Historic public comfort station adaptive re-use

Comfort Kitchen

This award-winning project involves the adaptive re-use of a long-abandoned but thoughtfully designed public comfort station, constructed in 1912, into a space for exploring and celebrating a collective culture in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. The work transforms historic public infrastructure from a long-past era into a platform for 21st century community interaction. The project, which began as a replicable prototype for a social club to bring people together across cultural and demographic barriers, emerged as a restaurant and community kitchen called Comfort Kitchen. The neutral interior, composed of a series of niches, thresholds, and small gathering spaces, conveys a tone of soft openness to the stories and cultures embedded in the innovative menu and the remarkable journeys that brought the diverse surrounding community to America.