Urban Embodiments: Roosevelt Avenue Studio I Final Presentation
Friday December 12th, 2014
930AM-130PM (A light breakfast provided starting at 920AM)Location:
Wollman Hall
Eugene Lang Building
65 West 11th Street.
Detailed Schedule:
930-950AM :: Framework and Partnership Introduction
950-1010AM :: Research Presentation :: Roosevelt Ave, BID’s, Everyday Practices.
Group Presentations: 25min Presentation + 25min Feedback
1010-1100AM :: Shared Embodiments Group
1100-1150AM :: Spaces for Negotiation Group
1150AM-1240PM :: Open Space Constellation Group
1240-130PM :: The BID (is not a) game Group
(see below for a basic description of the type of work you will see on Friday)Detailed Description:
Design and Urban Ecologies
School of Design Strategies
Parsons, The New School for Design
First Semester StudioInstructor: Quilian Riano
Students: Alexa Jensen, Bernardo Loureiro, Demetra Kourri, Denilyn Arciaga, Jesseka Metts, Kartik Amarnath, Maria Morales, Masoom Moitra, Mateo Fernández-Muro, Nadine Rachid, Silvia Xavier, Tamara Streefland, Walter Petrichyn.URBAN EMBODIMENTS: ROOSEVELT AVE DESIGN STUDIO
The Roosevelt Avenue corridor in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and North Corona, Queens is currently the site for controversial urban changes. As an example, the 82nd Street Business Improvement District (BID) is exploring an expansion from 82nd St. to 104th St. and in the past the expansion proposed even reached Flushing Meadows Corona Park. This potential expansion has been met with opposition by many in the community who feel that the BID will lead to increased privatization and eventual evictions of existing small business owners and low-income tenants. Other proposed projects in the neighborhoods that have met similar opposition include a mall and housing in Willets Point, a defeated soccer stadium inside of the Flushing Meadows Corona Park grounds and a large hotel and convention center to be located near the corner of Northern Boulevard near Flushing Meadow Park. These projects all intervene on Jackson Heights and North Corona but do not often take into account the individuals and groups that already live there and their existing political, economic and social practices. This studio asks students to consider how these developments are created and who benefits from them through research, engagement and design proposals. This will require a careful study of local communities and their current political, economic and social practices.
After on-the-ground research and engagements, the studio focused on four design proposals that together create a series of embodied infrastructures and processes – a network of public sites, relationships and actions that will provide new organizational arrangements to complement existing infrastructures in the area (human and social, technological and industrial, governance and civic, transportation and mobility, water and waste management, energy and ecology, communications and culture). In one case we are designing a Roosevelt Ave-specific board game that helps create communal agendas around the BID and other issues that the site faces.
The studio explored how these designs and their parallel processes produce visions and strategies for the emergence of a more democratic, participatory and inclusive public realm in Roosevelt Avenue.