S K Y L I N E | 9 | One Year of Covid
The Week Ahead
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As we reflect on one year of Covid, we’re revisiting some pieces we’ve published over the past months. A lot has happened since the first articles touching on the pandemic were written. Over two and a half a million people have died—over half a million in the United States alone. Emotions have morphed, world-views have evolved, behaviors have been learned and unlearned. Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing these essays, articles, interviews, and drawings that contemplate Covid and the built environment here on SKYLINE. Check out the following from Issues 10 and 11:
The past year has also been a bleak reminder of the injustices and inequity baked into our built environment. What can architects and designers do about it? There are many events this week that probe this very question at various scales and contexts; one is a talk by Mariana Mogilevich on her book The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York, which Palmyra Geraki reviewed in Non-Issue 16—read it here. Some other lectures and talks we’re looking forward to:
(3/8) Narrative Change for the Green New Deal (3/9) Activating Two Decades of Built Environment and Public Health Scholarship through an Equity and Covid-19 Lens (3/10) Paola Antonelli: There Is Always a Design Emergency (3/10) Experiential Equity: Designing for Justice, Connection, and Harmony (3/10) Spatial Inequities: The “Chinatown” Problem in Today’s Pandemic Times (3/10) Health Equity in Public Space (3/11) Interrupting Business as Usual: Equity + Justice Issues with the Profession Today (3/11) Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights (3/12) Planning Futures? On Decolonial, Postcolonial, and Abolitionist Planning (3/12) Mayors Imagining the Just City
Scroll down for more upcoming events. If you would like to write up something for SKYLINE, get in touch: editor@nyra.nyc
Alex Klimoski
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DISPATCHES
3/1
Empathy vs. Action
PASCALE SABLAN, founder of the advocacy organization BEYOND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT and president of NOMA, conversed with the wickedly articulate critical theorist MICHAEL STONE-RICHARDS at the talk REFRAMING UTOPIAS: RADICAL FUTURES AND RADICAL ANXIETIES hosted by CARNEGIE MELLON and moderated by undergrads. The two breathed fire into the idea of collective empathy as a means of understanding how the built environment perpetuates injustices. “Why collective?” Stone-Richards asked before answering his own question: “Empathy at the collective level is not something we get to choose.” But Sablan made clear the distinction between empathy and action. “Am I trying to get someone to care, or am I trying to inform in a way that will solicit action?” she asked. Sablan affirmed her own dedication to dismantling a system that glorifies billion-dollar supertalls instead of elevating community advocates. “I'm not trying to modify it—it needs to come apart completely, because the DNA from which it’s been constructed will never lend itself to me.” Katie Angen
3/2
Care is Everywhere
“Our political and economic systems actively conceal the mechanics of care,” said MARIA S. GIUDICI at the start of CARE-WORK, a two-day symposium at RICE featuring a panel that included architect ROSARIO TALEVI, architectural historian and curator JIA YI GU, and the New York-based feminist architecture collective F-ARCHITECTURE. The event explored two scales of care—the infrastructural and the embodied. Discussions reflected on themes such as new domestic models, queer histories, material labor, and institutional reform. The panelists’ ambitions to address labor, ecology, and collaboration in architecture were best summed up by keynote speaker, feminist scholar SILVIA FEDERICI, who stressed the profound connection between the struggle of women and environmental care. “Care is foundational to social movements, from BLM to advocating for clean water,” she said. Our current “untenable system” requires urgent care, lest we continue with the “savage process of complete privatization.” Harish Krishnamoorthy
Putting Things in Perspective
“Simultaneously retrospective and projective,” was how VLADIMIR GINTOFF described PAIRS, the new student journal of Harvard GSD, during a conversation with fellow founding editors KIMBERLEY HUGGINS and NICOLÁS DELGADO ALCEGA, and Canadian Centre for Architecture director GIOVANNA BORASI. By focusing on interviews that pair the history of an object with the work of a creative professional, the editors hope that Pair’s format will “force the participants into a context… to think together with us, rather than tell us about their projects.” Borasi closed the discussion by remarking that the journal had a sense Prima Voltita, “the quality of something done for the first time, no fear, all enthusiasm.” Nicholas Raap
3/3
Architecture and Blackness in America
A lecture by GSAPP professor MABEL O. WILSON hosted by SCI-ARC showcased the ways in which her virtuosity as a historian fuels the work of her design practice, STUDIO&. Wilson explained that “critical research finds expression in one form, which leads to a parallel project in another creative modality.” This process has allowed her to weave together projects referencing the American Black liberation struggle with a range of literary, historiographic, and artistic inspirations, including the work of artist John Outterbridge (Wilson’s uncle), and the writings of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Saidiya Hartman, among others.
These literary references situate “race and Blackness in the built environment,” says Wilson, and create work that is intentionally “un-disciplined.” A memorial for enslaved laborers on UVA’s campus, designed with HÖWELER + YOON, references brutality-laced, Civil War-era photos of a formerly enslaved man named Gordon; a two-channel video montage created with Wilson’s GLOBAL AFRICA LAB juxtaposes the destruction caused by Robert Moses-era highways with the 2020 surge of Black Lives Matters protesters in Manhattan; An interpretive music and fashion project with BRYONY ROBERTS and Harlem-based youth drumline group the MARCHING COBRAS pairs percussion with patterned fabrics inspired by WWI’s Harlem Hellfighters and the 1917 Silent Parade against racial violence; a newly-opened exhibition at MoMA, RECONSTRUCTIONS: ARCHITECTURE AND BLACKNESS IN AMERICA, displays the work of 11 designers and artists that explore “intersections of anti-Black racism and Blackness within urban spaces as sites of resistance.” Through it all, Wilson reminds us that the struggle for Black liberation takes many shapes, of which historical, artistic, and collective forms are but a few. Antonio Pacheco
3/4
Toxic Beauty
“Design emerges, it doesn’t descend,” was D.I.R.T. STUDIO founder JULIE BARGMANN’s mantra during her lecture MODESTY hosted by HARVARD GSD. The talk opened with remarks by Anita Berrizbeitia, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, who praised Bargmann’s ability to see “poetics and design potential” in derelict landscapes without falling prey to the aesthetic fetish of industrial decay. Bargmann then took the audience through nine projects that exemplify her idea of modesty, using “a restrained design approach while maintaining unapologetically ambitious goals.” Each project harkened back to her studio’s namesake, revealing how remediation and reclamation at soil-level can regenerate landscapes from the ground up. “I never wanted to change the world,” said Bargmann, but it is clear that in its nearly thirty years, D.I.R.T. has brought life back to landscapes that were once acid and fallow—proof that a modest methodology can ground an exceptional practice. Anna K. Talley
Library Love Fest
In the first event of OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK’s lecture series RADICAL KNOWLEDGE: LIBRARIES AS COMMUNITY CATALYSTS, the word “book” may not have been uttered a single time. The conversation between Librarian of Congress DR. CARLA HAYDEN and sociologist ERIC KLINENBERG—which, they admitted, was a “love fest,”—outlined some of the many ways that the social infrastructure of libraries supplement their traditional information-based services. “Librarians are the ultimate public servants,” filling voids left open by other institutions, such as support for the homeless, after school supervision, companionship for the elderly, and public training and access to the internet. Somewhat sheepishly, Klinenberg suggested that it might sound glib to say, “If we only build better libraries, we’d solve the problem of polarization...” Hayden interjected: “It wouldn’t hurt!” Lauren Cawse
3/6
Overheard at “This is not a Beaux Arts Ball”
The annual event was not hosted on Zoom, but rather a 3D platform, SpatialWeb, complete with rooms and three-dimensional sound and conversation cliques and music.
"I haven't been in the bathtub yet!”
“I wasn't very good in boy scouts — I get lost without a map”
“Instagram is dead!”
“Did you listen to the 99% Invisible…”
Then.. “Everyone form a conga line!” cried RYAN SCAVNICKY as he used a 'request follow' tool to crash a fleet of disembodied heads across the tattered, low-res three-dimensional world, “It's like our own pandemic pod!” - Wenzel Hablik
3/7
Shivonne, Will You Marry Me?
LOVE LETTERS, the winner of this year’s Times Square Design Competition, opened just before Valentine’s Day. Created by SOFT-FIRM, the design practice led by LEXI TSIEN and TALITHA LIU, the pavilion is a serpentine ribbon of repurposed plywood and woven mesh. A single zig-zagging wall grows from knee-tall at one end to room-height at the other, tracing the silhouettes of two interlocked hearts.
On Sunday morning, the pavilion offered respite from gusts sweeping across Times Square. Thousands of ribbons tied onto the structure flapped in the breeze, each inscribed with a heartfelt message. “Shivonne, will you marry me? You are my world,” read one. By turns festive and melancholic, the installation brings to mind the infamous love locks of Paris’ Pont des Arts, or the spontaneous memorials that materialize in the wake of tragedy. “Breonna you’ll never be forgotten,” reads another. Like a sailboat tacking into the wind, the curlicue structure outlines a series of intimate spaces, offering an architectural embrace at each turn: soapbox, loveseat, chapel, wishing well. LOVE LETTERS’ one-month run ends this Wednesday, March 10. Phillip Denny
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SOME HOUSEKEEPING
As you may know, we pay all of our contributors. We would like to pay them more. Therefore, we have recruited two part time Business Assistants to focus on our operations, revenue, and, well, our business. We are happy to introduce them to you today!
STEPHANIE TODERO traces her passion for New York and its architecture to a childhood viewing of Moonstruck. After coming to the city to work for Gensler, she now tries to make interiors and graphics as perfect as stars and snowflakes. She is now saving her pennies to buy that house on Cranberry Street.
Recently enrolled in the Pratt Institute's City and Regional Planning program and a New York native, MATTHEW MARANI loves the collision of architectural styles and cultures that plays out across the city's streetscapes. During the weekend, you may find him photographing buildings, oddities, and personalities across the five boroughs.
Stephanie and Matthew will be increasingly visible as they help The Review keep our mailing list in order, recruit new partners, and conquer the universe. You can tell them hello at: office@nyra.nyc
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THE WEEK AHEAD
Monday, March 8
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
4:00pm, Faye Jones School Of Architecture And DesignVirtual Tour: Madison Avenue, High Fashion and Historic Preservation
6:00pm, AIA New YorkNarrative Change for the Green New Deal
6:30pm, GSAPP
Tuesday, March 9
Robert Johnson & Austin Wade Smith: Factonomy and the Material Underground — Consume, Waste, Harvest, Produce
12:00pm, Cooper UnionActivating Two Decades of Built Environment and Public Health Scholarship Through an Equity and Covid-19 Lens
1:15pm, GSAPPSpace, Territory, and Performance: Luc Wilson and Lindsey Wikstrom
7:00pm, GSAPPInternational Womxn’s Week Keynote Address: Ananya Roy, “Undoing Property: Feminist Struggle in the Time of Abolition”
7:30pm, Harvard GSD
Wednesday, March 10
Healthy Building Materials
11:00am, GSAPPExperiential Equity: Designing for Justice, Connection, and Harmony
12:00pm, UC BerkeleySpatial Inequities: The “Chinatown” Problem in Today’s Pandemic Times
12:00pm, RicePaola Antonelli: There Is Always a Design Emergency
12:30pm, UT AustinHealth Equity in Public Space
5:00pm, GSAPPSierra Bainbridge of MASS Design Group
6:00pm, University At BuffaloThe Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York
6:00pm, Skyscraper MuseumNotes on Arabesque: Rayyane Tabet at The Cooper Union
7:00pm, Storefront For Art And ArchitectureFrank Lloyd Wright and New York with Anthony Alofsin, FAIA
7:00pm, 92Y
Thursday, March 11
Interrupting Business as Usual: Equity + Justice Issues with the Profession Today
11:00am, GSAPPVideo Premier - Docu-Dramas: People’s Architecture Office
2:00pm, CCASara Jimenez: Invisible Narratives
5:15pm, CornellSpring 2021 Sciame Series: Jeneen Frei Njootli, Manuel Axel Strain, and Patricia Marroquin Norby
5:30pm, SpitzerChristiana Moss: Joy Within
6:00pm, MITTaller Capital and Beyond the Built Environment
6:00pm, Architectural League Of New YorkDriving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
6:30pm, GSAPPCatherine Seavitt Nordenson, “The Miasmist: George E. Waring, Jr. and Landscapes of Public Health”
7:30pm, Harvard GSD
Friday, March 12
Planning Futures? On Decolonial, Postcolonial, and Abolitionist Planning
9:30am, GSAPPMayors Imagining the Just City
1:00pm, Harvard GSDBook Launch: Introducing: Short Essays on Influential Thinkers and Designers in Architecture
7:00pm, Pratt
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Thank you for your comment — we have corrected this on Substack.
Why do you write “over half a million people have died” when in reality over two and a half million people have died?