Roy Strickland describes a student project that combines infill development, real estate financing and urban design to re-envision the housing projects of the Lower East Side.

Sarah Ichioka and Moira Lascelles discuss the benefits of public assembly and a shared sense of possibility, offering lessons for a similar event in NYC.

Kirsten Hively visits the Candela Structures, relics of the 1964/5 World’s Fair, and encourages us to investigate the stories behind our city’s forgotten structures and spaces.

How do you involve people in a community engagement process when there is no defined community? Leslie Koch, president of GIPEC, tells us how she did it on Governors Island.

Following last week’s panel discussion on the Robin Hood Library Initiative, we take an in-depth look at the library of P.S. 69 in the Bronx.

Architect Peter Gluck and EHS co-founder Ivan Hageman introduce us to a distinctive independent middle school and discuss why the design of learning environments matters.

David Leven and Derek Porter discuss how their architecture and lighting design students collaborated to reimagine access to and use of this complex waterfront site.

Diana Balmori shares a flexible and inexpensive design scheme – complete with public engagement a la Twitter – to create street furniture and plantings that reimagine the public space of Gansevoort Plaza.

Before Balmori Associates began to develop the the design scheme detailed here, they first opened up the question of what a public space should be. Designers from the studio joined 40 Dutch urban design students and their teachers for a lively conversation that engaged the opinions of people around the neighborhood and the…

Interactive design student Sara Bremen investigates the NYC Info Center, designed by WXY and Local Projects, and some of its implications for information design, geographic awareness, and the shifting distinction between tourist and local.