Gowanus: Our Space

Larger-scale proposal by group 'Third Space".

Published February 2, 2023

The Fall 2021 graduate option studio was a collaborative studio ran by members of Dark Matter University (DMU), a democratic network guided by the principle that people cannot survive or thrive without immediate change toward an anti-racist model of design education and practice.

Within the studio, students met frequently with members of DMU to discuss topics and foundations of anti-racist policies in design. Students were encouraged early on to create both visual and written reflections of what design justice means to them, to be added to and worked through as the semester progressed. Students learned about the concepts of affect and effect through collage and then created a storefront design that would act upon their original ideas of design justice.

Moving forward, students began to collaborate with the Van Allen Institute based in Brooklyn, New York. The Van Allen Institute had been working with the community members of the Gowanus Houses, a New York City Housing Authority housing complex whose community center was being renovated without any consultation with residents to assess their needs or preferences.

Students worked with the Van Allen Institute as well as members of the community living in the Gowanus Houses. They developed design proposals that fit the ideas of programs those in the community would like to have within their buildings. Many of the residents in the building had a desire to make larger, flexible spaces to allow them to serve the changing interests of those living in the Gowanus Houses. Some of these interests included cooking, dance, youth activities, multigenerational activities, movie nights and performance spaces, among others.

With this information, the students looked further into the history of the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn to see how their design proposals for a community center could better serve those living there. Students Rene Franqui, Jaidon Ramirez and Richa Shukla investigated a topic called third spaces and their distance from the community center. Third spaces are known as the spaces where people spend their time between home and work. Common third spaces are coffee shops, shopping centers, barber shops, parks, museums, gyms, libraries and other environments where people feel safe and have a desire to visit. Many of the third spaces in the area were blocks away, stressing the importance of giving more third spaces back to those living in the Gowanus Houses.

The team worked towards creating a landscape with one proposal at different stages of development to help those living at the Gowanus Houses generate ideas for supportive spaces, countering their current lack of involvement in the community center’s renovation. Their proposal featured a library with computers, spaces of recluse and lounging, a kitchen for resident use, community gardens and sports fields, and areas for performance and arts.

With the proposals created by this team, and others developed in the studio, those living in the Gowanus Houses can now work with the Van Allen Institute to fight for design justice. They are able to utilize the proposals created in this as tools to communicate to the city features they need, want and deserve to better support their community. This helps to prevent the growth of the community which has been outpricing them within their own neighborhoods.

Section perspective with walls.