Elsa Ponce is a Mexican-born architect, designer, and educator based in Brooklyn. She leads Studio Elsa Ponce, an architecture practice rooted in spatial justice and community access. Inspired by grassroots movements, Ponce works through a creative methodology grounded in solidarity and participation, co-designing environments with underrepresented communities. Through collaborations with nonprofits such as the Workers Justice Project and New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), Ponce designs workers’ hubs and community centers in New York City. Her groundbreaking project, the Workers Justice Hub, recently opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, establishing the first dedicated community center for day laborers in New York City’s construction, cleaning, and delivery sectors.
Ponce’s work has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts, Art Omi, New Museum’s New Inc, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. She teaches at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York and is a co-founder of WIP Collaborative, a feminist practice focused on public realm projects.
She is currently developing Architectures of Welcoming, a research-driven design project investigating how architecture can embody hospitality to support immigrants facing displacement, loneliness, and loss. Building on her longstanding partnerships with immigrant communities, Ponce explores how culturally rooted “third spaces” can nurture care, connection, and belonging.
At MacDowell, Ponce worked on the vision of a speculative community hub informed by principles of openness, interdependence, and care. She explored these ideas through drawing, writing, and model-making, building on her experience co-designing community centers with immigrant communities.
Portrait by Marian Sell
