good afternoon thank you so much
I was just about to begin my first year
in graduate school for architecture when
Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 I
didn’t have much experience in design at
the time but I felt there must be
something I could do to help an old
headmaster put me in touch with a local
architect in New Orleans who had
volunteered free design services to
homeowners who could not afford them on
my first day of work
my boss handed me an impossibly long
list of addresses gave me her car keys
and said go
the first house on the list was in the
Gentilly neighborhood where floodwaters
had risen over ten feet every house on
the block seemed to be abandoned except
for this one where a young nurse had
taken matters into her own hands and
raised her one story home on top of
cinder blocks using car jacks when I
asked her where she intended to put the
stair she gestured to an area that would
have cut off access to over half of the
upstairs I told her to hold on I went
home stayed up all night and developed
three options for that stair location
when I returned she seemed elated not
only because she now had a complete
vision for a home a little better than
what was destroyed but because she no
longer had to go at the reconstruction
process alone that day taught me an
important lesson about the power of
design to heal it also taught me about
the power of design to hurt what would
happen to all those homeowners who
didn’t have access to an architect on a
larger city scale
why did levees designed and constructed
by the government fail and what seemed
to be the poorest neighborhoods in the
city I returned to school eager to learn
how to use design to serve society for
the better after the recession of 2008 I
felt very fortunate to get a job at a
great design firm in New York City where
I grew up there I managed from concept
to completion to subway entrance
canopies and a cafe kiosk that were part
of this enormous Hudson Park and
Boulevard development on the
Side of Manhattan this was an amazing
learning opportunity to be working
alongside such a talented architect on
projects that would impact so many New
Yorkers lives but at the same time it
felt very far from the work I had done
in New Orleans it troubled me that all
the best architects seem to be working
in similar context with booming
economies on golden towers why were
there so few on the fringes where
instinct told me design was needed most
I decided after much consideration to
leave this more secure path and rejoined
forces with some old classmates who had
founded the mass design group this is an
experimental nonprofit architecture firm
that had been asking those same
questions in context overseas I was
curious if we might be able to work
together to use design to heal right
here at home in the u.s. our upper one
derd if instead of waiting for clients
with enough money to build what if we
could create buildings starting from the
bottom up beginning with the local
community our opportunity to test this
hypothesis emerged in 2011 when
Hurricane Irene struck a number of
cities north of the city along sorry
north of New York City along the Hudson
River were flooded including
Poughkeepsie New York which is a short
two-hour train ride north of Grand
Central the Family Partnership Center
located at the heart of the city was hit
particularly hard by the storm this old
school building was repurposed to house
a number of community support
organizations that had been serving the
mid-south since 1954 officer trying to
salvage what he can after the flooding
everyone’s first instinct to get the
building up and running as quickly as
possible was to move that mechanical
system above the floodplain in addition
our team worked pro bono with
stakeholders of the organization to
develop a longer-term
more sustainable vision for for the
building our team envisions transforming
that Creek which was just outside and
was the prime
a source of the flooding to transform it
from that liability into an asset we
imagined transforming those hard edges
into soft edges that could better absorb
stormwater and serve as a public amenity
at the same time our hypothesis about
rebuilding from the bottom up has shown
the first signs of working this vision
which we developed alongside the
community has enabled the Family
Partnership center to launch a capital
campaign which is expected to raise
enough money to begin the first phase of
the of construction working alongside
the Family Partnership Center opened our
eyes even larger ideas in the city that
residents had such as using that very
same creek to stitch together
disconnected parts of the city the fall
kill as it is known was once a vital
industrial waterway that powered mills
along it today it is mostly paved over
and forgotten about a local resident
Bradford Johnson remembers playing in
the water as a child but today it’s full
of construction debris shopping carts
shoes tires you name it we even found
this creepy little gnome in there the
daunting restoration process would
require an enormous amount of capital
but perhaps even more challenging a
common vision amongst every property
owner along the creek as designers while
we can’t provide the bricks and mortar
costs directly we can help facilitate
that common vision we’ve begun that
process in partnership with the Dyson
Foundation and other like-minded
nonprofit and academic institutions like
Columbia University’s urban design
program as a first step we set out to
rebuild the emotional connection between
the community and the creek we organized
an event to walk physically through the
waters and document what we saw we put
our findings on display in an exhibition
on Main Street where the community could
rediscover this asset beneath their feet
and at the same time offer their own
ideas for its second life once again
this vision developed alongside the
community has unlocked enough grant
funding to further the initiative this
large-scale urban lens has made us aware
of some of the even larger forces that
have shaped the Kip see over the years
we were moved by the adverse role we
found design had played in the city’s
current hardship founded in 1683
Poughkeepsie became an important
commercial center with agriculture
traveling south by the Hudson River a
diverse range of industries sprung up in
the 19th century including oil blubber
rendering paper milling and brewing it
blossomed into an industrial and
academic center with the founding of
Vassar College Maris College in IBM
setting up headquarters just outside the
nationwide shift away from manufacturing
at the middle of the 20th century led
many to believe that cities around the
country needed to be redesigned under
the federal urban renewal program
governments destroyed entire downtown’s
to make way for high-speed roadways that
were thought to alleviate congestion and
improve the quality of life in
Poughkeepsie which received a very large
amount of funding under this program
this is what Main Street looks like
today clearly the program did not unfold
as intended
instead what happened was these
pedestrian friendly Main streets were
cut off by those high-speed roadways
which divided the city into sections and
choked off Main Street from the Hudson
businesses found it easier to relocate
outside where land was cheaper the final
blow came in the 1990s when IBM let go
over 7,000 workers vacancies soared in
the downtown area which became an island
locked between these highways the Kip
sees population fell by nearly a third
from its high of 40,000 in 1950 here’s a
clear example of a top-down
one-size-fits-all planning initiative
although it was well intentioned and
helped some cities it severely hurt
others urban renewal failed to recognize
the value of the smaller communities it
destroyed in the name of larger progress
today Poughkeepsie
government cannot support the planning
staff necessary to start to reverse some
of these effects and the community is
rightfully wary of any large-scale
planning initiatives architects waiting
for an economy to support them are very
few and far between to take
responsibility for this failure of
design and to support those incredible
organizations that have endured this
decline we’ve opened up the Hudson
Valley design lab just off Main Street
instead of waiting for clients with
enough money to build to hire us we’ve
opened our doors to the community so
they can tell us what they think is most
important we then work alongside them to
develop a common vision and use that
vision to unlock grant funding to
further it this bottom-up approach has
proven a viable alternative to that
top-down model that led to urban renewal
and still broadly defines the practice
of architecture today now we’re hearing
brilliant ideas from all over the city
and we’re working together to make them
happen a local CDC imagines transforming
this old trolley barn into a
community-based Arts Incubator that
could revitalize the middle of Main
Street we’re also in early conversations
with the city about transforming an an
old water cistern into a number of
possible uses including an underground
farm you heard me correctly an
underground farm which we think might
improve the community’s access to fresh
produce from our beginnings three years
ago with the Family Partnership center
we’re now working with over 10
organizations on the ground to reinvent
the keep see from the bottom up and we
hope this is just the beginning
poughkeepsie while unique and it’s
specific challenges and assets is not
unique in its general history as a
vibrant industrial center that was
injured by urban renewal that’s now full
of post-industrial infrastructure and
community organizations very interested
in giving its second life there are
hundreds of cities like this across the
u.s. in the US alone I’m sorry in the
Northeast alone we mapped all of those
have a population between 10,000 and
50,000 that experienced over a 10
percent decline in their population
since 1970 roughly the end of urban
renewal incidentally they all generally
have higher than state average poverty
vacancy and unemployment rates these
fringe cities are so important I believe
because these are the places where
people will be moving as the population
continues to grow as the cost of living
in these major urban centers continues
to soar and before that happens we need
to work alongside these communities to
come up with a common vision for this
infrastructure and support their local
economies before profit driven
developers inevitably arrive and risk
displacing the communities that live
here
these French cities hold the seeds of
our collective future whether we choose
to ignore them or come together to
restore them will determine our future
as one of reaction or invention North
Adams where we gather today just 100
miles north of Poughkeepsie is one of
these fringe cities although its
specifics are different I was astonished
by how much it has in common with
Poughkeepsie –zz history a booming
economy sprung up around the Hoosick
tunnel which was an important gateway
between New England and western states
by rail in 1900 North Adams had the
largest population of any city in
Berkshire County urban renewal in the
1950s resulted in the demolition of over
80% of the downtown in its place were
constructed to high speed roadways which
divided the city into sections and cut
off Main Street as the center of the
city increased competition overseas for
Sprague electric which employed over 20%
of the workforce to close its doors and
downtown turn into a vacancy island
north adams population declined by
nearly 40 percent from its high in 1940
in spite of this decline like
Poughkeepsie there remains tremendous
potential and opportunity in north adams
anchor institutions remain like the
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
while others have
moved in like MASS MoCA the Hoosick
river like the fall kill stitches many
of these disconnected components
together and is a clear opportunity for
Second Life we still have a lot of
listening to do and a lot of learning to
do about North Adams but we jumped in
last summer with an organization
interested in the rut in the ecological
revitalization of a section of the
Hoosick River surrounding the historic
black inton Mill we’re at the very early
stages of envisioning what that might
look like
last fall I also met local activists
Gee’s wiles who has a vision for the now
vacant Mohawk theater just up the street
to be designed constructed and operated
by the local community the vision
includes a tile in the entryway
dedicated to any member of the community
that participates in this effort be it
donating a million dollars or sweeping
up after a day of construction we have
learned about the tremendous opportunity
and need for engagement with these
fringe cities a rich enduring an
authentic place already exists in each
of them we must work alongside these
communities to remember and unlock each
one’s unique potential in the process we
might discover a more equitable model
for architecture serving society from
the bottom up instead of the top down no
one should have to rebuild after a flood
alone it doesn’t matter if it’s a
natural disaster a failed planning
initiative or years of economic
disinvestment architects and designers
should be jumping in to help so come
share your vision with me and let’s work together to make this happen thank you