Photo by Erik Freeland

Recently the staff of the Architectural League had the opportunity to visit The East Harlem School at Exodus House, an independent middle school on East 103rd St. EHS co-founders and brothers Hans and Ivan Hageman grew up on the site when Exodus House was a residential drug rehabilitation center, founded in 1963 and run by their parents. Growing up in East Harlem while attending the prestigious Collegiate School, the brothers were confronted daily with the acute imbalance between the opportunities and resources available to their fellow students as compared to their neighbors, and the socioeconomic biases that fed the disparity. The Hageman brothers wanted to bring the quality education they had experienced to the residents of their community.

When the rehab center closed its doors, Exodus House was converted into an after school and summer program in 1984 before transitioning into the year-round middle school in 1993. After years in the iron-gated building that had housed the rehab center, after-school program and the first years of EHS, the Hagemans and the board decided to pursue construction of a new school. The building, designed by Peter Gluck and Partners, opened its doors in December 2008. Peter Gluck is known for his focus on socially responsible design/build work and is fervent in his belief that architects should take responsibility for and oversee all aspects of a project, from design to construction. (Stephen Zacks described Gluck’s office, in a 2007 Metropolis article, as functioning “like an unofficial postgraduate program for discontented designers who actually want to learn to build something.”)

We were led on a tour of the new building by two EHS eighth graders, Tyler and Leilani, with help from Gluck and Project Architect Stacie Wong, who shed some light on the school’s unique operations as well as its flexible and beautiful space. After our tour we sat down for a conversation with Gluck and Ivan Hageman, the dynamic co-founder and head of EHS, who outlined what makes the school distinctive and how the building reflects that. Luckily, we brought our flip-cam with us:

Peter Gluck later elaborated on his experience working on The East Harlem School, his approach to school design, and why school design matters.

The design team with EHS students. Photo by Theo Morrison.

Urban Omnibus: How did your role as both designer and construction manager affect your process?
Peter Gluck: Completely. In the traditional practice when the project exceeds its budget, costs are reduced through value engineering which comes always at great expense to program and quality. Our response to this classic dilemma is to integrate the building’s construction with its design. What we try to do is “pin the tail on the donkey,” which is to truly and appropriately use all available budget, so that the building is neither under- or over-designed. For example, East Harlem was originally a swamp and the site, located in a 100 year flood zone, had a high water table. The foundations required complicated friction piles to anchor the building to keep it from floating, and complete waterproofing of the lower floors. The cellar slab was raised to be just above the water table, making the first floor 3 feet above the sidewalk. This raised first floor required a ramp from the street for ADA requirements, so we turned this into a positive asset: the ramp created a processional space for the students arrival to school. It allows Ivan to monitor the morning procession from his office perch.

Our dual role also allowed us to participate completely in the construction process and involve the manufacturers and sub-contractors in the development of the design. By engaging the actual players in relation to their specific area of expertise, we were able to partner with vendors creatively and give them a sense of ownership over the final product. Our willingness to partner in product design with a locker manufacturer, for example, allowed us to produce distinctive, custom-designed lockers at a standard price.

UO: What choices were made to reflect EHS’s pedagogical mission?
PG: Ivan sees a dual role in his pedagogy: serious study and academic pursuit and the importance of community engagement in the pursuit of common goals. This is most clearly articulated in the primary concept for the section and elevation of the building. The upper floors house the classrooms and their more solitary and sheltered endeavor behind the pixelated screen façade, while the lower portion contains more open public spaces, where student and teacher movement and activity is sensed from the street.

Ultimately budget constraints pushed us to a smaller multi-window scheme, which was inherently less expensive. We turned this to our advantage, by relating the scale and shape of the window to the neighboring windows, and by creating the potential for different light conditions by giving the teachers the ability to customize their classroom environment with operable windows and shades. Corridors were also conceived as rooms, to allow casual teaching-student moments to occur outside the classrooms. By programming in multi-use purposes for circulation spaces, it de-institutionalizes the hallways and gives a sense of place.

Thinking to the school’s future, we worked to maintain a level of flexibility throughout the building. The rooms can be reconfigured at anytime to accommodate the changing needs of the school as its pedagogy evolves. By using long-span structure with deep lateral beams, we were able to keep all the classroom walls as non-structural partitions. The concentration of the mechanical ductwork and equipment in the corridor ceilings also allows the space from the corridor out to the façade, front and back, to be flexible.

Photo by Theo Morrison.

UO: Why do you think school design matters and how can we encourage more innovation in the design of learning environments?
PG: Oftentimes school buildings are overlooked and seen as infill buildings. But in fact they are extraordinarily relevant as public buildings which can become the hearts of their neighborhoods. They have the potential to introduce real civic architecture to the inner city. They function as the expression of our times in the urban context. As for innovations in the design of learning environments, I think it is more often the case that innovative school projects are produced by architects who don’t necessarily specialize in a specific building type. They tend to bring a level of creativity and openness to the design process that yields interesting, rather than formulaic results.

—

Photo by Theo Morrison.

The design and efficacy of learning environments is a lively topic these days. To explore the issues in greater depth, check out some of these links:

• In July 2009 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan remarked, “It’s not about the building, it’s about the children.” Architecture for Humanity founder Cameron Sinclair took issue with Duncan’s remarks on the Huffington Post, reminding us that the way we design and build our environment testifies to our priorities in powerful ways. (Sinclair, with his colleagues at the Open Architecture Network, also focused last year’s Open Architecture Challenge on classroom design.)

• Here in New York, the nonprofit facilities developer Civic Builders are working to provide turnkey real estate solutions to charter schools, helping administrators with financing, acquisition, design and construction of educational facilities.

• In the early 1990s, not long after New York City’s School Construction Authority was created, the Architectural League partnered with the education advocacy group Public Education Association to propose ways to build small schools. The small schools movement was gaining steam as an important way to improve student learning and achievement, but in terms of facilities, the conventional wisdom had it that creating small school buildings was too expensive and too administratively difficult to be broadly feasible. New Schools for New York (available from the Architectural League), the book published to document the League/PEA design study that proposed alternative ways to build small schools by opportunistically using the fabric of the city and its overall development, is relevant and interesting almost twenty years later as New York continues to struggle to provide enough classroom space for its schoolchildren.

Gluck addresses a key point: careful attention must be paid to the design quality, scale and flexibility of schools, but also to their capacity to foster or inhibit learning and teacher-student and peer-to-peer relationships. Yes, we found The East Harlem School beautiful, but the ultimate achievement of the building is shown best by seeing it in use. Tyler and Leilani took pride in showing us their school and recounting the activities that take place in each space. We witnessed first hand the success of the communal areas, sitting in on a lively school-wide weekly gathering after our tour. The approach to the school was welcoming, and the respectful and warm relationship among students, teachers, and administration was clear even in brief encounters in hallways. Architectural analysis is too rarely explored post-occupancy. As we herald the importance of the design of learning environments, we must also look to the way these spaces are used by students, teachers and administrators as a crucial indicator of their success.  -V.S.


Photographs by Erik Freeland and Theo Morrison.

Welcome to a very out-and-about edition of the Roundup. Who says life slows down in the summer?

Tomorrow night come rage with us at the Architectural League’s Beaux Arts Ball at Omnibus home base The Old American Can Factory (tickets still on sale!). Why? Take your pick: open studios by Can Factory artists-in-residence (visit us in the Omnibus office in room A218), DIY collaborative manufacturing in The Factory, dancing ’til the wee hours with DJ Chris Annibell/Afrokinetic, food by the Vendy-award-winning Dosa Man (we’re all about the street vendor love) and Brooklyn favorite Blue Marble Ice Cream, and a very cool lighting installation by Wingspace Theatrical Design.  And, last but not least, because all proceeds support the League, our beloved parent organization.

Next up on the calendar, on Tuesday the 9th, is our second meet-up, this time in the Bronx for a walking tour of the Grand Concourse with our friends at the Design Trust for Public Space and WNYC’s Cityscapes.  If you can’t make the tour, bring some food and drink and come by for the Public Space Potluck.

Maybe you’re more in the mood for some super-fun Superfund knowledge.  Back at the Can Factory again, this time on the evening of June 15, we’re working with our friends at the Center for Urban Pedagogy and XO Projects to explore the issues surrounding this contentious debate.  Artist Brooke Singer and historian Sarah Vogel will discuss the history of the Superfund program, the politics of designation, and the changing legal definitions of toxins, risk, and responsibility.

The League is on board with our enthusiasm for the Floating Pool. Next Thursday, Jonathan Kirschenfeld will be presenting the project as part of the League’s 2009 New York Designs lecture series. Speaking of floating structures, if you like them for recreation, would you consider water-based living?

If the thought of braving the crowds in Times and Herald Squares on a weekday afternoon unnerves you, how about Vanderbilt or Bedford Ave.?  Sunday afternoons in June, enjoy car-free Vanderbilt Ave. (music! ice cream! skateboarding!), or head to Bedford for Williamsburg Walks on Saturday afternoons (friendly neighborhood organizations! rhubarb workshops! sock puppets!) both starting this weekend.  Next weekend Jackson Heights joins the fun with the 78th Street Play Street.

Still looking for more activities?  Yesterday Shumi gave us the skinny on West Harlem’s new waterfront park.  Break out your fishing poles on June 13th if you’re looking for an excuse to go visit it yourself.  Or, if you can’t get enough of life around the 7 train, the fun doesn’t stop with ecology: Jump on board for Queens Art Express ’09.  And The Putting Lot opens this weekend!

By the way (if you haven’t already heard), it’s official: Gehry’s out as designer of the Atlantic Yards arena, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone from the project completely. It looks like the little bird whispering in Alec’s ear knows his stuff.  That just might merit a new chapter in the production of Brooklyn at Eye Level.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Image: 2008 Beaux Arts Ball, The Architectural League of New York, photo by David Malosh

West Harlem Piers Park
Linking Riverside Park, which begins at 72nd Street, to Riverbank State Park, from 135th to 145th Streets, the West Harlem Piers Park is the last jigsaw piece in a now unbroken strip of publicly accessible waterfront running all the way up from Battery Park. A safe, continuous and dedicated bicycle path now extends along the west side of Manhattan, allowing a no-dismount ride from the Battery all the way to Dyckman up at 200th Street – a bright feather to the city’s cap, or bike helmet.

Over ten years in the making, the West Harlem Piers Park has been the laborious fruit of many stakeholders and the subject of discussion at every level of government. The site exists where several different neighborhood initiatives intersect: the West Harlem rezoning, the 125th BID westward expansion and Columbia University’s Manhattanville expansion. The complex consultation process brought in many parties, evidenced by the long succession of assemblymen and community leaders who took the stage to thank their colleagues. Congressman Charles B Rangel, who procured federal funds (including still-to-come stimulus dollars), and Assemblyman Herman “Danny” Farrell reminisced about the ferry to the Palisades Entertainment Park in New Jersey and trolley cars which rattled into the area when the West Harlem Pier was still functioning (indeed there were plans to rebuild the pier as an additional stop on the Manhattan Circle Line). Others grimly recollected the site’s seedier and more dangerous recent history: the milk bottles of the erstwhile Borden Milk Factory gave way to crack vials, broken glass and prostitution during the recession of the seventies. Today the park has been transformed into a highly usable and attractive addition to Harlem’s public spaces. Hope Knight from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Pam Jones from Community Board 9 both spoke of the site’s proximity to 125th Street, a major east-west connector, and of the ongoing developments planned for the area as being strategic to the park’s popularity.

W Architecture & Landscape Architecture and Archipelago Architecture and Landscape Architecture, who design exclusively for New York City, worked with the EDC to come up with a design for the space on this rather awkwardly shaped sinew of land. Several narrow lawn areas are neatly dissected by north-south pedestrian and bike paths; the southern end of the park has an ample number of benches and reclining areas, facing the water or the green spaces within the park. A triangular void in the decking separates the lawns from a pier-like strip of walkway running parallel to the park over the water, and increases the feeling of proximity to the river as it sparkles and spits underfoot. The strip allows fishermen – who have been provided with cleaning tables – and spectators of the growing kayaking community to be closer to the river whilst being undisturbed by the park’s other users. The park has also been landscaped to allow for small performance spaces, as demonstrated during the park’s inaugural ceremony by the company of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Patience Higgins Trio of jazz musicians.

Local artist Nari Ward was brought into the mix by Percent For Art, which ensures that one percent of public project funding is given over to the arts on site. His three metallic sculptures, derived from the shapes of fishing hooks, punctuate the lawns of the Piers park, while a walkway on the sidewalk edge of the park attempts to weave in spatial memories from the local community and from the history of the site.

Marine Transfer Station at 135th Street
Now relatively benign on the northern fringe of the Piers Park, until 2001 the Marine Transfer Station at 135th Street received 95 truckloads of garbage every day, all of which was largely transported by barge to Freshkills Landfill in Staten Island; the air pollution caused by the garbage and idling trucks exacerbated the locality’s already high asthma rate. The protests against seeming environmental racism gained weight as the negative effects to air quality were compounded by the local bus depot and the North River Waste Treatment Plant just behind the MTS, which processes sewage from all of West Manhattan, as well as the Riverdale area of the Bronx.

Two parties who are highly concerned in contesting the future of the 28,000 square foot space of the defunct Transfer Station are WEACT and Community Board 9, both of whom have been fundamental in the collaboration to develop the park so far. While WEACT, headed by the Jane Jacobs Medalist Peggy Shepard, sees the structure as playing host to further leisure activities such as kayaking, boat trips and a visitor center, Community Board 9 suggests that the creation of local green jobs is of paramount importance and so proposes long-term aquaculture and hydroponic agriculture projects, as well as promoting tourism and cultural activities. Having promised never to reopen the MTS for waste disposal, the Mayor’s office has commissioned WEACT to organize a broad-based steering committee and community-based charrette process that would work to find the best possible use.

We want to hear from designers about precedents and lessons learned from relevant experiences elsewhere, and from users and stakeholders about what they think should be considered too – let us know in the comments section below, and stay tuned to Urban Omnibus for updates. Though the park looks set to become a much-loved spot over the summer months, the MTS will remain ‘hot’ for some time yet.

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Shumi Bose is an architectural writer and researcher. She is currently working between London and New York, and lives in Brooklyn.

“Migrants from poor countries send home about $300 billion a year. This is more than three times the global total in foreign aid, making ‘remittances’ the main source of outside money flowing to the developing world “(New York Times Week in Review, November 18th, 2007).

The Mouride Brotherhood is a West African Sufi order of Islam based in the holy city of Touba, Senegal. Adherents have lived and traded in urban enclaves on every continent for much of the past fifty years. But I first came to understand some of the complexity of the Brotherhood’s commercial and financial network in a studio course I taught last year, Remittances: Global New York. The studio examined the pathways, institutions, and built products of the informal global trade in money. It asked the question: how is the movement of money manifested, and in what forms, in urban centers worldwide? New York City was our laboratory for experiments with this phenomenon, and students investigated two sites in Jackson Heights, Queens and one in Harlem, the stretch of West 116th Street that some call Little Senegal.

At first glance, the streetscape of Little Senegal reads as a typical ethnic enclave in New York. By looking closely beneath the surface of storefronts and street vendors, architecture student Anna Maria Bogadóttir discovered a global trade and remittance system that includes millions of $200 transactions, itinerant merchants moving from Hong Kong to Jeddah to New York to Paris, and the transnational financial flows that have funded the urban development of Touba.

This week Urban Omnibus presents the beginnings of Bogadóttir’s discovery process and invites readers to dig into the literature that reveals the complex relationship between this neighborhood, a global religious and financial network, and the urban development of a large African city of which too few of us are aware. This presentation, like the surfaces of New York’s streets that we walk by every day and take for granted, is only the start of the story. Look closer.

Detailed inspection of our urban fabric, and the financial systems that undergird it, challenges the common presumption that the Global North, or developed world, establishes institutions that dominate the Global South, or developing world. This studio documented and responded to the reverse trend, in which the developing world establishes new patterns in its host cities, dollar by dollar, person by person, often in ad hoc, makeshift, and opaque ways.  The result is a massive, still growing, dynamic global network of physical, communication, and institutional spaces.

Architects and urbanists need to recognize the spatial definition of these patterns: what do they look like now?  What materials, networks, technologies and programs inform or build each pattern? How does the informal city embed itself in the formal city? How do the informal and the formal cities transform one another? And what might each look like in the future?

– Laura Kurgan

For a thorough overview of worldwide remittance flows, check out the research and website of the International Fund for Agricultural Develoment (IFAD).

For press coverage of how remittances affect the global economy and how individuals are constantly reinventing this often informal framework, start here:

Western Union moves Migrant Cash Home, The New York Times, November 22, 2007

Interactive map illustrating the dispersal of remittance funds throughout the world, The New York Times, Week in Review, November 17, 2007

Immigrants push Western Union to share the wealth, in The Nation, May 11 2007.

The Million Dollar Club Project, an initiative to bolster the economic agency of remittance senders.

These scholarly sources offer an introduction to the Mouride Brotherhood and the holy city of Touba.

A sociological analysis of how the Mouride Brotherhood addresses globalization:
Diouf, Mamadou; Translated by Steven Rendall. “The The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” Public Culture – Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2000, pp. 679-702

An examination of commercial strategies employed by Mouride business people:
Ebin, Victoria. “À la recherche de nouveaux ‘poissons’: stratégies commerciales mourides par temps de crise”, Politique africaine 45, 1992, pp. 86-99.

A book-length account that links global and local elements of the experience of West African street merchants in New York City:
Paul Stoller. Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

How urban design in Touba reflects its position as the center of the Mouride Brotherhood:
Ross, Eric. Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

(Most of the Sufi shrines discussed in this book can be viewed in high-resolution satellite images by downloading this Google Earth file)

How Sufi brotherhoods shape the practice of Islam in Senegal
Mbacké, Khadim; Translated by Eric Ross and edited by John Hunwick. Sufism and Religious Brotherhoods in Senegal. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005.

Anna María Bogadóttir is a candidate in the Master’s of Architecture Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Laura Kurgan teaches architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is Director of Visual Studies and the Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL).

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.