TOPIC

Manhattan

Where to Have Sex in an Epidemic

The New St. Marks Baths became a key infrastructure of care in the struggle against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. What can its history tell us about still pressing questions around public health, private pleasure, and the spaces in-between?

Architects of Black Harlem

In an urban landscape synonymous with African American culture, buildings by Black designers make space for domesticity, creativity, and community.

Dispatches

This Is What We're Seeing, This Is What We're Not Seeing

Mark Dicus of the SoHo Broadway Initiative reflects on the ups and down of a tumultuous year along one of New York City's most heavily-trafficked pedestrian corridors.

Down to Earth

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

You’re Not Going to Tell Me When to Go Home

What happened on the ground during the summer protests in NYC? Participants describe a temporary landscape of kinship and resistance — and a template for another city.

Migrating Forms

Immigrant architects and builders transformed New York's working-class housing, once a symbol of despair, into a stock of dignified dwellings — their aspirations etched into the ornamented exteriors of the city’s iconic tenements.

Homebound

"Homes for the aged” have long negotiated between keeping elders safe and keeping them connected to their communities. As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens senior care facilities across the country, the story of one Manhattan nursing home holds lessons for balancing "home" and "institution" during times of duress, and far after the worst is over.

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.

Pass the Leftovers!

The largest controlled building demolition in history, currently underway in Midtown Manhattan, puts front and center the ethical and environmental consequences of architecture’s disposable values. Could today's detritus be the building blocks of the future?

Digital Frictions

Tools of Collective Intelligence

As building technologies from doorbells to thermostats claim to become ever “smarter,” how do they mesh with the social life of shared spaces?