When all the other mothers wore heels, stockings and hair spray, Esther would come to events with no stockings, no hairspray and no heels.
All Projects
“The highest point in Central Park, Summit Rock once looked out over a thriving rural community. Established in 1825 by free Black New Yorkers seeking respite from the discrimination and bustle downtown, Seneca Village flourished.”
An article about a forgotten village
“I have become a hoarder of dreams. Since high school, they’ve slowly piled up. They’re strewn across journals and loose slips of paper, and in the last few years stored on the Cloud, a nice place for dreams.”
A personal essay about grieving and dreaming.
A newspaper fold
“Starting with the New York Public Library Picture Collection and Digital Collections, build a collection of images with the theme of your choice.”
A class assignment engaging the NYPL image collection
A website about climate crisis
Editorial illustrations
“Browsing the web, what you see can be described as a series of containers, some seen and some unseen.”
A class assignment about containers
“The parade offers a glimpse at what the neighborhood could be: a place where people are free to be themselves and celebrate who we are. A place where we can be familiar. A place where we can move and breathe.”
An article about a fish parade
A website that uncovers alt-text
“Since acquiring a disability three years ago, I get around the city primarily using Access-A-Ride (AAR), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s paratransit service.”
An installment in a Romantic Urbanism series
“Each day, trucks arrive at the Soil Bank from 7 am until 1 pm, with the last truck no later than 1:30. The materials they deposit are delivered to a screener via front-end loader and sifted before they are homogeneous enough for reuse.”
An article about New York's soil
“Create a microsite around an Earth Month event or event series.“
Class assignment using real-time data
“When all the other mothers wore heels, stockings and hair spray, Esther would come to events with no stockings, no hairspray and no heels.”
An obituary
A magazine about hitchhiking
A Site for Sore Eyes
“I’d really come to peek at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, where each year a surprising volume and variety of wildlife gathers to enjoy an eccentric urban oasis.”
A mini series about how animals put human-built infrastructures to unanticipated uses.
“The way that elements and parts of a dream connect with each other is a complex problem, yet, like a language, there are rules and frameworks.”
A photo book
“Telling time, taking time, keeping time, time out, time to kill, time is money, time is on my side, race against the clock, ahead of time, a stitch in time, a hard time, buy time, big-time, and so on.”
A class assignment about keeping time
A website with an auto-generated pattern
Editorial illustrations
An article seen through windows
“Advertisements are so prevalent in New York’s urban landscape that they almost disappear from view.”
An exegesis of New York's blank billboards
A website that is also a rebus
A text about fostering cats
A series of one minute videos
A negative clock
A video in the style of a tarot deck
A video made of cartoon screenshots
An artist book
“Just type the word ‘Chinatown’ into a Google image search and it will return pages of brightly colored Chinatown gates.”
An article about Manhattan’s Chinatown
“This story is already out of date: New changes have come to the blue-grey cast-iron building at the corner of Grand and Eldridge Street where our story begins. ”
An article proposing a new model for historic preservation
A video in the style of a ransom note
“One publishes to find comrades.”
A class assignment about publishing
“A toxic mix of sewage, trash, urban runoff, and chemical waste released indiscriminately by the factories located along the banks of the Bronx River has wreaked havoc on its ecology for over a century.”
All about a map
A video featuring Taylor Swift
“Eighty years ago, the City attempted to counter that exclusivity through a theater guided by a public mission.”
An article about the making of municipal arts center in the 1940s
“Vladia Brooks kneads bread in the same spot that her father, Vladimir Nevl, kneaded bread for almost 50 years.”
An article about a Czech family restaurant
“The original meaning of the word ‘comprehension’ is ‘to grasp, to seize something with the hands and hold it tight...’”
A class assignment about hands
An video with animated emojis
A magazine in the style of a manila folder
A video in the stye of a comic strip
A website with a sunset cam
“Some of our deepest and most intimate relationships are formed living with other people.”
An installment in a Romantic Urbanism series
An article with a dancing lobster
“My grandmother, who is a potter, always insisted that she makes ceramic vessels, not art.”
A personal essay
“[The boat begins to sway under the waves.]”
An article written on aboat
A circular music player
“Behind the unassuming and conventional exteriors of public housing project buildings, behind the deferred maintenance and enduring stigma, there are apartment units with unique, enthralling, and expressive interiors.”
An article about a crowdsourced archive of family photos
“Budgets are moral documents.”
An interview about budget justive
“It’s illustrated in a topographic style, with the region seen from above and stretching out to the horizon. The artist even included the sky. . . that’s nice.”
A note from the editors about making a map of New York City
“I ventured out into the sick world to take leave of the city and spend a week with my old friend Annie at her cabin on the North Fork of Long Island.”
An essay about dreaming and digestion
“Forty years after its inauguration, there is still much to learn from a mold-breaking NYC playground that provided space for disabled kids to play alongside their non-disabled peers.
An essay about playgrounds
An online viewing room
A book that spans the life of a pencil
An exhibition catalogue
“Parasite. noun. par·a·site ˈpar-ə-ˌsīt. : an organism living in, with, or on another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host.“
A class assignment about web extensions
“The litter box may have brought us physically closer to our feline companions, but that doesn’t mean we understand them any better than when they lived mostly outdoors.”
An essay about cat litter
“Creating a space that appeals to locals and visitors is a balancing act. The New York that exists in the imagination of a tourist isn’t going to be the same as the many New Yorks 8.25 million residents know as their own.”
An article about the redevelopment of Rockefeller Center
A video featuring FKA twigs
“It’s become a ritual of sorts: drafting a list of ingredients, grabbing a canvas bag, driving the vehicle of my body along the same streets there and back, selecting my produce, paying, unloading my goodies, and packing them away at home.”
An installment in a Romantic Urbanism series
An article about the MTA map
“It’s the year 2044, and New Yorkers are commemorating the tenth anniversary of the MAGA regime’s fall from national power.”
An installment of NY 2044, a newspaper from the future
“This short swimming season, mostly due to a shortage of lifeguard and security staff, leaves the pools and their grounds unused for more than two thirds of the year.”
Five ways to keep NYC's pools open year-round
A set of animated icons
A website about medieval animal trials
@nytimes Instagram
A series of digital billboards
Teaching sites made with google docs
An artist book