The borough of Queens has long been celebrated as the melting pot of America. It was the birthplace of North American religious freedom in the seventeenth century, hosted two World’s Fairs in the twentieth, and is currently home to over a million foreign-born residents participating in the American experience. In 2013, Spanish-born artist and architect Rafael Herrin-Ferri began to paint a portrait of the “World’s Borough”—not with images of its diverse population, or its celebrated international food scene, but with photographs of its highly idiosyncratic housing stock. While All the Queens Houses is mainly a photography book celebrating the broad range of housing styles in New York City’s largest and most diverse county, it is also a not-so-subtle endorsement of a multicultural community that mixes global building traditions into the American vernacular, and by so doing breathes new life into its architecture and surrounding urban context.

With an introductory essay by Joseph Heathcott.

The borough of Queens has long been celebrated as the melting pot of America. It was the birthplace of North American religious freedom in the seventeenth century, hosted two World’s Fairs in the twentieth, and is currently home to over a million foreign-born residents participating in the American experience. In 2013, Spanish-born artist and architect Rafael Herrin-Ferri began to paint a portrait of the “World’s Borough”—not with images of its diverse population, or its celebrated international food scene, but with photographs of its highly idiosyncratic housing stock. While All the Queens Houses is mainly a photography book celebrating the broad range of housing styles in New York City’s largest and most diverse county, it is also a not-so-subtle endorsement of a multicultural community that mixes global building traditions into the American vernacular, and by so doing breathes new life into its architecture and surrounding urban context.

With an introductory essay by Joseph Heathcott.

Der New Yorker Stadtteil Queens gilt als Beispiel für die Integrationskraft der US-amerikanischen Gesellschaft. Im 17. Jahrhundert wurde dort die Religionsfreiheit der Vereinigten Staaten begründet, im 20. Jahrhundert fanden zwei Weltausstellungen statt und heute ist er Heimat für mehr als eine Millionen Menschen unterschiedlicher Herkunft. 2013 begann der Künstler und Architekt Rafael Herrin-Ferri ein Porträt des Stadtteils zu zeichnen, indem er die eigenwilligen Häuser der Bewohner*innen fotografierte. Das Buch zeigt dabei nicht nur die Bandbreite des Wohnungsbaus, es dokumentiert auch die Lebensweisen einer multikulturellen Gesellschaft, in der internationale Bautraditionen sich mit dem amerikanischen Kontext vermischen und dadurch eine ganz eigene Stadtlandschaft entsteht.

Mit einem einführenden Essay von Joseph Heathcott