This event will be conducted in-person in room 315F and through Zoom.

For Zoom attendance, please register in advance here.

Sidewalks and Storefronts examines Manhattan’s Chinatown through the lens of its small businesses — the markets, vendors, and family-run shops that animate its streets and sustain its collective memory. Formed through networks of migration and labor, Chinatown now stands at a fragile intersection of resilience and displacement, its everyday economy continually reshaped by urban change.

Tracing the neighborhood’s evolution from the 1870s to the present, the project situates the pandemic within a longer history of adaptation and struggle. Through on-site observation, photography, and architectural drawing, it documents the intimate relationships between storefront and street, interior and exterior, livelihood and space — captured in façade mappings and charcoal studies of Chinatown’s dense urban life.

Building on this research, the design proposals reimagine Chinatown’s civic spaces through the lens of small business, envisioning new spatial frameworks of support, continuity, and visibility that honor its layered histories while speculating on possible futures.

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Belinda Lin.

Alice (Yuan) Meng is a designer and researcher whose work explores the intersections of architecture, urban culture, and community resilience. A graduate of The Cooper Union School of Architecture AR’24 and designer at Young Projects in New York, she investigates how spatial design can amplify local economies and everyday life within immigrant neighborhoods.  

This project is supported by the Arthur Thomson AR’64 Post-Graduation Fellowship.

The Diane Lewis Student Lecture Series is endowed by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

The in-person event is open current Cooper Union students, faculy, and staff only. The zoom call is free and open to the public. Registration is required.