The NY Times critic gets off the sixth train to explore Adjaye Associates' first American K-12 project in Mott Haven, The Bronx. Kimmelman mentioned his two best-known New York projects – 130 William Street and Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development – in addition to  D.C’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for context and said its well-placed lightwells and other design features place a “premium on architecture [that] makes an obvious statement about the value of Dream’s students.”

He went on to add what seems like a heartfelt note on the tragic deaths of three immigrant construction workers on the site between 2019 and 2021. “I didn’t begin this column with that information because Assemblywoman Septimo is right," he wrote. "Stories about the South Bronx invariably start with trauma, casting the community as victim. For students, the new DREAM school is a place of hope and opportunity — a new chapter and good news for the neighborhood.”

It seems like a critic trying to justify a trade’s soft spot for reuse projects and role in social change, as he states, “In New York, we all live with ghosts.” But in the end, Kimmelman spins its completion as one of many rays of light changing the trajectory of a community all too often marred by tragedy.

For his part, Adjaye shared with Jennifer Diaz of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools: “The new DREAM Charter School at 20 Bruckner is an incredible opportunity to do something that all cities should be doing, which is radically reuse its industrial heritage or its past, and not to tear down buildings but to reimagine them as new pieces of infrastructure for new generations.”

In the Bronx, this is the latest in a string of high-profile new socially-oriented developments that includes projects from WYX, Alexander Gorlin, Dattner, and Snøhetta, along with Marvel’s forthcoming $26 million Bronx Museum of Arts overhaul and the new Universal Hip Hop Museum, which is expected to launch next year.