TOPIC
Public Housing
Beyond Resilience
Nearly six years after Sandy flooded basements and uprooted trees, Red Hook Houses is still in recovery. But designers from KPF and OLIN see a future brighter than survival, when infrastructure combines with art and the landscape rises above the waterline.
Do You Feel Secure?
For decades, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design has touted the efficacy of bollards, gates, and cameras in deterring violent acts — with scant evidence. At what cost do we build “defensible space”?
NYCHA
In our seventh Brass Tacks discussion, Rasmia Kirmani-Frye, President of the Fund for Public Housing, leveled with us on public housing’s unique role in the city and the challenges NYCHA must face.
The Storm That Will Be: Protecting Public Housing in the New 100-Year Floodplain
Elizabeth Rush looks at the particular challenges facing public housing authorities in high-risk flood zones and follows a design competition for a stormwater management plan in Jersey City to consider how responsive, site-specific architectural innovation can inform broader strategies for strengthening vulnerable communities.
Hard Units: A Drive through Jersey City with Brian Loughlin
Brian Loughlin, the chief architect for the Jersey City Housing Authority, takes us on a tour of recent renovations and rehabilitations, demonstrating the architectural innovation and policy acumen required to navigate federal housing programs and create sound homes and neighborhoods.
A Scheme on a Bluff: The View from Todt Hill Houses
In the third article in our Typecast series, Brad Fox travels to Staten Island's Todt Hill Houses and reminds us that amid debates on how design and policy can produce environments of opportunity, people are what ultimately make a place.
Joseph Shuldiner Knows Public Housing
As the only person to have managed housing authorities for all three of the nation’s largest cities, Joseph Shuldiner, current director of the Yonkers Municipal Housing Authority, has a unique and invaluable perspective on what it takes to make public housing work.
Smith Houses: A Legacy of Activism
Sarika Bansal investigates how local traditions of advocacy, a history of community tensions, and the chronic underfunding of public housing inform residents' opposition to a controversial new development proposal at Smith Houses.
Dwelling and Resilience
In a recent design studio set in the context of the public housing system, Andrew Bernheimer and David Leven challenged Parsons students to confront the environmental, social, municipal, and architectural demands of creating housing in New York City.
Typecast
Typecast is a long-term Architectural League study into architectural typologies that begins with a closer look at five "towers-in-the-park," one in each borough of New York City.