TOPIC

Materials

In Absentia

Where street trees have gone missing, sculptural assemblages punctuate the pavement.

A Wall Made of Bricks

Geologic processes, local histories, and centuries of labor converge on a project suggesting new possibilities of reuse.

21st Century Monument

Where a controversial sculpture stood, a monument to Harriet Tubman offers a new narrative and new directions for creating sites of collective memory.

God's Garage

It's complicated inside New York City's 99 cent stores, where creativity and exploitation coexist.

Whereabouts

9-26924

Wite-Out never really works as intended.

Cleaning Up?

Getting to Zero

Banned from residences for more than half a century, lead paint still poisons thousands of children a year in New York City. Who is responsible for ensuring healthy homes for all?

Withdrawn Waters

The balance between New York City's public and private pools has shifted dramatically in recent decades. Why has so much city swimming retreated into towers or behind fences?

Terra Incognita

Encouraging New Yorkers to probe the mysteries of the material beneath their feet, the Urban Soils Institute is moving knowledge of urban soils outside the domain of science and into the hands of communities.

Down to Earth

Viewed from the perspective of its raw material, Manhattan’s brassy Seagram Building illuminates architecture’s massive energetic and social consequences.

Seeing Double

The material flows that feed Manhattan's iconic public spaces reveal "reciprocal landscapes" whose fates are tied together by fertilizer, pavers, and planks.