Street-level experience, featuring community thrift activities beneath the store’s hovering geometry.

The Hover Store

Adaptive reuse, 555 Dixwell Avenue, New Haven

Year
2024
Site
New Haven, CT

A thrift store that continues, rather than replaces, the mission of the church it's built onto. The Hover Store preserves the existing church at 555 Dixwell Avenue and adds a new volume that hovers above it, its geometry answering the curbside's own irregular line.

Site planning worked outward from the existing church, learning-support building, and meditation garden already on the ground, threading a new street-edge condition between them. Inside, the project choreographs the life cycle of a donated object — drop-off, repair, storage, redistribution — as a sequence of spaces rather than a single undifferentiated room, with visual connections deliberately opened between floors so passersby and visitors can see the workshop in action.

Vertical circulation wraps the existing building, while supporting programs frame the site boundary.
The hovering geometry responds to the sinuous curbside edge, to inspire an iconic architectural feature.
This sectional detail illustrates the language of concealment and slippage established to reveal re-purposed goods & visual connection in thrift or church spaces.
Section A–A reveals a Programmatic hierarchy, with a below-grade meditation space for quiet contemplation.
Section S–S Features access to the elevated thrift store and its relationship with the existing church.
The slippage moments filter daylight to spotlight thrift items on display.
The continuity in the established design language informed the curation of the display & meditation platforms into moments of discovery.
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