2022 Impact Report

PHOTO: MARTHA SNOW

FABMOBILE BY SMART DESIGN

Since our founding in 1894, Van Alen Institute has taken a few evolutionary leaps, always rooted in the core belief that shared spaces are essential to democracy. Here’s what that looks like in action today:

We never start a project without a community partner. Communities are the experts in their own needs and vision. We place our trust in the expertise of local leaders who have guided their neighborhoods for decades, and humbly work to gain their trust in return.

We don’t show up with preconceptions. We’ll never ask our partners to respond to a design or plan that didn’t originate with them. Our design projects start and end with listening.

We invest our own funds to initiate work we believe in. We share funds raised with our community partners, no questions asked, so they can build capacity or implement ideas we’ve co-created. In 2022, we re-granted $689,000.

We’re not all the way there yet. Our co-creation method, which you’ll learn about in the pages following, is a work in progress. There’s still much to do to achieve justice in city-making, so we approach our work with humility and an open mind. We know we still have much to learn.

At nearly 130 years old, we find ourselves at the beginning of a movement. It’s an exhilarating moment, and we’re glad you’re with us.

Deborah Marton Executive Director, Van Alen Institute

PHOTO: ARGENIS APOLINARIO

GOWANUS WILDCATS DRILL TEAM

When I took on the role of Board Chair, we were in the most challenging early days of the pandemic, which impacted us all in every meaningful way. As New Yorkers, as humans, we were compelled to reevaluate and double down on what mattered most.

For Van Alen, this meant putting community-led design at the heart of the work. We recognized that to have the impact we want to have, to make our cities more equitable, we had to try to address systemic issues, expand our network and partnerships and most importantly center on communities. We evolved our mission to help create equitable cities through inclusive design. We immediately put that to the test through Neighborhoods Now, our pandemic response initiative in collaboration with the Urban Design Forum. Community leaders across New York City told us exactly what they needed to survive and thrive, and our incredible team rallied to connect them with those skills, resources, and access. We didn’t show up with preconceived notions of what our partners might need; listening to them was our first step, and always will be going forward.

Learning from that powerful experience, we now stand as an impassioned network for change and for more just cities. We strive to push toward equity in everything Van Alen does, from how we do the work to how we shape our Board — by prioritizing lived experience and perspectives shaped by the effects of inequity. Everything we do is about new ways of connecting and working together toward a better, more inclusive city.

Carla Swickerath Partner, Studio Libeskind Board Chair, Van Alen Institute

PHOTO: HIRA HASSAN KINGSBRIDGE ARMORY

PHOTO: COURTNEY STANTON

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT EVENT IN ALBANY

At Van Alen Institute, we never start work without a community partner. This way of working ensures that change originates in communities — experts in their own needs, strengths, and assets. Across projects, we connect community partners to diverse resources, participate in long-term engagement with residents, and co-create prototypes and long-term projects to serve community needs. Along the way, we build trust and capacity among our partners, help them tell their stories, and evaluate the impact of our work.

CONNECT

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

PUBLIC HEALTH ORGS

Our community partners define and lead the vision for their neighborhoods. To give form to their vision, we shape dedicated project teams of interdisciplinary professionals, supported by strategic advisors who provide expertise across many of our projects. Here, Van Alen’s represented by the orange lines connecting our constellation of partners. DATA COLLECTION & EVALUATION GRAPHIC DESIGN

PHOTO: ARGENIS APOLINARIO

DRIVE-THRU BY SOFT FIRM

This year through Neighborhoods Now, we got more than what we thought we’d get. We now have a vision in our back pocket to show potential and possibility. Without the team that would have never happened.

YVONNE STENNETT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CLOTH

In 2022, Neighborhoods Now — our pandemic response program with the Urban Design Forum — pivoted from immediate tactical support to long-term visioning, creating an opportunity to connect existing community partners with new resources. As one example, Community League of the Heights (CLOTH) had completed an outdoor dining and Open Streets plans in 2020-21, and aspired to build a more expansive vision for Washington Heights’ public realm — a first step to securing investment.

To meet their evolving needs, we matched CLOTH with a new group of interdisciplinary design professionals from Beyer Blinder Belle, BJH Advisors, Cause + Matter Design Studio, and HLW. Together they completed a comprehensive needs assessment of local businesses, which recommended a unified neighborhood brand to strengthen the commercial community, including concepts for retail displays, streetscape elements, outdoor furniture, and public space installations. Those recommendations have become an important tool for CLOTH in seeking investment to strengthen its small business community. Across New York City, Neighborhoods Now has connected 11 community partners with 200+ multidisciplinary professionals, resulting in 10,000+ hours of community-led design.

PHOTO: LOLA VIEIRA-SULLIVAN

CLOTH TEAM VISIONING SESSION

Community engagement is a poorly defined activity in citymaking, and frequently takes the form of a few perfunctory meetings with residents and community members. They may be asked to react to an existing design or idea — one they may have had no role in shaping, let alone leading — with little opportunity to meaningfully influence a project’s priorities and outcomes. For Van Alen, engagement itself is an important outcome, because relationships amongst community-based collaborators are critical to the long-term sustainability of any initiative.

For Lucid Project: Albany, our community-led redesign of a long-neglected public alley, engagement is a multiyear mode of working. Our collaborator, design studio The Urban Conga, didn’t put pencil to paper until they’d participated in months of listening sessions. The result is The Hive, a reflection of how local residents describe the space as a community hub, buzzing with locally led activities. The installation incorporates transparent panels that will host community artwork, as well as memorials to neighbors lost; all ideas came directly from residents.

Many in the communities around Gowanus have gained a deeper understanding on the impact of CSOs due to the work of Van Alen.

MICHAEL HIGGINS JR.

TOUR GUIDE, SOCIAL JUSTICE WALKS

Building on their experience in our 2021 Neighborhood Design Fellowship, two Gowanus residents designed GLOwanus , a light installation that alerts the community when CSO (combined sewer overflow) occurs, so residents can act to limit water use and decrease waste running into the canal. The prototype currently lives in Van Alen’s storefront windows, paired with a playful information display about the issue. Educational groups, including classes from local public elementary schools and CUNY’s urban design program, have used the window as a teaching tool and dropped in to ask questions.

This work takes place against the backdrop of Gowanus’ recent rezoning, which will bring around 20,000 new residents despite the fact that local water management systems are already past capacity. In 2023, the Neighborhood Design Fellows are hosting a series of community workshops supported by Van Alen to educate residents about CSO and gather ideas for the final light design, which will be fabricated and distributed to homes and commercial storefronts across Gowanus.

PHOTO: EVAN MCKNIGHT

PHOTO: ALISHA KIM LEVIN

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT EVENT IN ALBANY

Van Alen moved to Gowanus in 2020 understanding that work at the community level must begin with our own community. We’re proud to have built trusting friendships with many nonprofits and community hubs in the neighborhood, including NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses just a couple blocks away.

Closed for nearly 20 years, the Gowanus Houses Community Center hosted essential resident-led activities like day care and senior programs, which have been forced to move or shut down — a profound loss to the Gowanus Houses community. The center is finally slated for renovation by NYC’s Department of Design and Construction. In preparation, we’ve partnered with the Gowanus Houses Tenants Association to spread word of the reopening and build excitement about how the renovated center could best serve the community.

While the center needs physical renovation, our partners have told us that capturing its history is equally important. Under their direction, and with support from designers and storytellers in our network, we’ve created photography and oral history projects to help the Tenants Association illustrate the center’s important role in Gowanus life. Making those stories visible to city leadership will be an important tool for residents in advocating for more resources going forward.

PHOTO: STEPHEN EDWARDS

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT AT GOWANUS HOUSES

Community means a form of living where the people who live amongst one another know one another, look out for one another, encourage one another, and try to uplift one another.

EVONNE CUMMINGS GOWANUS HOUSES RESIDENT

In a first for Van Alen, in 2022 filmmaker Kate Levy documented the human beauty and city-making strategies of Neighborhoods Now. As part of our goal to connect communities with resources needed to realize their own visions, Kate’s work had a dual purpose: document the power of Neighborhoods Now ’s collaborative model and provide community partners with effective tools for communication with all their stakeholders. In addition to creating short documentaries featuring the work of each community partner, she produced social media-friendly clips highlighting their accomplishments and the talented local leaders, small businesses owners, and artists in their neighborhoods.

Storytelling in public space brings those spaces to life.

For our second design installation with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Soft-Firm’s installation Drive-Thru transformed The Plaza at 300 Ashland into a platform for neighborhood voices. Throughout Spring 2022, the installation featured short films that explore themes of urban life — such as Olalekan Jeyifous’s The Frozen Neighborhoods (Fly-through), which imagines the potential of community-led innovation to create a sustainable and self-contained world in Brooklyn.

As Neighborhoods Now pivoted from crisis response to longterm visioning, pilot programs became annual community traditions. Now operating every summer, Think!Chinatown’s Chinatown Night Market brings together residents, food vendors, artists, and performers in a dazzling celebration of resilience and joy. Similarly, Bed-Stuy Gateway BID’s Winter Wonderland has become one of the city’s biggest annual holiday markets and a highly visible showcase for Bed-Stuy’s many locally-owned small businesses. And on the Lower East Side, FABnyc put their 20-year vision plan into action, bringing more than 90 free arts and culture events to the neighborhood’s public spaces.

These Neighborhoods Now partners leveraged these pilot programs and related video assets, created with our support, to attract new investment, extending their impact and longevity. Public realm activations are an important tool for building community cohesion and commercial visibility, as are needs assessments, new graphic identities, and public space design concepts. In the end, we aim to help partners build capacity for self-advocacy to attract neighborhood scale investment that achieves their long term visions.

PHOTO: COURTESY FABNYC

FABNYC’S OPEN ARTS LES PROGRAM

Without this program, I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to put forth a community vision for public space . I feel transformed.

RYAN GILLIAM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FABNYC

Understanding what happened before Winter

Wonderland, during, and after; what made people come; what they didn’t like — we have so much power with this information .

DALE CHARLES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BED-STUY GATEWAY BID

In Spring 2021, Think!Chinatown’s first Chinatown Night Market attracted about 1,000 visitors. In 2022, the market’s audience expanded 10x over, welcoming a whopping 10,000 visitors to the final market of the season.

We know this thanks to a partnership with Gehl Studios, whose Public Life app enables evaluation of how public spaces invite different types of activities, people, modes of transit, and more. Thanks to this ongoing collaboration, we’re now able to track and evaluate the impact of our work, whether at Van Alen’s annual Block Party in Gowanus, the Bed-Stuy Gateway BID’s annual Winter Wonderland, or at our design installations in Downtown Brooklyn.

In 2023, we’re expanding these efforts with a new Placemaking Evaluation Fellowship. This cohort takes on data collection across all public space projects, and produces visual reports on how these spaces currently serve communities and how they can be more inclusive. This raw data and reports will be shared with community partners as a resource for their programming and fundraising efforts.

PHOTO: DIANA ARAUJO

PHOTO: LEE KYLE

2022 CHINATOWN NIGHT MARKET

82nd Street Partnership

Akshay Shetty

Albany & Troy Lions Club

Albany 518 SNUG

Albany Department of Planning and Development

Albany Victory Gardens

Andreas Tyre

Asian Americans for Equality

BD Feliz

BJH Advisors

Barretto Consulting

Bed-Stuy

Gateway BID

Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation

Bednark

Beyer

Blinder Belle

Bridge Tha Gap Community

Resource & Outreach

Brooklyn Business Center at Restoration

Buro Happold

Cause + Matter

Design Studio

Community League of the Heights (CLOTH)

DJ Scribe

DLR Group

Dash Marshall

Dattner Architects

David Briggs

Deirdre

McDermott

di Domenico + Partners

Downtown Brooklyn Partnership

Elisa Smilovitz

Ellana

FABnyc

Farzana Gandhi

Design Studio

Francesca

Bastianini

Fried Frank

Gehl Studio

Grateful Villages

Gretel

HLW

Hyperakt

James Corner Field Operations

Joanne Wu

KPF

Kia Weatherspoon

Lauren Vespoli

Leroy Street Studio

MA’AM

Marium Naveed

Martha Hall

Marvel Architects

Max Martin

Michael Bednark

Moody Nolan

N H D M

Nadine Nelson

Natalie Quah Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC)

Outsource Consultants

Partner & Partners

Pentagram

Pramity Shah

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

SO-IL

Scalar Architecture

Smart Design

Sofia Kavlin

Soft Firm

Stantec

Steven Koller

Stuart Lynn

Think!Chinatown

ThoughtMatter

Tracey L. Pinkard

The Urban Conga

Urban Design Forum

The Working Assembly

Fairstead is committed to building vibrant, sustainable communities for all, which is why we’re proud to support Van Alen Institute. By centering communities in the design process, Van Alen supports a public realm — in New York City and beyond — that meets the selfidentified needs of residents.

RACHEL J. HONG, CONSTRUCTION & DESIGN ATTORNEY, INGRAM YUZEK GAINEN CARROLL & BERTOLOTTI, LLP

Van Alen has shed light and warmth through deserving areas of our city, and that light and warmth is represented in each and every member of Van Alen and its advocates. All of us — lawyers, architects, designers, engineers — have a role to play in creating a more just city.

TYLER MCINTYRE, MANAGING PARTNER FOR DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION, FAIRSTEAD

Adamson and AAI

Alloy Architecture Research Office (ARO)

Ares

Arup

Bednark Studio

Bender Family Foundation

Buro Happold

Byron Bell

Architects & Planners

Carol E. Rosenthal

Civitas

COOKFOX

Dattner Architects

Determined

by Design

DPR Construction

Fairstead

Focus Lighting

Greenberg Traurig

Holland & Knight LLP

IA Construction management

Ingram Yuzek

Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti LLP

Jaklitsch / Gardner

Architects

Jordan Cooper

Kensington

Vanguard

Kinneret Group

KPF

Loci Architecture

Manhattan

Laminates

MBB Architecture

National Endowment for the Arts

NCheng

Nemo Tile

New York

State Council on the Arts

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

On Time Supply

Perkins&Will

Pratt Institute

Round Peg

Sharon Davis Foundation

Silman

Snohetta

Studio Libeskind

The Seelig Group

Thinc Design

Thornton

Tomassetti

UAG

Wells Fargo

WRNS Studio

Xylem Projects

Michael Bednark

Bednark Studio Inc.

Robert Bernstein

Holland & Knight

Jared Della Valle

Alloy

Mark Gardner

Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects

Jenn Gustetic

Public Sector

Innovation Expert

Mark Johnson, FASLA Civitas

Casey Jones

Perkins and Will

Latoya Kamdang

Pratt Institute

Hana Kassem

Kohn Pedersen Fox

Associates PC

May Lee

The Seelig Group

Sandy Lee

Kinneret Group

Nnenna Lynch

Xylem

Daniel Maldonado

DPR Construction

Carlos Menchaca

Pratt Institute

V. Mitch McEwan

Atelier Office

Raymond Quinn

Arup

Carol Rosenthal

Fried Frank

Katie Swenson

MASS Design Group

Carla Swickerath

Studio Libeskind

Kia Weatherspoon

Determined by Design

Allison Freedman Weisberg

Round Peg

Thomas Yu

Asian Americans For Equality

Byron Bell (Emeritus)

Byron Bell Architects and Planners

2022 FINANCIAL INFORMATION

COMMUNICATIONS AND GRAPHIC DESIGN ASSOCIATE

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

DEBORAH MARTON

SCOTT KELLY

MANAGING DIRECTOR

REN REESE

DIANA ARAUJO

FRANKIE

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS ASSOCIATE

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS MANAGER

ANNIE FERREIRA

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

ALISHA KIM LEVIN

DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS

ANDREW BROWN PROGRAMS ASSOCIATE

SHILOAH COLEY

KATE OVERBECK

PHOTO:FABNYC

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SESSION ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE