Reinventing Public Housing Proposals to Recontextualize the NYCHA Housing Estate Frederick Biehle Pratt Institute UG Architecture Pratt FA 2014
Reinventing Public Housing
03
Site Analysis
07
Site Metamorphosis
15
Proposals
19
Metastisized Block
21
Microblock
27
Incremental Landscape
33
Knickerblock
37
Public Greenway
45
Hyperblock
49
Colliding Typologies
59
Precedents
65
Credits
73
Frederick Biehle
Michael Rosen/Yuli Huang Hillary Flannery/Kaifang Zhang Yuri Kim/Sang Il Ma Peter Kim/Han Kim Emma Colley/Alyza Enriquez Javier Marcano/Veronika Suarez Hudson DeRicco/Nicholas Blount
01
02
Reinventing Public Housing The Need to Make Urban Housing Urban Frederick Biehle
In his 2008 publication Public Housing that Worked, Nicholas Bloom provided an in depth critique of high-rise public housing in the United States, something largely regarded as a failure (a perception I would heartily endorse). His powerful thesis overturned much of the conventional wisdom and triggered a fierce debate among those interested in current housing policy. His thesis was that while most of America’s high-rise public housing was, in fact, a disaster, New York City’s was not. New York City was different. It was the New York City Housing Authority that had created, overseen, and maintained a product of twenty six hundred buildings and a system that could, and continues to, satisfy the housing needs for over 400,000 tenants. In short, it worked.
1. That “slum” clearance was always a net positive. Most NYCHA projects were not built on vacant land, and were thus only possible by the demolition of multiple block neighborhoods, often occupied by tenement blocks or worse. Eliminating these neighborhoods became a critical catalyst as more than just housing advocates were interested in “slum clearance”. Because the system that was in place by 1940 to replace the neighborhoods was consistently based on the superblock housing estate model, clearance not only removed the tenement block, which perhaps could be seen as a net positive from a health and safety perspective, but it also removed the street, the public realm in which the collective activity of the neighborhood took place. While a replacement for the tenement housing would be offered, an appropriate public space to replace the street would not.
To stake this claim, however, Bloom had to redefine the frame through which affordable housing is evaluated. His new position needed to elevate bureaucratic workability over any issues related to the physical reality of its architecture. He readily acknowledged this. To get to his conclusion he had to defend several specific architectural assumptions institutionalized by NYCHA:
4. That not shaping the residual space opened up by the smaller lot coverages due to taller buildings was also acceptable if some trees were planted, thus elevating abstract aesthetics over social concern. In short, Bloom tells us that we should accept the NYCHA’s public housing ‘project’ for what it is- 2600 buildings on 154 sites and over 400,000 tenants all living with “well maintained brick buildings, mature plane trees and green lawns, active community and recreation programs and first class play equipment …(all of which) have made NYC public high-rise housing a smashing success.”1 As positive as these observations may be, they still disregard the fact that the projects are a psychologically partitioned (both physically by its stigmatized second ghetto appearance and spatially by its withdrawal from any larger idea for the public realm) series of island wastelands, anti-cities within the city.
NYCHA Low Income Housing Estates
Metropolis
3. That the decision to construct a kind of housing that was intended to look poor by virtue of its meager budgeting, absent of any sense of architectural detail or identity was also acceptable.
NYCHA Apartment Block Configuration
Tenement Block House
03
Perimeter Block Garden Apartment
Superblock Housing Estate
Gropius Spacing Diagrams
2. That the formula for the superblock housing estate that would a) aggressively and intentionally turn away from the fabric of the city that surrounds it, and b) zone its use to be exclusively residential and thereby eliminate any sense of urban continuity with its mixed use context was an acceptable, rational, even positive idea.
Theo Van Doesburg, Composition Weiss Black
William Lescaze, Williamsburg Houses
Obviously “a decent home and suitable living environment”2 is important to housing, but it is remarkable how antagonistic, even cavalier, housing advocates and planning authorities were to the city’s underlying fabric. The structure of the street and sidewalk was what provided the framework for an urban life, yet between 1932 and 1957 very few architects or urban planners seemed remotely cognizant of this. The crisis of decentralization, relieving urban density and overcrowding, was an at-all-costs agenda for them. One exception was the Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth, who in 1938 tried to give a more precise definition of urbanism by noting that it “included size, density and heterogeneity” but also that urbanism as a way of life meant something different, experiencing a set of human interactions that were impersonal, rather than intimate.3 This is something Jane Jacobs magically described in her Life and Death of American Cities, as “the daily ballet” of the sidewalk. She was referring to the episodic anonymous interactions which make up an “informal public life, a necessary mediator between ones more personally determined formal and private lives. The informal public life, then, is urbanism as experienced, the unplanned theater of the street and sidewalk.4 04
being designed by people who actually don’t like cities. They do not merely dislike the noise and the dirt and the congestion, they dislike the city’s variety and concentration, its tension, its hustle, and bustle. What made the city so good, was all the things the planners wanted to eliminate.”6 While we might know that statement to be true today, it still remains unclear just what we can do about it. In his concluding sentence Conn lays down the challenge- “the problem of the 21st century will be how we re-urbanize, that is, how we fix the mistakes of our anti-urban 20th century.”7 It will be no small undertaking. Movement Along Long Blocks
Movement Along Short Blocks
Steven Johnson, in his 2001 publication Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software cites Jacobs specifically for her description of the dance of urban life. For him, she is the boy in the Hans Christian Anderson tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, calling out the planners naked ignorance in not comprehending, even at the most intuitive level, what really made cities work. It was density, diversity, mixed use, and continuity she insisted. Johnson says the city is, essentially, an emergent system, operating bottom up as a constantly mutating multitude of independent interactions. He concludes by saying “better sidewalks make better cities, which in turn improve the lives of the city dwellers…city life depends on the odd interaction between strangers that can change ones individual behavior … encountering diversity does nothing for the global system of the city unless that encounter has a chance of altering behavior”.5 In his remarkable book Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the 20th Century, Steven Conn traces a consistent and repetitive attack on the city throughout the 20th century. By declaring the architects, city and regional planners, policy makers, politicians, federal housing administrators, decentralists, social engineers, garden city advocates, folklore enthusiasts, and academic intellectuals to be ANTI-URBAN he opens up a space to actually celebrate the qualitative values of living in the city, to articulate a vision of positive urbanism. William Whyte, an editor at Fortune magazine said in 1958, “most of the rebuilding underway was 05
Murders in NYC
Enclosure Diagram
Forty three years after the construction of the last NYCHA sponsored public housing project, New York City has finally run out of open space to build. Three recent events have coincided to alter the larger perception of NYCHA’s public housing estates and offer what may be a truly honest opportunity for change 1. We have seen a progressive and steady decline in the crime ratebeginning even before the Rudolf Giulianni administration and continuing with Michael Bloomberg. The city has experienced 24 consecutive years of decreasing crime and thus a reciprocal reinvigoration of the life of the city street to go along with it. This is particularly critical in more recent years where the urban context around
public housing estates have normalized. (In what is an interesting potential feedback loop, the revitalizing of city streets may be a significant contributor to the continued statistical drop in crime that has continued under Bill de Blasio, even with the taking down of the controversial stop and frisk program.)
challenges. We started with the question— Must we really accept the super block public housing estate for what it is? Or is there a way to transform and reinterpret, essentially contextualize it, and by doing so eliminate its stigma, its isolation, and its anti-urban grip on the city?
2. The remarkable building boom that started in the mid 1990s, fueled in particular by rezoning under the Bloomberg administration, has finally run up against public housing. It is now perfectly acceptable to build highrise luxury housing (the Toren, for example, on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn) or midrise market rate housing directly adjacent to public housing estates without damage to property values, something not even imagined ten years ago. 3. The RFP issued in Mayor Bloomberg’s final year calling for developers to utilize open space in a series of public housing estates to create new for-market (80-20) luxury tower projects. The carrot with this proposal was that income from the new housing would help pay maintenance and upkeep costs for the housing estates, which is another problem coming to term. Most public housing was constructed with a 50 year lifespan. By 2018 every project will have expired and be in need of serious restoration. While the RFP has been taken down by Mayor de Blasio, in part due to public outcry, the idea has not been entirely taken off the table. Finding a way for private development to fund the financial needs of low income housing is simply too attractive. 4. After 12 years of a city administration that was pro private development there is a new mayor who has made it a part of his mandate to reengage the idea of public housing. With his Five Borough, Ten Year Plan, Housing New York, he intends to a) foster diverse livable neighborhoods b) preserve the existing housing stock and c) build new affordable housing that will ultimately build and preserve 200,000 units. This fall, Pratt Institute UG Architecture offered an urban design studio intended as one step toward meeting Steven Conn and Bill de Blasio’s
Le Corbusier
Villa Radieuse
It has been quite some time since public housing (belligerently) carried the flag of the future by replacing what was then a discredited prior housing model, the tenement house, condemned as a slum and destroyed to make way for the future. But perhaps its time has come again. As the superblock public housing estate has itself been discredited as fundamentally antiurban, can we identify a way and a means to transform it, only this time without the wrecking ball. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Nicholas Bloom, Public Housing that Worked, (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, page 3 Stated goal of the original 1949 federal housing act legislation, allowing for the use of eminent domain to clear urban slums and replace them with new housing as quoted in Nicholas Bloom, Public Housing that WorkedQuoted in Nicholas Bloom, Public Housing that Worked, page 2 Steven Conn, Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the 20thcentury,(New York, Oxford University Press, 2014, page 306 Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of an American City, page 57 Steven Johnson, Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, 200, page 94 Steven Conn, Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the 20thcentury, New York, Oxford University Press, 2014, page 155 Steven Conn, Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the 20thcentury,(New York, Oxford University Press, 2014, page 306
06
Site Analysis Ingersol-Whitman Houses, Brooklyn, NY
1930s Slum & Row Houses 23 Blocks 1200 Dwellings 80-90% Lot Coverage 2-3 Stories High
1930s Slum & Row Houses
1940s Fort Greene Low Income Housing 5 Superblocks 3501 Apartments 22% Lot Coverage 6-13 Stories High 1.3 Millions Sq Ft Open Space 07
1940s Fort Greene Low Income Housing 08
09
Ingersol-Whitman Site
Ingersol-Whitman Houses
Figure Ground Plan Orginal Context - 1941
Figure Ground Plan Superblock - 2013 10
Programmatic Distribution
Building Sections
B
A
11
Commercial Uses
Commercial Uses - Bank
Institutional Uses
Commercial Uses - Market
Commercial Uses - Office Building
Institutional Uses - Education
Commercial Uses - Clothing
Commercial Uses - Personal Care
Institutional Uses - Cultural
Commercial Uses - F&B
Commercial Uses - Transportation Service
Civic Uses - Public Services
Commercial Uses - Specialty Market
Commercial Uses - Special Services
Civic Uses - Health Services
Commercial Uses - Leisure
Parking Uses
Civic Uses - Government Administration
A
Unit 1
Unit 2
Hallway
B
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Vertical Circulation
Industrial Uses
Hallway
Vertical Circulation
12
Transformation of Urban Fabric 1855 - 2014
Site Topography & Section
1855 Street Boundary 1889 Street Boundary 1908 Street Boundary 2014 Street Boundary 13
14
Site Metamorphosis Restoration of the Idea of the Street The Further Subdivision of the Superblock
15
Existing Condition
0
Metastasized Block
1
Microblock
2
Incremental Landscape
3
Knickerblock
4
Public Greenway
5
Hyperblock
6
Colliding Typologies
7
16
Reshaping the Urban Fabric Refilling to Reinforce the Street
17
Existing Condition
0
Metastasized Block
1
Microblock
2
Incremental Landscape
3
Knickerblock
4
Public Greenway
5
Hyperblock
6
Colliding Typologies
7
18
Proposals Reinvention of Public Housing
19
Existing Condition
0
Metastasized Block
1
Microblock
2
Incremental Landscape
3
Knickerblock
4
Public Greenway
5
Hyperblock
6
Colliding Typologies
7
20
Metastasized Block
1
3
Pilotis System and Courtyards
Addition of New Housing
ON AV
E
Introduction of Streets
CARLT
ST ERLAND
N. OX
CUMB
FORD
ST
D AVE RTLAN N. PO
N. ELLIOTT
NAVY ST
Existing Condition
2
E CARLT
SAINT
ON AV
EDWA
N. PO
RDS ST
RTLAN
D AVE
PARK AVE
PRINCE ST
The apartment block as freestanding mark in an open landscape, the underlying premise for nearly all of NYCHA’s projects including this one, is allowed to grow and ultimately metastasize by extension and continuation of its existing fabric, closing in on itself to create a new organism, a vast honeycomb of what appear to be courtyard oriented spaces. The additions would propose to integrate and distribute middle income and even market rate housing into the overall complex generating an extreme density without resorting to the high rise tower. The potential claustrophobia generated by the excess of enclosed spaces is resolved by stripping out all ground floor and second floor architecture, allowing for a transparent, piloti supported horizontal realm. New entrances are in glass so as not to disrupt the continuity and semi-private and semipublic use is integrated by breaking up the larger landscape into paths, outdoor seating and bounded passive and active recreation.
PL
Michael Rosen Yuli Huang
1. Front Courtyard 2. Site Plan 3. Process
MYRTLE AVE
22 ARK
21
N AVE CARLTO
ST FORD
ERLAND CUMB
Rooftop Green Space
N. OX
N. ELLIOTT
NAVY ST
PL
Rooftop Pavers Metal Rainscreen System on Brick Facade
ST
8
AVE
6
RTLAND
5
N. PO
4
Affordable Housing Unit Market Rating Housing Unit PARK AVE
Lobby
HI ST ALDELP
N AVE CARLTO
SAINT
PRINCE ST
EDWA
N. PO
RDS ST
RTLAND
AVE
Storefront
7 Rooftop Trellis System
MYRTLE AVE
Lobby
INGT WASH
RK ON PA
Amenity Level Bridge
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 23
Housing Axonometric Courtyard Courtyard Courtyard Nolli Plan 24
9
10
11
12
9. 10. 11. 12. 25
Myrtle Ave Courtyard Courtyard Courtyard 26
Microblock
1
3
Hillary Flannery Kaifang Zhang
The Microblock scheme attempts to give a rational urban order to the anti-urban tower in the garden typology. Each existing tower is provided with a new base or apron two to three stories in height that is the basis of an individual block. The prior modest architectural footprint is entirely reversed, with the new forms filling each block site completely with an intentionally dense urbanism. That density is aerated, however, by the consistent inclusion of courtyards, around which a variety of programs are distributed- institutional, retail/ commercial, and community. As an urban pattern it generates an irregular agitated grid that allows for missing pieces or openings that can act as figured gardens. The streets that threads through vary in dimension and hierarchical importance. While the superblock has been divided now into a fully porous street pattern, the absence of through access makes for a primarily residential neighborhood. 27
Existing Condition
Introduction of Streets
Relation Among Residents
Duality of Front and Back
Inactive Zone
Breaking the Duality
Sphere of Influence
Sun Study
Joined Lobby
2
1. Street View 2. Site Plan 3. Process 28
4
5
6
4. Street View 5. Microblock Plan 6. Figure Ground 29
30
9
7
8
7. Perspective 8. Perspective 9. Aerial View 31
32
Incremental Landscape
1
3
Yuri Kim Sang Il Ma
This proposal is a form of landscape urbanism in that it preserves a park-like landscape that is open to the public that can be used for both active and passive uses, and at the same time, tucked under is slopes, is a new agenda of built form that can be programmed to serve both the neighborhood and the surrounding areas. Generated as a pixilated grid, the carpet of green peels up along Myrtle Avenue to reinforce that streets infill with commercial storefronts. The landscape then runs continuously throughout the superblock site sloping down in places to the original ground gently, forming bridges across streets and open blocks and lastly shaping internal courtyards with facing community or retail uses. This forms a second, at-grade, set of meandering paths through the complex. The existing towers “raise their skirts”, that is pull up, to allow their structure to puncture the park and offer direct park/rooftop access from within. The loss of lower level housing is made up for by additional “green” stories. Monumental stairways are also distributed as a way to emphasize the “greenway”. 33
Existing Condition
Elevated Greenspace
Reaction to Site
Final Formation
2
1. Perspective 2. Site Plan 3. Process 34
4
7
5
6
4. Sectional Perspective 5. Sections 6. Street View 7. Courtyard 35
36
Knickerblock
1
3
4
Peter Kim Han Kim
Existing Condition
5 Modified Street Pattern
Influenced by the Knickerbocker Village (see pg 58), this proposal introduces a sense of perimeter blocks effectively concealing the existing architecture at street level. The street is reintroduced north-south as a meandering vehicular path,like speed bumps in the plan which divides the superblock into six sub-blocks rather than four. Each of these is then subdivided again into two or three perimeter blocks each with a central passive courtyard and a landscaped active pedestrian thoroughfare that runs east to west between them. The facade strategy recognizes the green condition of the public pedestrian as well as the courtyard. Dense planting is applied on the ground condition of the pedestrian space as opposed to planted green panels and hard ground are reflected in the courtyards. 37
New Commerical Configuration
2 6
Additional Housing
New Courtyard Green Space
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Courtyard Ground Plan Process Perspective Model Model 38
7
8
7. Nolli Figure Ground Plan 8. Perspective 39
40
9
10
11
12
9. 10. 11. 12. 41
Perspective Elevation Section Facade 42
13
15
14
13. Perspective 14. Perspective 15. Model 43
44
Public Greenway
1
3
Emma Colley Alyza Enriquez
The principal act of this proposal is to introduce a new public street, a mostly pedestrian avenue that can wind through the obstacle course of the existing towers roughly parallel to Myrtle Avenue. Unlike Myrtle Avenue it will not be dominated by traffic due to its side street termination at each end. Thus it restore a condition of urban normalcy where there is today a retail/commercial desert. It can be dedicated to active public uses; restaurants and cafes with outdoor dining on the sidewalks, an amphitheater, an open air market, and the principal institutions that are already clustered on the site- the elementary school, the catholic church, the library, and the hospital. Intersecting this street is a green or garden street that connects Fort Green Park with Commodore Barry Park at the very heart of the enterprise. The open air market also is the keystone to the streets success by acting as a feeder by bridging Myrtle Avenue with the interior street. 45
Existing Condition
Addition of Streetfront Buildings
Alteration of Streets
Addition of Green Space
Alteration of Buildings
Addition of Civic Amenities
2
4 1. 2. 3. 4.
Perspective Site Plan Process Elevation 46
5
5. Perspectives 47
48
Hyperblock
1
5
Javier Marcano Veronika Suarez
Commericial Uses
Residential Uses
Community Uses
Parking Uses
Incubator/Pop Shop Uses
Courtyards
Institutional Uses
Destination Points
3
To reintegrate the superblock into the city this solution is to make it a collection of hyperblocks. The hyperblock scheme reshapes the existing residual open space into a newly defined and distinct set of public courtyards, an urban space type not typically found in New York City. The public courtyard is intended to carry the same vitality as the street by being structured around a mix of use that includes local institutional and retail programming. Conceptually a repetitive pattern (as in the historic plan of Savannah, Georgia) each space is ultimately shaped and configured uniquely by the transformational demands of pedestrian circulation, existing tower footprints, new and proposed institutional programs, and a larger sense of episodic interconnectedness. Some courtyards are a landscaped extension of community centers for residents only, others support a larger institutional program such as the public school, the library or a newly designed museum. Redefining the street and courtyard by adding shared uses will cultivate a public trust and a healthy community for what will no longer be able to be called the Ingersoll/Whitman houses. 49
4
2
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Perspective Site Plan Savannnah Squares Courtyard Transformation Programming
50
6
7
6. Nolli Plan 7. Prototypical Building Axonometric 51
52
11 8
10
9
08. 09. 10. 11. 53
Axonometric Axonometric Axonometric Ice Skating Rink 54
15 12
14
13
12. 13. 14. 15. 55
Axonometric Axonometric Axonometric Library 56
20 16
17
19
18
16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 57
Balcony Axonometric Axonometric Axonometric Perspective 58
Colliding Typologies
1
3
Hudson DeRicco Nicholas Blount
The superblock is initially returned to something closer to its original patterning by threading five new north-south streets through the site. Along these streets are introduced new low density street front housing of three varieties depending on the block width dimensions and larger context- a. the townhouse with an enclosed semi-private common rear yard, b. the townhouse with a public rear yard taken up with fenced in recreational use (basketball, handball, tennis court, children’s playground, dog runs, etc.) which provides a buffer, and c. a shallow linear courtyard house with a privatized inner garden whose leftover space is given to decorative landscape. The existing towers are modified at the ground level to reconfigure their access into the new linear housing types. They typically act to subdivide the central spaces into incremental areas. Myrtle Avenue is also filled in with a building mass dedicated primarily to commercial/retail use. Although seemingly haphazard in the juxtaposition of the two systems, the scheme generates a wide variety of new housing as well as programed open public space for active and passive use. 59
Rowhouses
Elevated Towers
Amenities
Final Formation
2
1. Perspective 2. Site Plan 3. Process 60
4
5
4. Ground Plan 5. Perspective 61
62
6
7
6. Perspective 7. Sections 63
64
Precedents Socially Progressive Philanthropic Models Perimeter Block Garden Apartments
65
Linden Court Andrew Thomas, 1919 84th and 85th Streets between 37th and Roosevelt Ave Queensboro Corporation
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Andrew Thomas, 1924 Long Island City 54 Builldings, 2125 Families
The Chateau Andrew Thomas, 1922-3 6-09 34th Ave, 80-81st Streets
Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union Springsteen and Goldhammer 1927 Bronx 66
Thomas Garden Apartments Andrew Thomas, 1928 John D Rockefeller Bronx
Phipps Garden Apts Clarence Stein, 1929 Sunnyside Gardens, Queens
Paul Lawrence Dunbar Apartments Andrew Thomas, 1926-8 Harlem John D. Rockefeller 67
Mesa Verde Henry Smith, 1926 Jackson Heights, Queens 68
Knickerbocker Village Apts John S. Van Wart & Frederick Ackerman, 1933 Fred F. French Company 12 stories, High-rise Concept Hillside Houses Clarence Stein, 1935 New York City Housing Authority Sponsored Projects
First Houses Frederick Ackerman and NYCHA technical Staff, 1936 Ave A/ 3rd Street, Manhattan 69
Harlem River Houses Charles Fuller, 1937 70
Williamsburg Houses Lezcaze with Richmond Shreve (Shreve, Lamb, Harmon Architects), 1938
Queensbridge Houses Ballard, Churchill, Brost, Turner, 1940
Red Hook Houses Domenick, Mccarthy, Hohauser, Litchfield, Moscowitz & Robin for Alfred Poor, 1939 71
East River Houses Voorhees Walder Foley and Smith, 1941 72
Credits
Jennifer Lopez, Commissioner of Entertainment, NYC Mayor’s Office. Thank you for acting as the catalyst for bringing the idea of the studio to life. Erika Hinrichs, Chair UA Pratt Institute. Thank you for supporting the idea of the studio John Shapiro, Chairperson of Center for Planning and the Environment. Thank you for referring me to a series of fellow faculty and professionals involved in low income housing and plans for its future. David Burney, Professor and Director of Urban Placemaking and Management, Pratt Institute, Tamar Kiselevitz, Partner, Robert Scarano, Architect, and Jonathan Martin, Professor, Pratt Institute. Thank you for assisting me with the background material critical to an understanding of the scope for the project. John Kirchenfeld, Architect and Founder of the Institute of Public Architecture, Nicholas Bloom, Professor, NYIT and author of Public Housing that Worked, Kaja Kuhl, Professor, Columbia University, Beth O’Neil, Professor, Pratt Institute, Lawrence Zeroth, Professor, Pratt Institute, EJ Seong, Professor, Pratt Institute, 73
Debora Gans, Professor, Pratt Institute, Tom Vander Bout, Partner, NVda Architects, Frank Lang, Professor, Pratt Institute, pubic housing specialist. Thank you for participating in the reviews that helped the work to mature. Michael Pyatok, Architect and Public Housing specialist, Thomas Jefferson Medal recipient, Pratt graduate. Thank you for taking the time to critique the students’ progress at the time of your lecture at Higgins Hall. Steven Lovci and Bruce Eisenberg, Department of Design, NYCHA. Thank you for your generous participation in our reviews and bringing a more official perspective to the larger issues. Elaine Braithwaite, Policy Advisor for the Deputy Mayor of Housing and Economic Development, NYC Mayor’s Office. Thank you for taking the interest in the project and encouraging the distribution of its results. Bill Menking, Professor, Pratt Institute and Karen Kubey, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Architecture. Thank you for including the work in the Symposium on Housing to be held in April of 2015
Pratt Institute Thomas Schutte, President Bruce Gitlin, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Peter Barna, Provost Pratt Institute School of Architecture Thomas Hanrahan, Dean Kurt Everhart, Assistant to the Dean Pamela Gill, Assistant to the Dean Undergraduate Architecture Erika Hinrichs, Chair Jason Lee, Assistant Chair Teralyn Stewart, Coordinator of Student Advisement Juliet Medel, Coordinator of Student Advisement Latoya Johnson, Administrative Assistant Adam Kacperski, Administrative Assistant Editor Frederick Biehle Design and Production Michael Rosen