Fire Island Pines occupies a singular place in New York's cultural landscape. For decades, it has served as a refuge, gathering place, and site of community-building for LGBTQ+ people, while its unique ecology and physical isolation have shaped a built environment unlike anywhere else in the region.

The project explored possible futures for public space in a community defined by both environmental sensitivity and a dramatic seasonal population shift. With no direct road connection to the mainland, every building material must arrive by boat, making construction, maintenance, and waste management ongoing challenges.

Beginning with a simple constraint—no lumber could be cut—we developed a fully reversible structural system using bolted connections and stainless-steel tension straps, allowing the installation to be disassembled and the material returned to the mainland for reuse.

Rather than proposing a specific intervention, the exhibition presented a series of studies and provocations, asking how collective gathering and public life might be imagined within a place whose identity depends on both its fragility and its rich social history.

This exhibit was funded through the Architecture League of New York and NYSCA Independent Projects Grant program and developed by co-founder Davis Owen and Francis Aguillard.