paraSITE

In 1999, New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani proposed new anti-homeless, anti-tent laws. According to this law, any structure, domed or otherwise, standing in excess of 3.5 feet above the ground and capable of housing someone inside, is considered a tent, and use of the structure on city streets is considered illegal camping. The inhabitant of said tent can be ticketed or arrested. Given the incidence of homelessness in New York City, these laws are clearly meant to anticipate the possibility of “tent cities” and to prevent against an appropriation of “public” space.

The paraSITE units in their idle state exist as small, collapsible packages with handles for transport by hand or on one’s back. In employing the device, the user must locate the outtake ducts of a building’s HVAC system. The intake tube of the collapsed structure is then attached to the vent. The warm air leaving the building then inflates and heats the double membrane structure.

On a purely pragmatic level, the shelters enable survival on the city streets by siphoning the warm air being expelled by a building’s heating system into the double membrane inflatable. The homeless never come into direct contact with the potentially harmful exhaust air, as it circulates through the two layers of polyethylene and the shelter is heated through conduction.

The shelters function not only as temporary places of survival and retreat, but also as stations of dissent and empowerment: many of the homeless users regard their shelters as a protest device, some shouting slogans like “We beat you Uncle Sam!”. The shelters communicate a refusal to surrender, and make more visible the unacceptable circumstances of homeless life within the city.