Interboro’s Rebuild by Design planning work.
entry, deeply informed by existing social patterns in Detroit won, and as D’Oca notes, the term ‘blot’ has since become part of the discourse on shrinking cities. SERVICE TYPES & CLIENTS Interboro has three main areas of design practice: planning projects, installation-scale design projects, and office renovations. In addition, the office runs many projects that don’t quite fit neatly into these service areas, and are sometimes self-funded, but often feed intellectually into their planning and design work.
Planning In their most recent planning work, for the Rebuild by Design initiative, the firm started by identifying misalignments between regional goals that would benefit local municipalities-- for example, the regional imperative to increase impermeable surfaces, and local goals for local economic development. The firm sought to be practical yet idealistic in their proposal and identified opportunities to put these goals in alignment, such as reinvigorated public coastal ecosystems that protect from flooding and provide new ammenities.
research spills over into other firm efforts, and vice-versa. In addition to research on temporary uses and regional planning strategies, the firm has also active research eforts on other related political issues. A major research interest of theirs is in NIMBYism (‘Not in My Backyard.’) The firm was asked to produce a drawing by Esquire on “the state of things in the US,” and produced a map that includes design and planning practices communities use to be inclusionary or exclusionary. They subsequently produced a large atlas illustrating these practices and are writing a book that catalogs these processes.
Temporary Installations Another specialty of the firm’s is temporary installations. Like the firm’s planning projects, these projects grew out of the firm’s research and planning interests. Building on the ideas generated in their Dead Malls competition entry, in 2009 the firm created “Lent Space,” a public space for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, they transformed a privately-owned development site into a temporary plaza. The site hosted planters holding trees that would eventually be used as street trees in the surrounding area, and they redesigned the typcial construction site fence into a moveable sculptural barrier with attached seating for passers by. While the D’Oca looks at the firm’s accomplishments with satisfaction generally, he would like to be able to compete for larger projects. He
For Interboro Partners, planning work also means investigative work, revealing some of the existing dynamics in a given space and economic system. In 2009 they worked as urban design fellows for the ‘Made in Midtown’ campaign, launched by the Design Trust and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. They campaign rested on a study of the Garment Industry in Manhattan, which is under pressure to redevelop into residential property. Interboro’s study revealed the ways in which the neighborhood contributed to New York City’s economy and its interactive graphic website, madeinmidtown.org was an advocacy tool. It used the graphic technique of the cross section to reveal the vibrancy and productivity of the industry.
Research Research is a central part of the firm’s planning efforts, and project-specific Made in Midtown interactive graphic.
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