The memory of one up-and-coming New York architect is being honored through a donation drive benefitting one of the firms he most admired, Oakland-based Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS). 

Eric Salitsky was killed in Brooklyn on May 5th after being struck by a sanitation vehicle while on his bicycle. A native of Massachusetts, Salitsky studied for his master’s at the Pratt Institute before joining ESKW/Architects, where he continued to make a name for himself in the design and documentation of multifaith community spaces he pursued in the years following his graduation. Salitsky’s work eventually earned him an AIA Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant and curated exhibition in 2019, and he was scheduled to deliver a presentation on the subject at the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ASCF) on June 4th.

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His noted penchant for equity and shared personal drive to foster a more just world through design brought him into contact with DJDS, which he described in a 2020 email to a friend as being worthy of “tzedakah,” the Hebrew term for charitable giving, according to J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Their common interests surrounding the need for dialogue between communities were noted by DJDS’s Garrett Jacobs, who lamented his one-time roommate’s absence from the community. 

“I really could have used a thought partner in the intersection of Judaism, spirituality and spaces that brings people together and helps resolve conflict,” he said. “There’s not many of us at that intersection.”

“When most people walk into a space, they see it for what it is. Eric saw it differently. He saw it for what it could be. He believed that spaces had the power to affect our emotions, our spiritual lives, our ability to connect. And now the man who wanted to build Shuls and churches and mosques and schools and maybe all at once has been taken from the world, and I feel spaceless,” his Rabbi Jeremy Borovitz remembered finally. “Eric made people feel warm and loved. He had a quality about him that made you comfortable in his presence. He was so open with the world and to the world. He was compassionate and kind. He knew how to listen.”