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Posts Tagged ‘projects’

High-End Architect Goes Affordable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 22, 2025| 4 Comments »

Photo: Hufton+ Crow.
This affordable housing in New York was designed by the firm of famed architect Daniel Libeskind.

If you’ve spent your career catering to the wealthy, where do you go for other worlds to conquer? One architect turned to the poor.

The story is from Justin Davidson at Markets Today via MSN.

“Walk down an ordinary blah-colored stretch of Marcus Garvey Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant, past the dispiriting bulk of Woodhull Hospital and the brown-brick boxes of the Sumner Houses project, and you come upon an incongruous apparition, a great white sugar cube that’s been carved, beveled, and knocked askew. Stranger still, this work of obviously ambitious architecture was executed on a spare budget for residents with meager incomes. Even more startling, the Atrium, an affordable-housing development for seniors and veterans of the shelter system, was designed by the firm of Daniel Libeskind, he … of the kind of jagged form that would defy attempts to gift-wrap it.

“With the Jewish Museum in Berlin, opened in 2001, Libeskind established himself as a pioneer of deconstructivism, a style based on the illusion that buildings were lifting off, bursting, imploding, or peeling apart. After the 9/11 attacks, when he was appointed master planner of the World Trade Center rebuilding project, he became famous as the embodiment of advanced architecture, headlining a period when a dozen or so celebrities scattered the world with signature structures. You might not know where a building was or what it was for or how it stood up, but you could quickly identify who designed it. His global brand would seem like an odd choice for the most basic tier of New York’s urban shelter. …

“Spend some time in and around the Atrium, though, and you begin to see that the pairing of high-design auteur and low-income residents meets an assortment of needs and isn’t just noblesse oblige. Erected by a cluster of nonprofits — Selfhelp Community Services, Riseboro Community Partnership, and the nonprofit developer Urban Builders Collaborative — on a patch of NYCHA [New York City Housing Authority] land, the Atrium leavens the neighborhood with 190 new apartments, a spacious community room, fresh landscaping, and a jolt of jauntiness.

“Like many public-housing projects, the original Sumner Houses, built in the late 1950s, withdraw from the street, lurking behind a perimeter of pointless lawn. The Atrium does the opposite, hugging the sidewalk, peppy and reassuring. This is an active, even restless building that greets passersby with a smooth dance move. … The whole structure makes a quarter-twist from ground to roof, and you can trace its sinews stretching diagonally across the grid of ribbon windows.

“Inside, comfortable apartments encircle the raised, skylit courtyard that gives the building its name. That arrangement is a resonant one for Libeskind, who grew up in the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx, a complex developed in the 1920s by the garment workers union. …

” ‘It stood out,’ Libeskind told me. ‘It was populated by working-class people, but it had a sense of elegance.’ The courtyard was essential, a way for mostly Jewish immigrants to replace the tenement’s narrow, stinking air shaft with a form of genuinely gracious living. …

“Still, there’s a difference between an outdoor courtyard and an indoor atrium. Carelessly handled, the nine-story doughnut form could easily have evoked stifling precedents. … To avoid any hint of that oppressiveness, Libeskind laced the floor with diagonal walkways between raised planters and sculpted the inner façade almost like a climbing gym, with protrusions, ledges and trapezoidal windows placed in an apparently random arrangement. The goal was to make the court a destination rather than a vestibule. Since it’s one floor up from the lobby, going there requires an affirmative decision. …

“The success of a low-income housing complex depends on its social warmth. Selfhelp maintains a small team of social workers on-site, mostly to help residents navigate the welfare bureaucracy but also just to be there if they want to chat. …

“The residents I spoke to enjoy the Atrium, not because of its architectural pedigree but because it is clean and safe and orderly and bright, a rare haven for New Yorkers whose lives have often been turbulent. Still, loneliness is a tough enemy. …

“Designing a building and running it are different arts, but doing each one well fortifies the other. With the Atrium, Libeskind has given vulnerable people a place they can gradually make their own. He has also demonstrated that the daunting list of rules, requirements, prohibitions, and economic strictures that govern affordable housing in New York don’t have to choke off inventive architecture. …

“Ahmed Tigani, a deputy commissioner at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, insists that the Atrium shouldn’t be a one-off showcase of precious design. Recruiting architects like Libeskind makes it clear that low-income housing is an integral part of the cityscape. City housing staffers should wrestle with loftier questions than those described by the number of units built, Tigani says. ‘What is the physical impact of our investment, but also the social and spiritual impact? What does a building visually contribute? Does it feel like a part of your neighborhood? Does it feel like a statement of belief in what that housing can be?’ ”

More at MSN, here.

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Nudging Kids toward Independence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 13, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Jackie Valley/The Christian Science Monitor.
Fifth graders at Dennis Ortwein Elementary School in Las Vegas, Nevada, and their Let Grow posters.

Ultimately, you want your children to grow up able to take care of themselves. Love and convenience give parents plenty of temptation to do things for them beyond the point where the help is beneficial. That’s why a school in Nevada is lending a hand to kids and parents alike to so that fledglings may have a good chance to fledge.

Jackie Valley has the story at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Walking the dog. Wrapping a package. Cooking dinner.

“For adults, these activities often represent mundane to-do list tasks. But for fifth graders in Las Vegas, they offered something different this past school year – a taste of independence. 

“ ‘I can do things by myself more instead of having my dad or my mom do them,’ says Deven Doutis, who learned his dog goes a little nuts when he spots another canine out for a stroll.

The small steps toward greater – and lasting – independence came about in a very intentional way.

“Deven’s teacher, Amy Wolfe, sensed students were entering higher grades with more needs than in past years. Some couldn’t open a water bottle, for instance, or navigate minor conflicts with their peers. So when Ms. Wolfe heard about a program called Let Grow, she decided to pilot it within select classrooms at Dennis Ortwein Elementary School in Las Vegas.

“The program’s premise is simple: When children gain independence, they grow into more confident and capable people. …

“But what, exactly, are kids allowed to do by themselves nowadays? Terms such as ‘helicopter parent’ or ‘overparenting’ have become shorthand to describe adults who are overly involved, sometimes to the detriment of their child’s developmental growth. …

“A poll conducted last year for C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan found that three-quarters of parents say they have their children do things for themselves; however, the percentage of parents who report their children do specific activities independently is lower. Only a third of parents, for example, allow their 9-to-11-year-old child to walk or bike to a friend’s house. A similar portion say they encourage their 5-to-8-year-olds to decide how to spend their own gift or allowance money.

“Safety concerns emerged as the top reason those same parents don’t allow their children more free rein. The results did not come as a surprise to Lenore Skenazy, president of Let Grow and author of Free-Range Kids. For years, she has been on a mission to unleash children in a society where they increasingly have little independence in the physical world. …

“She says the backlash stems from a pervasive, heightened sense of danger built by media narratives and litigious tendencies. …

“In a commentary piece published by the Journal of Pediatrics last year, researchers pointed to evidence showing a correlation between children’s dwindling independence and increasing mental health problems over several decades.

” ‘We are not suggesting that a decline in opportunities for independent activity is the sole cause of the decline in young people’s mental well-being over decades, only that it is a cause, possibly a major cause,’ the authors wrote. (The lead author, Peter Gray, is a research professor in psychology at Boston College and a founding member of Let Grow.)

“In Ms. Wolfe’s classroom each month, students chose an independent activity, loosely tied to a theme, and completed it by themselves. Then they reported back to their classmates and teacher about the experience. There were no grades or critiques. If Ms. Wolfe asked any probing questions, it was to suss out how her students felt after, say, baking a cake or pulling weeds. …

“ ‘It’s more about developing the conversations with students to where they see independence … as a value,’ she says. …

“For her first project, Giwan Istefan’s 11-year-old daughter, Aria, decided to make miniature lemon-and-blueberry cheesecakes. Ms. Istefan says it turned into an exercise in parental restraint as well.

“ ‘I was like, “Oh my gosh, I see the disaster happening,” ‘ she says. ‘But I had to step back. It was growth not just for her, but it was growth for also myself.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. What are some of the ways you have encouraged independence in children, not necessarily only as a parent?

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Building a Community in the “Projects”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 19, 2016| 2 Comments »

Attempts to improve housing for low-income people have often destroyed a sense of community. That’s eminently clear in Robert Kanigel’s new biography of Jane Jacobs, an activist who helped to end the construction of the large complexes known as the “projects.”

So there is some irony in a new Global Oneness film about a 70-year-old housing project that probably once destroyed a neighborhood but has since created its own sense of community. Today it is threatened with what sounds like very pleasant improvements.

Life is complicated.

The Global Oneness Project has interviewed Yesler Terrace residents and created a film to spark discussion of the pluses and minuses of revitalization.

“Even the Walls is a short documentary about the multi-generational residents living within Yesler Terrrace, a public-housing neighborhood in downtown Seattle grappling with the forces of gentrification.

“For over 70 years, Yesler has been home to thousands of Asian, Asian American, African, African American, Native American, Hispanic, and Caucasian residents. The 30-acre property is being redeveloped quickly and the residents are being forced to make a decision — collect their memories and belongings and leave, or return to a place they know well, but do not recognize due to heavy reconstruction.

“Even the Walls chronicles the intimate stories and experiences from the residents of Yessler and defines the human connection to home and community.”

The film is here. Lesson plans for teachers are here. And the good intentions of the City of Seattle are described here.

Photo: Seattle Housing
In an organic 70-year process, the residents of Seattle’s somewhat worn Yesler Terrace have made the “projects” into a real community. So not everyone is thrilled that improvements are afoot.

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