TOPIC

Design

The Private Lives of Public Schools

When it comes to building schools, a little-known entity with radical roots has had an outsize effect on the city’s skyline. How can the Educational Construction Fund adapt an experimental ethos to changing times?

Circulation Desk

Waterfront Views

With so much of value under threat from rising seas and flooding rains, recent books reconsider our relation to the water’s edge.

Lavender Lane

Getting to the bottom of a mysterious streak of purple cropping up along Manhattan’s eastern edge.

The New Public Water

Drinking water is all around us, but just out of reach. Can simple tweaks to the city’s emergency infrastructure radically expand access to this precious resource?

An Urban System of Death

Density and displacement aren’t just problems for the living.

It Takes a Village to Weather a Storm

In Sheepshead Bay, designing for resilience at a scale somewhere between the city and the single-family house.

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.

The Location of Justice: Futures

Reentry: Start Here

People returning to city life after time in prison will soon be able to find help at some branch libraries. How can designers help librarians create life-saving connections?

The Location of Justice: Systems

Where Care Meets Confinement

For doctors trying to provide mental health care to people who are incarcerated or detained by the New York City Department of Corrections, city jails pose a challenge — and provide an opportunity.

Intersections: Behind Closed Doors

House Proud

As a generation of queer pioneers reaches old age, new models of housing and community space leverage design to meet their needs.