Tracked Houses

NEW YORK, NY, USA, 1990

These polemical houses – inspired by the plight of a community of homeless people living in a railway tunnel and abandoned rail yard on the west side of Manhattan – introduced literal motility into the repertoire of representational effects. While their forms are admittedly cartoonish, the random motion of the complex of loft-beasts, each coupled to a repurposed railway car, is intended to evoke the constrained nomadism of this rejected population.

Credits: Michael Sorkin, Kent Hikida

Photos: Dorothy Alexander, Robert Morrow