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!
Comments Off on Deborah Marton: My last day at Van Alen
Reflections on my last day at Van Alen
Deborah Marton, at center. (Left: R. May Lee, Board Chair. Right: Shiloah Coley, Project Manager, Programs) Photo: Cameron Blaylock
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.
Comments Off on Deborah Marton to Step Down as Executive DirectorDeborah Marton, at center. (Left: R. May Lee, Board Chair. Right: Shiloah Coley, Project Manager, Programs) Photo: Cameron Blaylock
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.”
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
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.
Comments Off on Neighborhoods Now Policy Recommendations
About the Recommendations
The COVID-19 pandemic has not treated New Yorkers equally. Many neighborhoods—especially communities of color and those suffering from longtime inequities—simply have not gotten the support they need to reopen safely. If enacted quickly and equitably, the policy recommendations below can make lives better for all New Yorkers.
These recommendations stem from Neighborhoods Now, an initiative by the Urban Design Forum and Van Alen Institute to channel pro-bono resources from New York-based design firms and other experts into community-driven recovery strategies. Based on the initiative’s work in 2020, Van Alen and the Forum developed 10 policy recommendations to share with New York City’s Departments of City Planning, Cultural Affairs, Parks and Recreation, Small Business Services, and Transportation, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. These recommendations also serve as guiding principles for the initiative’s upcoming work.
Priority Recommendations
1. Prioritize neighborhoods impacted by high infection rates and with low-income populations. DOH should evaluate past COVID infection rates, and collaborate with SBS, DCP, DOT, and EDC to focus their financial and technical assistance on low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.
2. Provide targeted support for commercial corridors without a BID. With emergency financial support from the Mayor’s Office, SBS should embed small business specialists in commercial corridors without BIDs. Specialists should be equipped with the latest public health guidance; provide financial, legal, and technical assistance; and conduct on-site support whenever possible.
3. Support embedded community organizations taking proactive approaches. Community organizations play a critical role in translating citywide guidance and resources for small businesses, civic and cultural organizations, and immigrant communities. The Mayor’s Office, SBS, EDC, DCP, and DOT should provide additional grants and technical assistance to these organizations.
4. Minimize NYPD’s impact on permitting Open Streets and Open Streets: Restaurants. Allowing NYPD an opportunity to review and deny applications before they even reach DOT review impedes the equitable distribution of these programs. The Mayor’s Office should instruct NYPD to permit Open Streets in communities without maintenance partners, and provide emergency micro-grants and training to enable CDCs and community organizations to serve as maintenance partners.
Additional Recommendations
5. Expand access to Open Restaurants and Open Storefronts through shared space. A sidewalk swap program would enable businesses to share unused sidewalk rights with neighboring businesses. Businesses with insufficient frontages should be allowed to negotiate permits with all landowners on the same block, across the street, or on adjacent side streets.
6. Temporarily apportion park land for open-air commerce. To enable creative ways to gather safely and promote commerce, the Department of Parks & Recreation and Department of Consumer Affairs should establish a temporary permitting process for open-air commerce in designated areas of park land,especially where streetside locations may not be suitable.
7. Make vacant public buildings available for community uses. Through flexible and short-term leasing, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and EDC should make vacant public buildings available to nonprofit organizations seeking more space to safely deliver critical services.
8. Provide government training or grants to support lease renegotiations. The Mayor’s Office should provide emergency support to enable SBS to establish new training programs and grants to support lease negotiation, leveraging new and sustainable lease structures that other businesses and real estate companies across the city have begun to pilot.
9. Support small cultural organizations to program outdoor activities under creative permitting and safely reopen for indoor activities under guidance similar to faith-based institutions. DCLA should advocate that small performance spaces and other cultural organizations reopen for indoor activities under the same guidance extended to faith-based institutions. In the meantime, DCLA and DOT should immediately enable cultural organizations to program cultural events with concessions in DPR space and to operate outdoors in the parking lane and along the sidewalk in the mold of Open Restaurants
10. Accelerate DOB permitting for interior uses due to COVID-19 retrofits. Small businesses seeking to make their space safe for limited indoor use may require building barriers or other minor retrofits that would typically require lengthy DOB permitting. DOB should establish an accelerated, free or low-cost permitting for these cases that does not require the support of an expediter.
Paint and Plant event in Jackson Heights, July 25, 2020. Photo: Sam Lahoz
Community clean-up day in Kingsbridge, Bronx; October 17, 2020. Photo: Carla Swickerath
Construction of a restaurant barrier prototype in Kingsbridge, Bronx, August 20, 2020. Photo: Cameron Blaylock
Outdoor dining area constructed for Tropical Rotisserie on Sedgwick Ave. Photo: Cameron Blaylock
Installation of planters in Restoration Plaza, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn; October 15, 2020. Photo: Cameron Blaylock
