Projects
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BetterBin Litter Basket Design Competition
Together with the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY), the Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA), and the American Institute of Architects New York (AIANY), we invited interdisciplinary industrial design teams to reimagine the iconic New York City litter basket.
Van Alen Report
Van Alen Report gathers expert perspectives on subjects that are redefining society’s relationship to cities.
Emergency Contact: New Ideas for Neighborhood Mental Health Centers
Emergency Contact was a one-day flash competition that challenges interdisciplinary teams to design practical solutions for affordable, replicable neighborhood mental health treatment centers to efficiently put patients in contact with treatment.
Opportunity Space Festival
More than a million refugees and migrants entered Europe in 2015, highlighting one of the toughest challenges that cities around the world will face for decades to come: In an era of great uncertainty, how and where can people find opportunity?
To The Streets 
To the Streets is a fast-paced one-day design competition that asks multidisciplinary teams how a distributed network of assembly spaces could be designed for the streets of New York City’s five boroughs.
Shore to Core
Shore to Core asks: How can we recreate an urban core so its design is intelligent, flexible, and responsive to the needs of residents and visitors?
Memorials for the Future
The National Park Service (NPS), the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), and Van Alen Institute collaborated on Memorials for the Future, an ideas competition to reimagine how we think about, feel, and experience memorials.
Future Ground
Future Ground was a design competition that invited multidisciplinary teams to generate flexible design and policy strategies to reuse vacant land in New Orleans, transforming abandoned landscapes into resources for the current and future city.