We are celebrating 15 years — and counting — of stories that are deeply researched and deeply felt, that build a historical record of what the city has been.
Urban Omnibus / The Architectural League of New York and Urban Design Forum are excited to name Ellie Botoman, Ekemini Ekpo, Daphne Lundi, Anoushka Mariwala, Philip Poon, and Shirt as the newest cohort of New City Critics, a fellowship program empowering new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge how we design and develop our cities.
Our fellows this year — architects, journalists, artists, a city planner and a rapper among them — will be training a critical gaze on New York City over the next nine months. The fellowship supports six critics from underrepresented backgrounds through guest lectures and workshops, research guidance, networking, and the production of new critical projects. Through work to be published on a new vertical on Urban Omnibus, the fellowship encourages a more expansive conversation on the future of cities. The program is supported by an advisory board of leading writers, editors, and cultural producers — Garnette Cadogan, Dario Calmese, Alexandra Lange, Sukjong Hong, and Carolina A. Miranda — who also served on the jury to select the cohort. The program will be led by Ming Lin, Program Coordinator at Urban Design Forum, and Mariana Mogilevich, Editor in Chief of Urban Omnibus.
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Ellie Botoman is an environmental art historian researching the impact of climate change on cultural heritage preservation and possibilities for multisensory and multispecies collaboration in the design of exhibitions and institutional architectures. They have previously held roles at the Cooper Hewitt and the Center for Architecture, among others. Their criticism and poetry can be found in The Long Now Foundation and The Brooklyn Rail.
Ekemini Ekpo is a journalist, researcher, and theater artist seeking to catalyze intellectual and emotional inquiry through these forms. She is currently a resident actor at Mercury Store, a theater development lab in Gowanus and has previously participated in the Vox Media Writers Workshop. She was born and raised in Texas, and her people are from Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.
Daphne Lundi is an urban planner, policymaker, and artist. The child of Haitian immigrants, and as a native New Yorker who experienced Hurricane Sandy, her work is shaped by the impacts of climate change. As a Public Scholar at The Moynihan Center at CCNY, she has been exploring the intersections between sci-fi and city planning.
Anoushka Mariwala is an architectural designer, researcher, and writer from Mumbai. She is interested in considering the body as a site, producer, and interpreter of place and object. Most recently, she has been thinking about land history, property formation, and its entanglements.
Philip Poon is an architect, artist, and writer. Informed by his background as a Chinese-American from New York City, his work as a registered architect, and his engagement with art and activist movements in Chinatown, his projects materialize issues at the intersection of space, race, and class. As Dimes Square Tourist, he leads walking tours of Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Shirt is an artist working across writing, rap music, performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. Using a bricolage of language, sound and object, he considers ways of unlearning as a means of creating a more expansive readership. His work was recently published in Unlicensed, a volume on bootlegging as creative practice.
This year’s program would not be possible without the support of Critical Minded, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Joan Copjec, Paul Goldberger, Mark & Carol Willis, Nat Oppenheimer and Mary Margaret Jones.
We are also grateful to the founding donors of the program: Critical Minded, Mark & Carol Willis, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Graham Foundation, Thom Mayne, Moshe Safdie, Joan Copjec, Paul Goldberger, Eric Owen Moss, Zach Mortice & Maria Speiser, Tami Hausman, Stella Betts, Mary Margaret Jones, Nat Oppenheimer, Deborah Berke, Zach Mortice, Calvin Tsao, Rosalie Genevro, Mario Gooden, Lyn Rice & Astrid Lipka, Karen Stein and Vincent Chang.
Urban Design Forum programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
To learn more about supporting New City Critics, please contact Daniel McPhee, daniel@urbandesignforum.org.
The Architectural League of New York supports critically transformative work in the allied fields that shape the built environment. As a vital, independent forum, the League stimulates thinking, debate, and action on today’s converging crises of racism, inequity, and climate change, in service of a more livable and just world. Urban Omnibus is The Architectural League’s online publication dedicated to observing, understanding, and shaping the city. Urban Omnibus raises new questions, illuminates diverse perspectives, and documents creative projects to advance the collective work of citymaking.
Urban Design Forum mobilizes civic leaders to confront defining issues in the built environment. We are an independent membership organization that empowers professionals of diverse backgrounds, industries and perspectives to shape a better future for all New Yorkers. We investigate complex challenges in the built environment, study alternative approaches from cities around the world, and advance progressive strategies to build a more democratic city. Our history has been shaped by writers including our founder Ann Ferebee and late president Michael Sorkin, both of whom inspired legions of critics and cultural theorists.
The views expressed here are those of the authors only and do not reflect the position of The Architectural League of New York.
Dispatches from the New City Critics fellows: new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and build our cities.
