Rotating megaphone pavilions turn NYCHA residents' voices into public space

Turn a pass-through strip between a public-housing complex and the Astoria ferry terminal into a gathering place rooted in residents' own stories.

Megaphone-shaped pavilions that residents rotate by hand — perforated with neighbourhood scenes outside, lined with their poems and memories inside.

Four powder-coated aluminium octagons (1.42–2.34 m), perforated outside with people playing, dancing and protesting; inside, poems, memories and messages from Cosby and neighbours — each one manually rotatable to reframe the views.

Opened August 2026 as a permanent installation: seating, play structure and performance space; residents co-authored the content and can re-aim the openings between waterfront and complex.

Since August 2026, four large octagonal structures have stood between the Astoria Houses public-housing complex, the waterfront and the ferry terminal in Queens. Designed by Brooklyn studio The Urban Conga with poet and resident Tamra Cosby, the permanent installation 'Revolving Voices' takes the megaphone — the area's emblem of amplified voices — and rebuilds it as architecture: powder-coated aluminium shells, 1.42 to 2.34 metres across, that people can walk into, sit on, climb and perform in.

The commission came through 'From Roots to Arts: Celebrating NYCHA's Cultural Heritage', the Public Housing Community Fund and NYCHA's artist-in-residence programme, which pairs artists from public housing with their own communities. Residents' memories and ideas shaped the design: perforated outer surfaces carry scenes of neighbourhood life — people playing, dancing, protesting — while the insides are lined with poems, memories, messages and stories by Cosby and her neighbours, so anyone sitting inside is literally surrounded by them.

Nothing is fixed. Each element rotates by hand, so users choose whether the openings frame the waterfront and ferry crowd or close into sheltered nooks facing the housing complex — continuously renegotiating the relationship between artwork, homes and shoreline. A strip that used to be a pass-through now holds seating, play and a small event space; the design assigns it no single function, and residents remain co-authors of both content and configuration.

The motif came from the community's own instrument: a megaphone amplifies voices, and the pavilion gives that metaphor a room-scale, usable form.

Participation ran through the whole process — residents supplied the poems, memories and images, so the artwork archives its own neighbourhood.

Hand rotation keeps the piece unfinished by design: every turn changes sightlines, shelter and who the space invites.

The brief targeted a transit strip, not a plaza — a small-scale intervention where people already pass, rather than a destination they must seek out.

Public art works hardest when the public can change it: rotation makes neighbours co-authors of the space's configuration, not just its audience.

The installation opened in August 2026 as a permanent fixture of the Astoria Houses campus, doubling as seating, play structure and performance space for gatherings, music and poetry. Residents' texts are permanently inscribed, while the structures' orientation — and the social situations they create — stays in visitors' hands.