Design For Six Feet
After sitting at home for two months this unforgettable spring, launching Design For Six Feet together with Liz McEnaney and…
Awesome Newburgh
Awesome Newburgh gives micro-grants to projects that make Newburgh awesome. This past weekend, we launched an exhibit of all the projects awarded so far at the ADS Warehouse in Newburgh. The show will be up for another two months, so stop by to learn more about Awesome Newburgh and the many small & big things we help realize.
Design For Six Feet in Hudson
This Saturday at 1pm, we will join Peter Spears of @futurehudson for a conversation about Design For Six Feet, how and why we started it, our recent work and where we think it will go. We will also discuss our collaboration with Future Hudson, Hudson Hall and the City of Hudson to create a shared experience of Warren Street in Hudson as well as a recent design competition for outdoor play in response to closed libraries, canceled summer camps and the uncertainty of school reopenings.
The Climate Action Lab – Launching a Project Diary
The Climate Action Lab is an experimental laboratory to explore architecture and urban design solutions that address the climate crisis….
Ruderal Ecologies: Grounds For Change
and youarethecity on the road again…On Saturday, April 14th, 2018 Kaja will be speaking at Ruderal Ecologies: Grounds For Change…
Fieldguide on the Road
The Fieldguide to Phytoremediation will be featured at NatureStructure, and exhibition curated by Scott Burnham at the Boston Society of…
Talking about participation
In September, I was invited to speak at Rising Architecture in Aarhus, Denmark. I don’t like the way I look on video, but I think the editors capture very well some of the most important points I said in this interview after my talk. thank you.
How to capture the invisible by meeting people from Rising Architecture on Vimeo.
Speaking about spaces of migration…
on April 22nd at a 1-day summit at NYU in New York, which brings together various diplomats, representatives from the…
Writing about PARKINGPLUS
In May, our article about speculative design for parking on Long Island was published in articulo: Journal for Urban Research:
ParkingPLUS: How Design Produces a Future for Long Island’s Suburban Downtowns
Speculative design can be a useful tool in building broad-based support among community members and stakeholders for denser, transit-oriented development, and a greater mix of uses in North American suburbs, particularly in suburban regions characterized by both fractured governance and persistent segregation by race and class such as found in the Long Island suburbs of New York City. Urban design and in particular urban design competitions provide opportunity to initiate public conversations about the potential for retrofitting selected suburban sites to new built configurations that are more socially sustainable and resilient over time. Recent efforts by the Long Island Index, a project of the Rauch Foundation, to leverage research through sponsoring design competitions to generate an informed conversation about land use around transit stations in Long Island’s suburban downtowns serves as an example. We present the 2013-14 Build a Better Burb: ParkingPLUS design challenge and its results as well as local and national reactions to them – including debates in the freewheeling discursive space of online comments to articles. We emphasize the role that speculative design can play in advancing local policies and decision-making processes that support a greater densification and diversification of transit-supported suburban downtowns. See the full article here
while waiting for warmer weather…
Snow again in New York City. Here in anticipation of warmer days to come, watch the video about Hike the Heights featuring our map.
next hike is June 6th, 2015
Morningside Park Green Gym
Morningside Park Green Gym is launching this spring. See a preview of the map we designed for it.
Conversations: Equity Agendas on Monday October 27th
Presented as part of the annual Max Bond Lecture, an annual series of design talks in memory of J. Max Bond, Jr., FAIA, Institute for Public Architecture fellows will explore ideas for public and below-market housing at this joint event.
Hike the Heights 10: You’re Invited!
Build a Better Burb Parking PLUS
There are more than 4,000 acres of surface parking lots in and around Long Island’s downtowns—that’s about 6.5 square miles solely dedicated to parking. In September 2013, the Long Island Index announced the ParkingPLUS Design Challenge to solicit innovative designs for parking structures, freeing up this valuable land for better uses. The design challenge paired four leading architectural firms with four Long Island communities: Utile, Inc. worked with Rockville Centre, LTL Architects worked with Westbury, Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design worked with Ronkonkoma, and dub Studios worked with Patchogue. Although each firm developed their design for a specific community, their ideas can be readily applied to downtowns across the Long Island region and around the nation. The challenge also included analyses of costs to build and maintain each of the parking structures, how to finance them, and economic benefits.The designs were released to the public January 16, 2014.
Image: Utile, Inc for Rockville Centre.
Together with June Williamson, Associate Professor of Architecture at The City College of New York/CUNY, author of Designing Suburban Futures and co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia, I had the great pleasure of coordinating this effort for the Long Island Index.
See some press coverage of the Design Challenge in Newsday, Long Island Advance ,CBS News, NBC News. All designs can be viewed in detail at Build ab Better Burb
Designing Services for Housing
Finally! Designing Services for Housing is the culmination of 18 months of research, design and discovery with the Public Policy Lab, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Parsons DESIS Lab. The publication illustrates how our team of fellows developed proposals that support the way in which New Yorkers understand and apply for affordable housing. Among collaborators referred to as the “How-to-guide”, this report will now sit on agency staff’s desk as vital instruction for implementing these ideas as pilots. We will continue to work with HPD throughout 2014 to see, how that worked.
