Archive

  1. Lucid Project: Albany

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    About

    How might a neglected public alley be transformed into a space for rest, play, and collective healing?

    How might a community-led design process create opportunities for a long-term vision?

    Lucid Project: Albany aims to inspire transformational change in Albany’s West Hill neighborhood through the community-led redesign of a public alley. The project brings together West Hill residents, city agencies, and design professionals to co-create design solutions that address immediate local needs while supporting long-term visioning and planning with residents.

    Ultimately, we have three main objectives with our partners:

    • Facilitate West Hill’s access to resources that can transform their built environment and support socioeconomic development
    • Bring community members to work together and with other professionals to co-create design solutions that address their specific needs and aspirations
    • Support capacity-building efforts within the community

    Our Partners


    Our Work

    We began our work in West Hill by listening to community stories and identifying ways to lift up and build upon existing neighborhood initiatives. Though residents face a number of socioeconomic challenges tied to historical and ongoing legacies of systemic racism, West Hill is teeming with ideas and strong community-based initiatives.

    For example, the Eden’s Rose Foundation, a local nonprofit, has acquired more than 20 empty lots covering approximately five acres of land. To date, they have built Albany Victory Gardens (AVG), a large community garden that occupies more than two acres within one block. With a focus on economic and food justice, AVG trains local residents in urban farming skills, and cultivates fresh and healthy produce that can be grown and sold locally.

    Nearby, 518 SNUG (Should Never Use Guns) works to de-escalate violence in the community and mentors at-risk youth through extensive outreach programs. Their outreach workers are on-the-ground day-in, day-out, talking to young people in their community to build relationships and encourage healthy life decisions. They also hold vigils in honor of community members who have lost their lives to gun violence, and own a plot of land at AVG to cultivate crops.

    Currently, we’re focused on transforming a city-owned alley space in the middle of the Albany Victory Gardens. This community-led effort will create a safe space for community members and aims to inspire a larger conversation about self-determination. As part of this process, we’ve been organizing and participating in co-design sessions in Albany with our community partners and design team, listening to local dreams and aspirations for what this space could become.

    Updates

    Spectrum News

    Organizers plant seeds of renewal in Albany alleyway

    Timeline

    Sep 2021

    Kickoff

    On September 24-25, we held a community engagement session and co-design workshop with design team The Urban Conga and our local partners.

    Oct 2021

    Community Engagement

    We set up a table at the West Hill Farmers Market on October 17 and 24 to put forward some initial concepts and gather more ideas from the West Hill community. On October 27, we joined SNUG’s Kids Halloween Party at the Arbor Hill Community Center to share some design inspiration and gather more feedback.

    Dec 2021

    Design Review

    We hosted a design review and selection with our community partners.

    Jan – May 2022

    Partner Workshops

    We’re holding inspiration workshops with our local partners and starting site prep and fabrication.

    Jun 2022 – Jun 2023

    Site Cleanup and Installation

    We’ll host a volunteer site clean up and install the selected design!

    Supporters

  2. GLOwanus

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    About

    The recent rezoning of Gowanus will bring approximately 20,000 new residents to the neighborhood, yet the local water management system is already past its capacity. The Gowanus Canal is a site for combined sewer overflow, or CSO, which requires new sewage containment plants to be built around the canal. But in the years before these are completed, a shift needs to occur in public education, awareness, and participation around water quality issues.

    Our Neighborhood Design Fellows are building on their experience in the fellowship to develop a light installation that will inform the Gowanus community when CSO occurs. They’ll also initiate an information campaign with tips on how to use and conserve water to help prevent CSO, and present ways to hold authorities accountable for the Canal’s cleanup.

    The Fellows will host a series of community workshops, supported by Van Alen, to educate residents about CSO and gather ideas for the installation design. The installation will be prototyped in our storefront windows at 303 Bond Street, and distributed throughout the neighborhood in late 2023. Currently, our storefront windows are displaying information about CSO with illustrations by Martha Hall— stop by to learn more about this important environmental issue.

    What is CSO?

    CSO, or combined sewer overflow, occurs when New York City’s water management system is overwhelmed by rainwater. To learn more about CSO and how this project hopes to raise awareness within the Gowanus community, we spoke with Steven Koller, a Neighborhood Design Fellow and an Environmental Science and Policy PhD student at The University of Miami. He explained:

    “New York City has a combined water management system, partially due to the fact that it’s quite an old system. 60% of the city’s water management is combined, meaning that when you flush the toilet, take a shower, or wash your dishes, all of that water gets combined into the same pipe as the water that’s flowing off the street via grates. Most of the time, that’s not an issue. But when you have a rain event — and it doesn’t need to be a big one — the system gets overloaded.

    “And this water is normally tied to a wastewater treatment plant, of which there are quite a few around the city. But during these rain events, the system can’t pump it all to the wastewater treatment plant. And so it’s released to roughly 700 outfall points around the city in all five boroughs, including at the head of the Gowanus Canal at Butler Street. On average, the canal receives roughly 270 million gallons of CSO annually.”

    More About CSO

    Nothing so far!

    Timeline

    Apr – May 2022

    Community Workshops

    Residents and students from Gowanus will learn about how water works through natural systems and city infrastructure to impact our daily lives, and how they might impact our lives in the future. Participants learn how to advocate for change through a better understanding of the problem, knowledge of where they can have an individual impact and where they have an impact at the community level.

    Oct – Dec 2022

    Installation Prototype

    Van Alen Institute will exhibit a prototype of the light installation in our storefront windows at 303 Bond Street.

    Jan – Dec 2023

    Community-Wide Installation

    The light installations will be distributed to residents and businesses in the Gowanus community, raising awareness of water quality throughout the neighborhood.

    Who We’re Working With


    Resources

    Open Sewer Atlas: Independently-run map that uses data from New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) to show where and how much CSO occurs at various outfalls around the city

    Combined Sewer Overflows: NYC DEP’s primer on CSOs, including individual actions that can be taken to reduce CSO

    Waterbody Advisories: NYC DEP’s real-time, site-specific info about water quality, largely driven by CSO events

    Gowanus Rezoning Environment Impact Statement, Water and Sewer chapter: Detailed information on how the rezoning and Superfund cleanup actions will impact future CSO

    Neighborhood Design Fellowship: Gowanus

    Gowanus residents work toward the future they imagine for their community.

    Contact

    To become a GLOWANUS host and / or comment on the GLOWANUS storefront display at 303 Bond Street, contact:

    Andrew Brown

    Director of Programs

    Supporters

  3. Placemaking Evaluation Fellowship

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    Van Alen Block Party, October 22, 2022. Photo: Argenis Apolinario

    Overview

    The Van Alen Placemaking Evaluation Fellowship provides hands-on experience evaluating the power of design to bring life to public spaces. Seven undergraduate and graduate students evaluate the quality of public life at 2-3 sites in New York City using the tools and methods of Gehl, a pioneer in understanding how design of public spaces can improve civic life.

    Participants gain the opportunity to learn valuable skills in evaluating public spaces, while exploring the city through Van Alen’s co-produced installations and programs, and sharing their insights and skills with Van Alen’s community organization partners.

    With the support of the Senior Fellow the cohort take its collected data and observations, and produce a variety of creative, impactful images that express the insights they have gained into how public spaces serve communities, and how those spaces might be made more inclusive.

    Core Components

    • In-person training on using Gehl’s Public Life Tools
    • Collecting data on-site at the Van Alen Block Party in Gowanus
    • Collecting data on-site at 2-3 installations co-produced by Van Alen Institute in NYC
    • Educational workshop on methodologies for observing and analyzing public life in public spaces
    • Learning how insights are applied in Van Alen’s partner organizations
    • Optional field trip to share fellows’ observations and skills with Van Alen’s community partners in Albany, NY

    Meet the Fellows


    Who They’re Working With


    What They’re Working On

    Neighborhoods Now: Bed-Stuy Gateway BID

    Building on Winter Wonderland, an open-air holiday market supporting local small businesses.

    Public Realm R+D

    Surfacing the work of emerging designers and tests new strategies to bring people together in public space.

    Van Alen Block Party 2022

    Thank you to everyone who came out for our second annual Van Alen Block Party on October 22, 2022! This spectacular day was made possible by the help of our Gowanus Fellows, along with our generous supporters and the countless performers, vendors, and volunteers who transformed a Brooklyn block into an epic celebration of community and public space.

    Contact

    Andrew Brown

    Director of Programs

  4. Gowanus Action

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    About

    To do community-centered work, we need to be an active member of our own community. 

    Since moving to Gowanus in 2020, we’ve collaborated closely with our neighbors to support local, resident-led design projects. In order to understand how we could best support our new neighbors, we launched the Neighborhood Design Fellowship, a paid design-training program where residents learn about design justice and work together on Gowanus-based projects that promote equity, inclusivity, and community-driven change. The Fellows identified the Points of Agreements — a comprehensive though non-binding rezoning plan between the city, developers, and the Gowanus community — as the focus of their ongoing work. With our support, they’ve launched two projects that address the Points of Agreement, including the historic and continued Gowanus Canal pollution and the Gowanus Houses Community Center renovation and reopening.

    We also host the monthly Community Board 6 meetings, throw an annual block party celebrating the creativity and culture of Gowanus, and partner with neighboring organizations to address issues identified by the community.

    Projects

    Hear from Locals

    Gowanus Houses Community Photo Album

    Help us create a Community Photo Album that celebrates the Gowanus Houses community!

    “This community was always a family”: Voices from NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses

    In Summer 2022, past and present residents of NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses gathered for the annual Old Timers Day. As part of an ongoing storytelling project, we spoke to event attendees about memories from the Houses and what community means to them.

    Q&A with Steven Koller, Neighborhood Design Fellow

    One of our Gowanus fellows tells us about a new project to increase water quality awareness in the neighborhood.

    Annual Block Party

    Van Alen Block Party 2022

    Thank you to everyone who came out for our second annual Van Alen Block Party on October 22, 2022! This spectacular day was made possible by the help of our Gowanus Fellows, along with our generous supporters and the countless performers, vendors, and volunteers who transformed a Brooklyn block into an epic celebration of community and public space.

    Van Alen Block Party 2021

    Thank you to everyone who came out and made Van Alen Institute’s inaugural Block Party in Gowanus an incredible success.

    Supporters


  5. Public Realm R+D

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    About

    Drive-Thru by Soft-Firm. Photo: Cameron Blaylock for DBP

    Who we are as a society is defined by how we interact in our public spaces. We must reinvigorate our public spaces in ways that bring people together and strengthen the bonds and networks that help our communities heal and thrive.

    61% of Americans — approximately 200 million people — report that they are lonely. Social disconnection and isolation are linked to a host of health ailments, ranging from high blood pressure and heart disease to increased anxiety and depression. As isolation grows, social cohesion declines, causing levels of trust to fall and public life to erode. Americans who are more trusting and civically-engaged are more likely to help improve their neighborhood and offer assistance to neighbors in need. Restoring social cohesion is essential to unite, mobilize and rebuild communities in times of crisis.

    Van Alen Institute’s Public Realm R+D initiatives transform public spaces into social infrastructure. From community parks to public plazas, social infrastructure refers to the places and spaces that foster trust and social cohesion in communities. Working with the communities we serve, and some of the most innovative practitioners in design, we create spaces that unite neighborhoods by bringing joy to those who live and work there, and give people hope for the future. These spaces may provide new places to play, give support to local businesses, encourage the use of sustainable transportation, provide space for meaningful public discourse, or inspire a shared sense of civic purpose. While the possibilities are vast for each place we work, the desired outcome is the same.

  6. Gowanus Houses Community Center

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    Gowanus Houses community center site visit, April 22, 2022. Photo: Alisha Kim Levin

    About

    The recent rezoning of Gowanus will bring approximately 20,000 new residents to the neighborhood, yet the local water management system is already past its capacity. The Gowanus Canal is a site for combined sewer overflow, or CSO, which requires new sewage containment plants to be built around the canal. But in the years before these are completed, a shift needs to occur in public education, awareness, and participation around water quality issues.

    Our Neighborhood Design Fellows are building on their experience in the fellowship to develop a light installation that will inform the Gowanus community when CSO occurs. They’ll also initiate an information campaign with tips on how to use and conserve water to help prevent CSO, and present ways to hold authorities accountable for the Canal’s cleanup.

    The Fellows will host a series of community workshops, supported by Van Alen, to educate residents about CSO and gather ideas for the installation design. The installation will be prototyped in our storefront windows at 303 Bond Street, and distributed throughout the neighborhood in late 2023. Currently, our storefront windows are displaying information about CSO with illustrations by Martha Hall— stop by to learn more about this important environmental issue.

    Hear from the Residents

    “This community was always a family”: Voices from NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses

    In Summer 2022, past and present residents of NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses gathered for the annual Old Timers Day. As part of an ongoing storytelling project, we spoke to event attendees about memories from the Houses and what community means to them.

    Who We’re Working With

    Andreas Tyre

    President,

    Gowanus Houses Resident Association

    Tracey L. Pinkard

    Vice President,

    Gowanus Houses Resident Association

    Kia Weatherspoon

    Founder, Determined by Design


    Community Photo Album

    Gowanus Houses Community Photo Album

    Help us create a Community Photo Album that celebrates the Gowanus Houses community!

    Our Space Gowanus

    In 2021 Neighborhood Design Fellowship: Gowanus a paid, six-month program for up to 12 Gowanus residents focused on an action campaign to bring attention to the Gowanus Houses Community Center. With Dark Matter University, the fellows drafted and assembled this pamphlet outlining the history of disinvestment that has plagued the community center and their visions for the future of the space. In October 2021, the pamphlet was distributed at our inaugural Van Alen Block Party and displayed in large format on the street-facing windows of our office in Gowanus.

    Neighborhood Design Fellowship: Gowanus

    Gowanus residents work toward the future they imagine for their community.

    Contact

    To become a GLOWANUS host and / or comment on the GLOWANUS storefront display at 303 Bond Street, contact:

    Andrew Brown

    Director of Programs