WATERTIGHT is a 3D-scanned and 3D-printed specimen collection of human habitats and the individuals that reside alone within them.

Half of all city-dwellers in Manhattan, New York, now live by themselves. This is the only period in human history that civilization has supported large numbers of single occupant households.

The twelve WATERTIGHT characters represent an incomplete archive of the city’s adapting housing infrastructure at this moment. Each 3D-printed portrait is a shell protecting the material embodiments of the personal histories within. Small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, it is a corporeal version of a life in progress.

WATERTIGHT uses tropes of academic classification to contextualize these specimens with urban housing trends, social flux, and digital documentation techniques.