Archive

1. Photos: The House Transformed opening reception

   February 26, 2026 5:12 pm Comments Off on Photos: The House Transformed opening reception

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   On February 24, friends new and old ventured out after a historic blizzard to celebrate The House Transformed.

   On view at Van Alen Institute through May 22, The House Transformed presents new ideas for domestic architecture. Featuring participants from local and global contexts, the exhibition rejects conventional notions of nuclear family and a “one-size-fits-all” approach to the house. These models and drawings explore alternative concepts for collective living, multigenerational households, and caregiving.

   The exhibition debuted at the Princeton University School of Architecture and is curated by Mónica Ponce de León with Shoshana Torn and Massimo Giannone.

   Learn more

   In the News

   Press

   The Architect’s Newspaper

   The House Transformed, an exhibition curated by Mónica Ponce de León, opens at Van Alen Institute

   Read More

   Related Projects

   

   Urban Room

   Ongoing

   Exhibition: The House Transformed

   On view through May 22, The House Transformed presents new ideas for domestic architecture.

   See Project

   

   Ongoing

   Urban Room

   Using our HQ to host public programs and as a flexible community space.

   See Project

2. Photos: What Language Leaves Behind

   February 24, 2026 10:46 am Comments Off on Photos: What Language Leaves Behind

   What Language Leaves Behind: Integrating Graphics and Architecture

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   On February 19, 2026, we gathered at Van Alen Institute for an evening of conversation and discourse on interdisciplinary design practice with Taylor Loutsis, Studio Loutsis; Joshua Ramus, REX; and Craig Dykers, Snøhetta.

   Moderated by journalist Diana Budds, panelists discussed how shared values around community, integration, and cross-disciplinary partnership are central to their successful collaborative projects.

   ​This event was curated by the Van Alen Vanguard, a dynamic network of emerging design leaders. Diana Budds and Taylor Loutsis are among the inaugural cohort developing public programs and exhibitions that reimagine designers’ roles in civic life and center equity, resilience, and local knowledge.

   Related Projects

   

   Ongoing

   Van Alen Vanguard

   A cohort of rising professionals reimagining cities, public space, and designers’ roles in civic life.

   See Project

   

   Ongoing

   Urban Room

   Using our HQ to host public programs and as a flexible community space.

   See Project

3. Announcing the Van Alen Vanguard

   January 13, 2026 2:18 pm Comments Off on Announcing the Van Alen Vanguard

   Van Alen Institute is thrilled to announce the Van Alen Vanguard: a dynamic network of 21 emerging leaders committed to civic life and design. Throughout the year, they’ll engage in collaborative learning projects that further their practices and reimagine designers’ roles in civic life. Activating our space at Gowanus, they’ll also develop events and exhibitions that center equity, resilience, and local knowledge in design.

   Learn more

   2026 Members

   Farida Abu-Bakare
   Associate Principal and Director of Global Practice, WXY

   Annie Barrett
   Founding Principal, Aanda Architects
   Senior Critic, Yale School of Architecture

   Francesca Bastianini
   Co-Founder and Principal, Sighte Studio

   Ekin Bilal
   Co-Founder, NOT NOT
   Visiting Critic, Cornell AAP

   Diana Budds
   Journalist

   Pamela Cabrera
   Senior Associate, Transsolar KlimaEngineering

   Celia Chaussabel
   Co-Founder, NOT NOT
   Reyner Banham Teaching Fellow, University at Buffalo

   Justin Den Herder
   Vice President and Principal, TYLin

   Curry J. Hackett
   Clinical Assistant Professor, NYU Steinhardt

   Jerome Haferd
   Founder, JEROME HAFERD Studio

   Ekene Ijeoma
   Founder, Black Forest
   Founder, Studio Ijeoma

   Dione Lee
   Senior Designer, HUSH Studios

   Taylor Loutsis
   Creative Director and Founder, Studio Loutsis

   Benjamin Meade
   Senior Design Director, Alloy Development

   Daniel Pittman
   Partner, TAD

   Sanjukta Sen
   Landscape and Architectural Designer, Field Operations

   Clara Syme
   Co-Director, a83

   Hermona Tamrat
   Founding Principal, hgt studio

   Paula Vilaplana
   Curatorial Associate, MoMA
   Instructor, Syracuse University School of Architecture

   Charlotte Wessell
   Director of Development, GSAPP

   Learn more

4. Double your impact: Your donation matched, dollar-for-dollar

   December 8, 2025 10:12 am Comments Off on Double your impact: Your donation matched, dollar-for-dollar

   Your support. Doubled. This week, we hope you’ll Double Down on your support of designers and community leaders coming together to solve public space challenges.

   Every donation through December 14 supports a more just and vibrant city through the power of design shaped by local knowledge and care — and is matched dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000 thanks to the generous support of Van Alen Board Chair May Lee.

   Whether you give $10 or $1,000, you’re part of a community committed to designing a better future for our city.

   Our end-of-year campaign is also your last chance to snag our special edition Van Alen merch. When you donate December 8–14, choose a special edition tote, tee, or set of magnets featuring stunning design proposals from our archive. Limited stock left — once they’re gone, they’re gone!

5. Albany Hive Wins Three Prizes at 2025 SEGD Awards

   November 18, 2025 10:39 am Comments Off on Albany Hive Wins Three Prizes at 2025 SEGD Awards

   Albany Hive Wins Three Prizes at 2025 SEGD Awards

   

   

   

   

   Albany Hive received three awards at the 2025 SEGD Global Design Awards, which honor design excellence that connects people to place through storytelling, meaning, and impact. Since 1987, the SEGD Global Design Awards have celebrated innovative projects shaping how people engage with the built environment. This year, SEGD received 284 entries from 151 firms, with 30 projects ultimately selected for awards. “Winning projects highlight the breadth of our community—from deeply researched approaches that prove design’s impact beyond beauty, to work that advances equity, sustainability, and a more connected world,” said SEGD CEO Cybelle Jones.

   Albany Hive (“the Hive“) is a collaboration between 518 SNUG, Albany & Troy Lions Club, Albany Victory Gardens, Bridge Tha Gap, the City of Albany, Grateful Villages, Rensselaer School of Architecture, Stantec, The Urban Conga, and Van Alen Institute.

   This uplifting new shared space on a city-owned alley at Quail St and 1st St in the city’s West Hill neighborhood. Co-designed with West Hill residents, the Hive reflects the alley’s function as a community hub, buzzing with locally-led activities. Six beehive-inspired sculptures in vibrant blue and yellow will include built-in seating elements and polycarbonate panels to host community-made artwork. They’re paired with new planters and swales that help absorb rainwater and an enhanced pathway with improved lighting, access, and drainage.

   At the 2025 SEGD Awards, the Hive received three honors:

   • Sylvia Harris Award, recognizing designs that exemplify an unerring commitment to improve the civic experience—advancing social impact through community engagement, equity, and accessibility
   • Life-Centered Design Award, honoring one project that demonstrates exceptional leadership in advancing environmental stewardship, equity, and human well-being through design—embodying SEGD’s commitment to a more sustainable and inclusive world
   • Merit Award, acknowledging artful conception and creative solutions in experience design projects

   The jury noted that “The Hive is well-deserving of the Sylvia Harris Award, designed by and for the community and brought to life by vibrant programming which catalyzes change in the low-income neighborhood. The design is also thoughtful with a modular system, allowing for a great range of activities to take place on these platforms.”

   They added, “The Hive is a testament to the power of community organizing and local leadership in communities where quality design is often deprioritized. This project demonstrates the best use of resources, personifying ‘a lot with a little’—resulting in a high-quality place and design. This project is worthy of the Sylvia Harris Award for its clear social impact, the physical transformation of the site, and the integration of cultural and natural beauty for the community.”

   Congratulations to our Hive coalition for this well-deserved honor!

   Learn more about Albany Hive

6. Hayley Eber Named Executive Director

   March 26, 2025 10:49 am Comments Off on Hayley Eber Named Executive Director

   Hayley Eber Named Executive Director

   

   We are thrilled to share that Hayley Eber is joining Van Alen Institute as our next Executive Director. Selected by Van Alen’s Board of Directors after a thorough national search, she will assume her role in June. She succeeds Deborah Marton, whose tenure concluded in late 2024.

   Hayley brings extensive leadership experience to Van Alen, including her current role as Acting Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. There, Eber has championed equity, spearheading the school’s most diverse incoming class and chairing its Antiracist Task Force.

   She’s also the founder of award-winning architectural practice Studio Eber, leading projects showcased in the Venice Architecture Biennale, Tallinn Architecture Biennale, Shanghai SUSAS, and the upcoming Triennale Milano.

   Throughout her career, she’s demonstrated a dedication to community-building, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the creation of more just urban futures — all principles that Van Alen’s team, Board, and inclusive design collaborators share on a core level.

   Please join us in giving a warm welcome to Hayley!

   Read the press release

   In the News

   Press

   The Architect’s Newspaper

   Hayley Eber to depart Cooper Union for executive director role at Van Alen Institute

   Read More

7. Deborah Marton: My last day at Van Alen

   August 19, 2024 2:28 pm Comments Off on Deborah Marton: My last day at Van Alen

   Reflections on my last day at Van Alen

   

   Dear Friends,

   Friday was my last day as Van Alen Institute’s Executive Director. As part of the Van Alen network, you’ve been part of what has been the most exciting, transformative, meaningful leadership experience of my career.

   For 130 years, Van Alen supported architects and other allied professionals in dreaming big, challenging boundaries, and evolving personally and professionally to build a better world. When I joined, my charge from our board was clear: build on this legacy with self-directed projects that deepen long-term impact.

   In a commitment to the truism that design excellence is inseparable from justice, we evolved Van Alen’s mission in 2020: to create equitable cities through inclusive design. In the eventful five years since then, Van Alen – with the collaboration of partners across the city – embraced one of the greatest challenges of our time: bridging the gap between those who benefit from the support of our culture, city and nation, and those communities burdened by exclusion and disinvestment. Van Alen alone can’t change embedded patterns of injustice, but we defined a specific challenge and are sincerely, humbly, and wholeheartedly working to shift the balance towards justice in citymaking.

   As of 2024, Van Alen has established four core programs to advance its mission: Design Sprints, Common Build, multiyear programs like Albany Hive, and the Urban Room. This work proceeds from the conviction that communities should lead with their own expertise, and evidence of the success of this approach mounts daily. In the last five years, Van Alen received both the largest single gift and largest unrestricted support in its history. New partners – community leaders, designers and other professionals, supporters – join these efforts at an accelerating pace.

   This success doesn’t happen without the efforts of many. I’m grateful to three visionary board chairs: Jared Della Valle, Carla Swickerath, and May Lee. Working with them and with a passionate board of directors has been one of the most rewarding collaborations of my life. Many other leaders across our city joined these collaborations, and I’m especially thankful for Dale Charles, Ryan Gilliam, Yin Kong, Dan McPhee, Leslie Ramos, and Yvonne Stennett. I thank the extraordinary Van Alen team for their faith in me and joyous embrace of our unusual journey. This courageous bunch, untethered by conventional, tired ideas that perpetuate injustice, includes Andrew Brown, Shiloah Coley, Pratik Dubey, Annie Ferreira, Anthony Gomez, Scott Kelly, Alisha Kim Levin, Joseph Messana-Croly, Kate Overbeck, and Ren Reese. Finally, a fierce public thank you to my children, Lola and Henry Newman, whose curiosity, patience, and love buoyed me throughout.

   Van Alen’s best days are yet to come. While its board searches for a new leader, Andrew Brown, Director of Programs and Kate Overbeck, Director of Strategic Partnerships are stepping up today as Interim Co-Executive Directors. I invite you to join me in supporting their able leadership through this transition. I will remain available to them and to you in our efforts to advance justice in citymaking.

   With deepest thanks!

   Deborah Marton

8. Deborah Marton to Step Down as Executive Director

   July 1, 2024 2:30 pm Comments Off on Deborah Marton to Step Down as Executive Director

   

   Sharing some big (but bittersweet!) news — Our executive director Deborah Marton has decided to step down, come this August. We’re going to miss her fiercely, but know she’ll do great things as she focuses on her work with the New York City Public Design Commission.

   Over five years, Deborah led Van Alen through a mission shift to create equitable cities through inclusive design, and created new programs that make it easier for communities to shape places where they live. Through her leadership, all our work is grounded in community expertise and residents’ agency over their built environment.

   What happens next? While Van Alen’s board searches for a new leader, Andrew Brown, Director of Programs & Kate Overbeck, Director of Strategic Partnerships will step up as Co-Interim Executive Directors, carrying forward our current community-led design projects.

   Sharing some words from Deborah on the occasion:

   “It’s been the opportunity of a lifetime to steer Van Alen Institute towards self-initiated projects that advance design justice. Now, with a suite of community-led design programs, welcoming new headquarters in Brooklyn, and a unified board and staff, Van Alen is in a brilliant place to continue growing under new leadership. It’s been an honor and privilege to lead these efforts and build coalitions with inspiring community leaders working towards justice, squarely situating Van Alen to foster equity in the built environment.”

   Read the full announcement here.

9. 2023–24 Impact Report

   June 12, 2024 11:04 am Comments Off on 2023–24 Impact Report

   Dear Readers

   Van Alen Institute marks its 130th anniversary in 2024 — a remarkable achievement for any organization, and only possible through equal amounts of passion and adaptability. With this milestone in mind, our team spent much of the past year visioning Van Alen’s next 130 years. We spoke with designers ready to break away from practices that perpetuate inequity, and community leaders eager to wield design as a tool in their work toward justice. All of them said they need space, time, and trust to forge partnerships between people and professions often siloed from each other. With those resources, they’re ready to co-create design projects that address communities’ visions for their own neighborhoods.

   In response, we’ve configured our programs on a timeline of trust. The first introduction many community organizations have to Van Alen is Design Sprints, an eight-week program that gives local leaders and designers a crash course in collaboration. Our first Design Sprints cohort created stunning branding, engagement, and advocacy tools for urgent neighborhood issues. That experience is now the foundation for mid- and long-term projects in the form of pop-up activations, public space improvements, and neighborhood-scale planning.

   Because trust is the bedrock of everything we do, it also begins long before a project kickoff. We start by meeting people where they are — first literally, when our team travels across NYC to meet with community organizations pursuing justice and equity in their neighborhoods. When one group told us, “We don’t work with architects — they’re tools of gentrification,” we didn’t see that as a closed door. We mutually acknowledged that design has long been complicit in plans that accelerate displacement, and continued conversations about how it might be a tool to solve those issues instead. They decided to partner with us, completing the first round of Design Sprints with talks to collaborate again.

   This is the start of Van Alen’s next 130 years: unconventional, silo-breaking partnerships resulting in projects that heal, restore agency, and build power to realize communities’ visions for their neighborhoods. That’s our vision of an equitable city — let’s build it together.

   Deborah Marton
   Executive Director
   Van Alen Institute

10. Welcome to our new website!

    September 27, 2021 4:58 pm Comments Off on Welcome to our new website!

    A quick hello and welcome to the new vanalen.org! We’re thrilled you’re here. We’re still very much under construction, but we hope you’ll start poking around. We welcome your feedback anytime.

    Van Alen Institute has an updated mission: To help create equitable cities through inclusive design. In an equitable city, communities are engaged in the conception and creation of their built environment, regardless of income or personal circumstances. Community-driven decision-making builds resilience, social infrastructure, and ultimately, more just cities.

    In line with this mission, we want our website to be just as lively and community-centered as our work on the ground. It’s our goal to share more about our processes while they’re happening, be transparent about the ways we work, and highlight the voices and expertise of our many partners. We also want to our website to be a tool for two-way engagement and feedback — not just publishing. As we keep building out the site and our current projects, you’ll see more and more prompts on how to get involved with us in New York City and beyond.

    Thank you to our wonderful design team Partner & Partners, a worker-owned design practice focusing on print, exhibition, interactive, and identity work with clients and collaborators in art, architecture, government, and activism. We can’t recommend them enough.