Housing Brass Tacks

What Can Architects Do?

In the thorny thicket of housing problems, from cost to supply to quality, what roles can architects play? Architects Susanne Schindler, Jared Della Valle, and Deborah Gans offer possibilities.

The Location of Justice: Streets

Beacon / Bunker

Photographer Kris Graves tracks all 77 NYPD precincts from Tottenville to Edenwald, looking to these buildings — sometimes humble, sometimes imposing — for the face and footprint of law and order in the neighborhood.

The Location of Justice: Structures

Structures: Perspectives

The buildings where fates, freedoms, and justice are decided sit at the center of our image of the justice system. What form should they take? How should they work?

The Location of Justice: Structures

Retrofit for Fairness

The city oversees an experiment: Can new signage and instructions improve experiences in New York’s busiest criminal courthouse?

Intersections: Surfacing

Battlegrounds and Bachelor Flats

The NYC LGBT Historic Sites project puts once-marginal histories on the map, shining a light on the significance of overlooked sites.

Intersections: Surfacing

Making Space for Intersection

Many architects and urbanists are asking how their tools might be most effectively deployed in order to resist the violent oppression of marginalized communities, and how this effort might need to look different today than it has in the past.

The Location of Justice: Structures

Due Process and the Enclosure of Justice

What is gained, and what is lost, when justice takes place outside public view?

The Location of Justice: Structures

The People's Court

New spaces for justice replace punishment with problem solving and hierarchy with community.

The Location of Justice: Structures

A Jail to End All Jails

Mayor de Blasio promises to close the Rikers Island jail complex in ten years. But what comes next? A look at the island’s history reveals clues — and cautions.

The Location of Justice: Structures

What Jail Can't Do

Frank Greene and Kenneth Ricci discuss the changing paradigms of half a century of justice architecture and what we should ask — and expect — from courts and jails.