Mouhamadou Dieng Portfolio

PORTFOLIO

Mouhamadou Dieng

The Bernard and Ann Spitzer School of Architecture

REGROUNDING HARLEM

Advanced Studio, Fall 2023

Collaborated with: Lorraine Colbert

Instructor: Jerome Haferd

The Harlem African Burial Grounds exists at the water’s edge of East Harlem, now currently the site of a defunct MTA bus depot. Formerly under the ownership of the Reformed Dutch Church, the burial ground was split into a site for European burials, and “Negro burials.” These burial grounds became a casualty to city planning, in which the Commissioners Plan had erased that boundary and turned it into a profitable plot of land.

Since then, numerous architectural interventions existed on this site. With the imposition of these architectures, and the filling in of the water through city development, the burial ground has been geologically displaced. In order to rectify this bodily injustice, we propose that the site must be “re-grounded.”

ReGrounding Harlem is an archival fabulation of the history of the Harlem African Burial Ground that deems exhumation as reparation. Through analyzing the layers of the site’s ground, we explore the Ground as a medium that harnesses the narratives and lives of inhabitants that have been disrupted through time. The Ground continues to disrupt the next phase of time following the EDC development plan for the Harlem African Burial Ground. The narratives and the identities of the site’s inhabitants through time are hidden inside forgotten objects and the Ground, and will disrupt this site through hauntology.

MTA Bus Depot

Infrastructure and disarticulated earth meet at the site of the burial ground. The earth itself is an insfrastructure that must be excavated and brought to the public as a form of exhibition.

Present Day - Speculative Section

“Hauntings” break through the shell of the MTA bus depot, and they take physical space and precendence in order of construction

Phasing Diagrams

Phase 1 - Excavation

Phase 2 - Removal of Bus Infrastructure

Phase 3 - Haunting

Phase 4 - Construction of Housing Development

Underground*

“Hauntings” wisp their way through the proposed development, emulating ossified bones in texture

ARTISTS JUNCTION

Core Studio 6, Spring 2023

Collaborated with: Alejandro Estevez, Jaden Fabro

Instructor: Ali Hocek

West Harlem has a burgeoning network of arts programs, dispered amongst the exisiting urban context, some specificially through the domain of institutions such as City College. At the site of the former Croton Aqueduct gatehouse exists an opportunity to involve a new Art-In-Residence program into the neighborhood. The “Artists-Junction” expands upon an existing artists culture in Harlem through the inserction of public and private programs. These programs meet volumetrically to create numerous mixed interior spaces. The junction of these programs is an exploration of a mixed-use approach to design in Harlem, and what it means when “Junctions” arrive in our environment.

Ground Floor*

Studios

Main Gallery

Studios

Studios

Mezzanine*

Residential At Roof*

Typical Residential*

South Elevation

North Elevation

HEATSCAPE

Core Studio 3, Fall 2021

Instructor: Viren Brahmbhatt

St Nicholas Park in Harlem was considered a site in which public and private edges meet; in this case, an abandoned and inaccessible stair in the park. This inaccessible stair creates a void in the center of the park. A public sauna is proposed as a means of creating new collective space for Harlem as a culmination of research and mapping. The sauna is segmented into thermal volumes, creating designated experiential spaces for all of the rituals of bathing.

Ground Floor Plan

Showers Sauna

Locker Room

Locker Room

Restroom

Restroom

Underground Cisterns

Sauna

BIOSCOPE

Spring 2022

Collaborated with: Philip Lee, Tamar Plotzker, Juan Giraldo, Chayarei Boldonado, Lutfun Priya

StreetLab is a nonprofit that hosts programs for public space across New York City. Through the Freedom By Design Chapter, our group of students proposed a portable gallery prototype for StreetLab’s DRAW program. With no way of properly storing drawings created by children at these pgorams, the Streetlab team often resorted to pinning up drawings up on makeshift boards.

The Bioscope is a contemporary take on a Bangeladeshi cinematic device, intended to give children a more compact and digital experience into the work that they create.

The Bioscope uses a set of tablets that are programmed to scroll through drawings via a handcrank (like a film reel). Each “scope” gives a child a view into the digital space of drawing.

ARTWORK

Various artworks completed in photographical or physical mediums

“Flesh Item,” Ink Print

“Dark Strata,” Paper Collage Advanced Studio, Fall 2023

“Ablution,” Digital Photograph

Mouhamadou Dieng

The Bernard and Ann Spitzer School of Architecture