The desired subject. Crisis, reaction and architecture: the case of Roosevelt Island

Abstract

This manuscript tries to bring attention to one of the most neglected islands of New York City which is known today as Roosevelt Island. Despite it having brought about heavy debates in the last century, it has hardly achieved the analytic attention it deserves. This text will try to show that it is possible to patently observe in the Island the main metropolitan, domestic, architectonic and social shifts that have occurred during the 20th century and the connections between them. The architecture that has been built there can be classified in three separate critical historical periods. Each of these has led to building types which have generated a particular domesticity addressed to accommodate a desired type of subject.