TOPIC

Public Space

Explicit Trespassers: Colin Jerolmack on New York’s Pigeons

Sociologist Colin Jerolmack explains how the inescapable pigeon can help us understand the broader systems — natural, physical, and cultural — that build our experience of the urban environment.

Empire Drive-In: A Novel Perspective on Car Culture

The Armory and the City: Civic Spaces of the National Guard

In advance of The Architectural League's Beaux Arts Ball on September 28th at the 69th Regiment Armory, we take a look back at the civic and social role of National Guard armories in the American city.

Thomas Hirschhorn's Precious and Precarious Bronx

Writer Steven Thomson and photographer Cameron Blaylock respond to Thomas Hirschhorn's Gramsci Monument, a conceptual sculpture commemorating an Italian philosopher installed at a NYCHA complex in the Bronx.

Paths to Pier 42

Hester Street Collaborative's Anne Frederick and Dylan House discuss a temporary pop-up public space on the Lower East Side that creates an asset for the neighborhood while informing and building momentum for the design of a future permanent park.

Little Metrics

Malaika Kim, one of two runners-up of the Fuzzy Math writing competition, traces how the intangibles of her life — the passage of time, acquired knowledge, and changes in lifestyle and family — have shifted her perception and experience of the physical environment in very measurable ways.

Urban Omnibus Writing Competition: Fuzzy Math

The City That Never Shouts

Announcing the winner of our Fuzzy Math writing competition: Steven Higashide imagines a near future in New York, in which a new City agency — the Department of Externalities — monitors and evaluates the social and environmental effects of everyday actions.

Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts

Corona, Queens

In the first in a series of profiles of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts, Caitlin Blanchfield reports on how a robust network of community-based groups in Corona, Queens, has put local cultural vitality and institutional partnerships to work in reclaiming a public space for neighborhood use.

Multitasking Infrastructures: A Conversation with Sheila Kennedy and Veit Kugel

Sheila Kennedy and Veit Kugel discuss integrating natural systems, material innovation, and digital technology in projects that reflect a singular and synergistic approach to architecture, infrastructure, and civic space.

No Place for Amateurs: A New Stadium vs. Queens’ Soccer Fields

Samuel Stein argues against Major League Soccer's proposed stadium in Queens and asks "who exactly will benefit from yet another stadium in the park"?