Whether she is working on the renovation of a Manhattan apartment or a proposal for a multifamily housing prototype in Newark, architect Nina Cooke John’s design approach is anthropological in nature. At the crux of her eponymous practice, which she established in 2018, is a fascination with how people appropriate and modify the spaces around them in an ad hoc manner. This is apparent in her earliest work: her thesis project at Cornell University, where she received a B.Arch. in 1995, explored how leftover space between buildings in the Bronx and Brooklyn could be transformed into “urban porches”—places for musical storytelling—for the predominantly Caribbean communities residing there. “I did get some pushback,” Cooke John, who was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, recalls. “Since it wasn’t a single building at a particular location, there weren’t any big formal moves,” she says. “Rather, it was about taking what you’ve been given and programming it in a way that benefits a larger group.”
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