Bet the House

March 2023 Ι Landscape Architecture Magazine  Pulling off the road during a hot and sticky New York City summer day two years ago, and into the Berry public housing complex on Staten Island, Kate Belski of Grain Collective had a bit of a revelation. She found herself in a central lawn dotted with trees, surrounded… Continue reading Bet the House

High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up

Aerial view of First National Bank building in Chicago, Illinois, circa 1969.

August 31, 2023 Ι Architects’ Newspaper In the 1960s, the same Chicago city agency conjured some of the worst and the best in American residential high-rises, and in rapid succession. The Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Robert Taylor Homes were the nation’s largest public housing project when they opened in 1963: the buildings locked in a… Continue reading High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up

The City We Refuse to See

October 2021 Ι New York Review of Architecture, #23  Review: Candyman (2021 version), directed by Nia DaCosta. Spoilers ahead. In Candyman, the 1992 film and its 2021 remake, a killer slips past walls and phases in and out of mirrors. This gore-soaked terror inhabits the shadow-realms of crumbling public housing blocks. He skulks the empty… Continue reading The City We Refuse to See

Is this library politics?

April 28, 2021 Ι The Chicago Reader  Drive south on the Bishop Ford Expressway to Altgeld Gardens and you’ll pass plenty of reminders you’re in a landscape not meant for inquisitive visitors. There are looming grain silos next to a parked shipping freighter, a village-scaled water reclamation plant, and plenty of anonymous warehouses. But once you… Continue reading Is this library politics?

A Seat at the Table

Architect Magazine Ι Feb. 3, 2020 Early in the development of the Ruth Ellis Clairmount Center in Detroit, an LGBTQ+ affordable housing and outreach center that focuses on young people of color, Jack Schroeder, AIA, of Landon Bone Baker (LBB) knew there would be an arts component to the mostly residential project, but he wasn’t… Continue reading A Seat at the Table

The National Public Housing Museum Eyes a 2021 Opening

The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι Dec. 3, 2019 When you’re working to establish a museum with such contested subject matter as the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM), it pays to have a few shorthand expressions within easy reach, lest anyone get confused about creating a curatorial platform for an institution many associate with failure. Crystal Palmer,… Continue reading The National Public Housing Museum Eyes a 2021 Opening

Decoding Oppression in Architecture: Design as a Tool for Social Justice

Oct. 24, 2017 Ι Redshift In the years since the Great Recession cratered the steel and glass fantasies of a generation of architects, architecture centered around social justice has gained salience and ever-loftier pedestals. But while architects speak of aspirational ways that design can inspire people to be better, more empathetic citizens, design often does the… Continue reading Decoding Oppression in Architecture: Design as a Tool for Social Justice

The Final Hill

Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι October 2017  The first thing you notice is all the cars. The are a strange landscape divided by Jersey barriers and concrete retaining walls that carve up the site’s topography. Endless rows of cars are parked along its curving streets and in front of 62 three- and four-story barracks-style buildings that plod… Continue reading The Final Hill

Redesigning Lathrop

Architect Magazine Ι January 2017 The Julia C. Lathrop Homes, built in 1938, are one of the oldest Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) projects in the city. Inspired equally by Ebeneezer Howard’s English Garden Cities and company towns like Pullman on Chicago’s far South Side, Lathrop was designed by a cadre of architects punching below their weight… Continue reading Redesigning Lathrop