Archinect - News

NYC’s housing chief resigns amid concurrent homelessness and affordability crises

2023-05-24T17:50:00-04:00

New York City’s Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz is set to leave her post in the Adams administration by early July, she told Gothamist, leaving open a critical role tasked with overseeing the city’s response to its growing housing and homelessness crises.

Katz told Gothamist the job was both “frustrating” and a “real sprint.” She is credited with overseeing the beginnings of New York Mayor Eric Adams’ first housing plan as well as streamlining several key projects involving supportive and transitional housing during her 16-month tenure.

The city’s shelter system swelled considerably in 2022 while an influx of newly arrived migrants complicated efforts to provide beds for those most in need. This came at a time when rents across the city have soared past pre-pandemic record highs in nearly every borough. New Yorkers are currently experiencing homelessness at a rate of 1 per every 120 persons, according to The Bowery Mission.

The Mayor's office has yet to name a replacement for the position.

CannonDesign is pitching in to help acclimate migrants to NYC

2023-05-15T14:52:00-04:00

A new project from CannonDesign aimed at helping migrants who were relocated to Brooklyn’s Red Hook Cruise Terminal in the past year is providing hope to advocates for inclusive design as the city grapples with a vexing crisis that’s only expected to grow with the end of Title 42.

The project was initiated by Blue Cottage of CannonDesign team member Kimberly Silver, a resident of Red Hook, who, in reaction to Councilwoman Gale Brewer’s charge to do more, worked with fellow CannonDesign staffers Steffany Brady, Dylan Coonrad, and Abbey Furlow to strategize a set of wayfinding design solutions that can help better orient them to the neighborhood and city. Together, they say three core “functions” can be achieved as a result of the project.

Using Silver’s observations of the area, TRANSIT activates street surfaces and other barriers surrounding the terminal with clear trail marker-like visual wayfinding directions to the subway and nearby bus stations.

Image courtesy CannonDesign

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MAD Architects to help transform the historic Fenix warehouse in Rotterdam into a landmark for migrants

2018-11-27T09:27:00-05:00

Once the largest warehouse in the world, the Fenix building and its surrounding riverbanks in Rotterdam saw millions of European migrants leave from its embarkments. Bought this year by the arts organization Droom en Daad Foundation, the building will soon undergo a historic renovation that seeks to honor this legacy.

Today, the former Holland American Line facility houses a number of arts groups, galleries, and, an organic food court. While the ground floor will continue to host restaurants, shops and galleries—some of which will remain its current occupants—the top floor will become devoted to exhibitions that commemorate the journeys of millions of migrants, both past and present.

Concept sketch. Courtesy of MAD Architects.

It won't be a museum, insists the Foundation's leader Wim Pijbes. He told the New York Times in April that he wants to find a word "that has a kind of hybrid function, a place, a platform, an agora." As an example of what might be on display, Pijbes revealed th...

Trump considers tent cities to house unaccompanied migrant children

2018-06-13T19:29:00-04:00

The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention. The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children...

Over 11,200 migrant children are held without a parent or guardian by The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS who oversees around 100 shelters. As these shelters fill up with children separated from their parents, the Trump administration considers building tent cities to accommodate this rapidly increasing population who await processing.

Ruimteveldwerk maps 'modes of movement' for asylum seekers in Oslo

2016-09-13T18:30:00-04:00

According to estimates by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, up to 60,000 people will seek asylum in Norway this year alone, most of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these newly-arrived people have little knowledge of where to go to find basic resources, not to mention where to make friends. How do you spread information among a constantly changing group of people who don’t have either the visibility or the vocality of the rest of a city’s population?

For Modes of Movement, one of the 2016 Oslo Triennale commissioned ‘intervention strategies’, the Belgian collective Ruimteveldwerk met with asylum seekers in Oslo to gather information and anecdotes about places they found useful or appealing. They then converted their findings into a city guide, which delineates fundamental resources like medical centers and shelters, alongside places where asylum seekers can simply meet one another and share stories and experiences.

Like the rest of the intervention strategies in ...

Germany announces new integration measures for migrants and refugees

2016-04-14T13:07:00-04:00

Germany has announced new legal measures requiring migrants and refugees to integrate into society in return for being allowed to live and work in the country. Under the coalition government’s measures, announced on Thursday morning, asylum seekers face cuts to support if they reject mandatory integration measures such as language classes or lessons in German laws or cultural basics.

"According to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the aim of Germany’s first ever integration law is to make it easier for asylum seekers to gain access to the German labour market, with the government promising 100,000 new 'working opportunities', expected to include low-paid workfare jobs."

For more on the refugee crisis currently engulfing Europe and the Middle East, take a look at these past articles: