Sugar Hill apartment complex Photo: Marc McQuade

If the Bronx ever invaded Harlem, surging over the Macombs Dam Bridge from Yankee Stadium, its forces might hesitate at the sight of Sugar Hill, the apartment complex designed by David Adjaye. The medieval-looking structure at the corner of 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue looms like a ruined bastion at the crest of Coogan’s Bluff, a pair of great squared-off boulders stacked slightly askew, as if a defending army had readied it for toppling. The west façade is pitted with small square windows that glint like mica in the granitic mass.

Photo: Marc McQuade

It’s a hard to fathom why Adjaye would evoke a hilltop citadel, or clad it in storm-cloud-colored concrete so that even on a perfect June day it glowers forbiddingly against the sky — after all, the building’s intentions are exactly opposite. This castle is a home — 124 of them actually, developed by the nonprofit Broadway Housing Communities to provide a struggling neighborhood with desperately needed affordable housing. Below the apartments are two institutions geared to kids: an early childhood center and a children’s museum, separated by a narrow court. The whole thing will rest on a foundation of giggles and squeals, a fact that will invigorate some residents and irritate others, but surely represents a boon in an area desperate for such facilities. Adjaye rightly rejects the brick box model of public housing and public schools. Why, then, replace it with a dead-eyed guard tower?....Continue Reading

> via nymag.com