Get Involved

Are you a community-based organization looking for support on a design project? Are you a designer or professional looking to share your resources and skills?

In NYC and beyond, Van Alen Institute creates space for community leaders, designers, and other professionals to connect, build trust, and collaborate. Our goal is to make it easier for communities to shape the places where they live. That’s why our projects always start with a community partner — giving form to their vision. Watch the video above to see this process in action in Albany, NY, where we built a community-led collective that transformed a neglected alley into a vibrant shared space.

We also frequently collaborate with municipal partners that bring a big-picture outlook and help grow our work from pilot projects to solutions on a larger scale. We also always love hearing from our fellow non-profits and design organizations about potential collaborations or idea-sharing.

If this sounds like you, contact us at vai@vanalen.org to get a conversation going.

The Urban Room at Van Alen Institute is a flexible, accessible, street-level space located at 303 Bond Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It’s a place for civic-minded organizations to meet and diverse groups to come together in dialogue, and serves as an information hub for the Gowanus community. For values-aligned nonprofits and community groups, Van Alen offers this space and meeting tech on a sliding scale, while private and corporate space rentals support our mission to create more equitable cities through inclusive design.

To inquire about using our space, fill out this form.

We make it easier for communities to shape the places where they live by connecting them with our interdisciplinary network and sharing experience in how cities are designed and built. As a design organization, our role is to forge new coalitions between designers, residents, and city leaders. When these groups share experience, knowledge, and resources, they’re better equipped to advance design justice. In the video above, see how this played out in our pandemic response initiative Neighborhoods Now, created in collaboration with the Urban Design Forum.

Every member of the Van Alen community has a role to play in advancing design justice, and we’re grateful for your support.

Our programming is supported by:

Public Space Supporter
Civitas
KPF

Community Design Ally
Denzil Gallagher, Buro Happold
Goldman Sachs
Thornton Tomasetti

Ground Up Supporter
AV&C
Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects
MBB
nCheng
Lauren Kogod and David Smiley
Charlotte and Neill Wessell
WXY

Our design partners include:

A05 Studio
American Design Language
Buro Happold
Farzana Gandhi Design Studio
Gensler
L&L Studio
Marvel
N H D M
ORG
Pentagram
Perkins Eastman
ReFrame Architecture
SFDS
Studio Loutsis
Ten to One
ThoughtMatter
TYLin

Our work is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Design Sprints: Building Creative Capacity is supported by the NYC Department of Small Business Services. Common Build is supported in part by both the National Endowment for the Arts and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. The Urban Room is made possible by Jared Della Valle.