Urban Exiles studies how people establish shelter and daily routines in spaces not intended for habitation, such as parks, underpasses, transit stations, and vacant lots. It examines how the city responds through regulation, policing, and design, not a linear process but a generative one where each party shapes the environment for future action. In the end, it is a study about the design of absence in civic space and its active role in our lives.

The project sets archival images and field work of informal settlements beside contemporary photographs of sites in New York, tracing the material dimensions of policy and survival that generate the spaces we encounter and shape the actions and potential actions available in those spaces.

OUTPUT

Installation

Exhibition

Photobook

Research Paper

TEAM

Joseph Reich (Lead Researcher/Creative Director)

Aleksa Milojević (Producer)

Matthew Wilde (Producer)

Developed at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Tao DuFour.

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