TOPIC
Materials
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.
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Withdrawn Waters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.
Signs of the Times
From small and ubiquitous markers to massive bespoke steel numerals, this longstanding Greenpoint signage company helps New Yorkers navigate the city.
Reflections on a Rising Hudson
Two hundred years of environmental change have meant both destruction and conservation of the most interesting river in America.