PROJECT PROPOSAL Project Area: Land Use and Development · 2009-04-10 · PROJECT PROPOSAL Project Area: Land Use and Development 0928 – 1052: Public/Private Boundaries in 29 Brooklyn

Van Alen Institute Resident Fellowship Application 2009 Cynthia Lawson and Meret Lenzlinger

0928 – 1052: Public/Private Boundaries in 29 Brooklyn Blocks

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PROJECT PROPOSAL Project Area: Land Use and Development 0928 – 1052: Public/Private Boundaries in 29 Brooklyn Blocks 0928 – 1052: Public/Private Boundaries in 29 Brooklyn Blocks is a multi-layered depiction of Brooklyn’s Fifth Ave, between Flatbush Ave. and Prospect Expressway, between 2009 and 2014. This stretch in the Park Slope neighborhood is the perfect example of a changing streetscape reflecting the economic ups and downs of a neighborhood. 0928 – 1052 documents, represents and critiques these changes and exists both online as well as in the material world (as a stitched-together panorama of the Avenue, an interpretive plan view, and a modeled lattice of the commercial landscape). The project’s title refers to the specificity with which we will engage with the site – analyzing each block, each lot, and each storefront. 0928 and 1052 are the first and last block numbers along the stretch, as used to identify property for tax purposes and for zoning and construction at the various city agencies. The proposal here described is the beginning of a five-year investigation of the site and as such a Residency at Van Alen Institute will allow us to launch this project to the general public and call for their participation, as well as engage with scholars interested in the topics we are addressing, so as to receive critical feedback about the work as we move forward. Context If neighborhoods are microcosms of the metropolis, then commercial streets located in residential neighborhoods are their “downtowns” or, to use a more au courant term, their “Main Streets.” As such, these streets become the major civic connectors: people shop for groceries; meet up with friends for dinner; wait for their bus; collect signatures for petitions; and catch up with folks they just happened to run into. When a neighborhood has a commercial strip with a diverse enough range of offerings and services it can fully satisfy its residents’ needs. It is no surprise that, in dense urban hubs such as New York, many people rarely leave their neighborhoods. Commercial blocks serving residential neighborhoods and made up of small independent businesses in particular are affected directly by the ebb and flow of money into the neighborhood in the form of taxes and dispensable income. These commercial streets are continually in flux, mirroring the economic conditions of their surroundings: as neighborhoods gentrify, closed storefronts become occupied. Once enough storefronts in each block are open, a tipping point is

reached1 and the area becomes a shopping destination. 99¢ stores and bodegas

are replaced by higher end groceries and boutiques. Commercial rents increase, so a second wave of tenants replace the “pioneers” who originally took advantage

1MalcolmGladwell.TheTippingPoint:HowLittleThingsCanMakeaBigDifference.Little,BrownandCompany:2000.



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of the neighborhood’s low rent. “Main Street” becomes a bazaar for luxury consumption. What happens when a recession hits? It is precisely that last wave of high-end stores that is most affected by consumers cinching their belts. Once the gift shop for high-end design products closes, the butcher store it replaced will not move back in—the tide does not simply turn back. As we have entered the current recession, many of these storefronts are being vacated and shuttered with no replacements in sight. Our project will track some of the changes this economic downturn will bring. Civic Ground The street blocks in question are usually subdivided into residential scale lots and occupied by row houses. The scale favors independent businesses over larger

stores2 and zoning favors mixed-use over monolithic occupancy. However, even though these physical conditions fulfill Jane Jacobs’ prerequisites for vibrant

pedestrian communities3, the economy is what activates these storefronts. A street with 70% of the storefronts shuttered may still act as a vehicle to propel people through the urban fabric, but it is the activation/population of the store fronts that puts a caesura in people’s stride; that invites lingering; that stretches time. The facades of these storefronts act simultaneously as boundary and connector. The degree of transparency of that boundary directly relates to the contraction and expansion of perceived public space and time. In other words, while the physical boundary of public vs. private property remains constant (sidewalk vs. store), the public realm in a larger sense contracts and expands depending on what happens when and where and for whom along that boundary. It is our goal to investigate the role of that boundary and the perceptions of space and time across it. We will take into account the street, the boundary and the commercial space beyond. The “Other” Fifth Avenue Originally the conduit for the Brooklyn Union Elevated Railroad (El), Fifth Avenue was a vibrant commercial street marking the lower edge of Park Slope. It was busier than Seventh Ave, and its role as a neighborhood’s boundary can still be seen in the shift of the street grid and the change of some street names above and below Fifth Avenue. In the late 40s, the El was replaced by the Fifth Avenue bus

line, and the Avenue was hit hard in the blackout riots of 19774, closing down most of the businesses overnight. It did not recover from New York’s disastrous economy of the 70s until well into the 1990s. Throughout the 90s and the early 21stC, partially due to skyrocketing housing prices in Manhattan, the influx of professionals and their families into the outer

2NewburyStreetinBostonistherareexceptiontothis:OnefindsaBananaRepublicorsimilarstoresoccupyingtheparlorfloorlevelofseveraladjacentrowhouses,butthisverywellcouldbebecauseitisnotlocatedinaresidentialneighborhood.3Jacobs,Jane.TheDeathandLifeofGreatAmericanCities.VintageBooks:1961.4Goodman,James.Blackout.NorthPointPress:2003.



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boroughs dramatically changed the streetscapes of the neighborhoods into which they moved. In 1996 (when Lenzlinger first moved to Fifth Avenue) more than half the storefronts were shuttered day and night. The few open stores were bodegas and 99¢ stores. There was a spattering of Chinese and Caribbean take-out places, and two finer sit-down restaurants within a 20-block stretch. On the side streets, drug gangs were hocking their wares and prostitutes were found just down the street toward 3rd Avenue. As anyone who reads the New York press knows, Park Slope has since become the poster child of post-graduate hipsterdom, mommies with strollers, and with that, Fifth Avenue has gradually (progressing roughly north to south) been transformed into a string of artisanal shops, fashionable boutiques and high-end restaurants. The two existing supermarkets have been completely remodeled, while smaller stores such as butchers and import grocers have been displaced together with the immigrant communities to whom they once catered. Regardless of one’s opinion of the pros and cons of gentrification, the fact remains that the store fronts along streets like Fifth Avenue act as economic indicators of the neighborhood in which they are located. We propose to study Fifth Avenue over the next five years, block by block, and to record changes both historical and into the future. The Website The project’s website (29BrooklynBlocks.com) will initially be used to broadcast the “Call for Images” and will then serve as the digital repository of all media submitted. Visitors to the website will be able to see an in-progress version of the stitched landscape and will be encouraged to submit images of areas they identify have already changed. Upon the project’s completion, the website will have a description of the project & its process as well as a final version of the project (presented as a scrollable landscape of the site investigated.) The Stitched Landscape A stitched-together photographic landscape of this avenue serves as the base onto which additional temporal information will be added as visual and informational layers. This additional information may include old photographs of any portion of the site, textual and recorded stories of local residents, as well as information on how long a particular business has occupied a specific site. These temporal variables will be depicted via layers (we will experiment with transparent and superimposed or opaque and floating), color-coding, and sound layering when applicable, adding a depth (see Figure 1) to what is a seemingly straightforward visual documentation of an avenue.



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Figure 1: Proposed photo stitch with layered temporal information

The original stitched photographic landscape will be created using images photographed by Lawson, to which layers will be added from a variety of sources including photographs taken and submitted by local neighborhood residents, images found in the archives of the Van Alen Institute, NYC’s Department of Records, and New York Public Library. The emphasis of the project is on engaging the general public in witnessing the changes that we already see manifesting themselves on Fifth Avenue. Our hope is that the photo-based panorama of the Avenue will change over time via the layering of images submitted by the general public, documenting changes in storefronts. This “Call for Images” will be broadcast via flyers in the stores, residences, and schools neighboring the proposed site; via Brooklyn blogs such as

Brownstoner5 and Park Slope Parents6; a Facebook group; our personal and professional networks; art/design NYC universities and public schools close to the area; and the Van Alen Institute community. We hope that with this participatory approach, residents of Park Slope and the general public will actively engage with how their neighborhood is changing. The Plan View

5http://www.brownstoner.com6http://www.parkslopeparents.com/



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The plan view of Fifth Avenue is inspired by the Nolli Map of Rome (see Figure 2), which contrasts the white of public space with the black impermeability of private property . The map will depict a storefront as an in-between space (neither all white nor all black, but a shade in between) and as such will be a commentary about how an active storefront offers a blended public/private space. The treatment of the storefront boundary will be depicted in plan view as well. The map we are creating will be drawn on a long scrolling roll of bond paper, which will offer a geographic, but also critical, positioning for the stitched landscape.

Figure 2: Nolli Map from http://nolli.uoregon.edu

A Modeled Lattice We have a particular interest in how the public realm is transformed by the shutters on commercial storefronts. They represent the activation of an in-between space that moves from private to public, with shades of grey in-between. Generally speaking higher end stores tend to remain unshuttered at night because they often appear once the neighborhood is considered “safe” and because an open window extends the relationship between customer and goods. It is this connection between storefront materials and gentrification that the lattice would communicate. For this reason, we are proposing an additional element that will serve as a guiding (and framing) element for the final exhibition: a modeled lattice perforated with the pattern of Fifth Avenue’s commercial storefront shutters. This piece would be ideally fabricated using a CNC Router at the Avery Digital Fabrication Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Final Exhibition Upon completion of the Fellowship, 0928 – 1052 will be exhibited in its final form online as well as in Van Alen Institute’s public gallery. The final design of the material piece and exhibition will be defined on site since we propose to create an immersive viewing of the work, so that people can, in some way, walk through the layered landscape, such as in the work “OceanMalecónDrive, La

Habana-Miami”7(Figure 3.) The linearity of the site (we are working with a straight 1.5 mile stretch, at roughly at 1:40 scale) will be a guiding design element in the final exhibition. Our historical research will serve as an introduction to the project.

7byAngelMorúaandproducedbyCiudadCityandEmba



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Figure 3: Installation shot of OceanMalecónDrive, La Habana-Miami courtesy of

penultimosdias.com

A color accordion pamphlet will be published simultaneously with the exhibition’s opening. This pamphlet will contain contextual information, and will contain fold-out pages which replicate the elements presented in the exhibition. We are very interested in exhibiting this work on site on Fifth Avenue so that it becomes a truly participatory project starting and ending in the neighborhood. Throughout the residency at Van Alen Institute, and as we work through the details of the project, we will actively establish relationships with the owners of some of the empty storefronts on Fifth Avenue to exhibit the entirety, or portions of the work. We will also submit it for consideration to local galleries in Park Slope such as Open Source on 17th Street 404 Gallery on Seventh Avenue, and Object Image Gallery on Fifth Avenue Our Collaboration We are both Brooklyn-based practitioners: Lenzlinger as an architect and educator with a 9-year architectural practice that focuses on local projects, Lawson as an academic and artist based out of Madarts, an active arts collective in South Park Slope. This proposal stems from Lenzlinger’s residential and professional life in Park Slope for the past 12 years during which she has witnessed many of the changes from which this project stems. This project would be a move for Lenzlinger to focus on more academic and experimental interests, that complement her teaching at Parsons. This would also allow her to shift focus from the private sphere of residential construction to a more public realm of her neighborhood. For Lawson, this project is a continuation of the body of work she started when first joining Madarts, in 2007, in which she has investigated the public urban landscape through photography and other media. With a particular emphasis in space and time, Lawson engages with critical issues in an effort to engage and challenge the general public.



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As a team, Lenzlinger and Lawson share their interests in how an economic rise or downturn can so significantly affect their neighborhood. For the proposed project, Lawson will focus on the development of the website, promotion of the project, and the stitched photographic landscape, while Lenzlinger will focus on the drawing of the plan view, the modeled lattice and the historical research. Together we will design the overall look and feel of the various elements we are making, as well as their exhibition.

Documents

PROJECT PROPOSAL Project Area: Land Use and Development · 2009-04-10 · PROJECT PROPOSAL Project Area: Land Use and Development 0928 – 1052: Public/Private Boundaries in 29 Brooklyn