We are excited to be featured in @urbanomnibus this month in Designing Mamdani’s New York, a roundtable examining the role of architecture and design in shaping a more equitable, people-centered city.
The piece brings together NYC–based architects engaged in public and civic work to consider how design can meaningfully contribute to policy goals around housing, infrastructure, climate resilience, and the public realm.
Our Principle, Deborah, discusses the importance of inter-agency collaboration, capacity building, and early design engagement in realizing durable, community-focused outcomes — situating architecture as an active participant in shaping civic outcomes rather than a downstream response to policy.
Jared Rocks! Literally and figuratively.
All it took was for Jared, our amazing project manager to take some rocks he collected on the building site out of his pocket to attract a group of eager young geologists at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Thanks to the Architectural League, @archleague , for hosting us at this event!
We can’t wait for them to see a few of the big glacial erratics we found that Nancy Owens Studio, our Landscape architects, will help us place in our garden courtyard. It’s coming along! @nancyowensstudio
We are excited to be among this year’s cohort of Taconic Fellows!
Each school year, @prattinstitute Center awards seed grants to Pratt Institute faculty, staff, and students working in close partnership with community-based organizations throughout New York City.
This project builds on years of collaboration with local partners to support the Jewel Streets community, one of New York City’s most climate-vulnerable areas facing chronic flooding and heat exposure. Faculty and students have worked with residents to document environmental systems, develop soft infrastructure and housing strategies, and advance city engagement on new sewer and blueway initiatives.
The next phase will design a resilient mixed-use plan for a 17-acre site, creating affordable housing, refuge spaces, and water-management landscapes—serving as a pilot for climate-driven relocation that preserves community heritage.
Neighborhood residents get a deserved, starring role on the construction fence at our future home in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
We are proud to feature the photography of local talent and youth, created in collaboration with seniors at the Red Hook Senior Center during a six-week photography course with RHAP – the Red Hook Art Project.
“Portraits of Resilience” was first exhibited at Photoville in DUMBO and has now found a new home here. Come visit, see the portraits, and scan the QR codes to read their stories! @redhookartproject
We are excited to share that the IDC Foundation has awarded a second $1 million grant to Pratt’s Research Accelerator Hub. Within the Hub, the Housing Futures Lab — led by Professors Lawrence Blough and our Principal, Deborah Gans — continues to push the boundaries of housing innovation.
Early support from the IDC Foundation helped fuel the Lab’s development, and the team recently received an additional grant from PennPraxis to author a case study on Church Grove, a groundbreaking self-built housing project on a community land trust in London.
The Coney Island Houses and Coney Island I (Site 1B)—commonly referred to as Unity Towers—are the next NYCHA developments empowering tenants to shape the future of their homes.
According to NYCHA, the Coney Island Houses require an estimated $110 million in critical capital repairs, while Unity Towers faces $42 million in necessary upgrades. These funds are essential to address longstanding infrastructure issues, modernize living conditions, and enhance the overall quality of life for residents.
To ensure that resident voices are at the center of this process, the Gans & Co team has been entrusted with gathering community input, identifying top priorities, and facilitating transparent discussions around the improvements. Our role is to bridge the gap between residents and decision-makers, ensuring that the selected solutions align with the community’s most pressing needs and desires for their homes.
Exciting progress at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum! The backhoes at the groundbreaking weren’t just for show—work is well underway, and the excavation and challenge of the pit is now fully exposed.
Eventually, it will transform into a lush landscape of walls, paths, terraces, and abundant and varied greenery, like the renders shown here, designed in collaboration with Nancy Owens Studio.
We were so excited to break ground on @bcmkids ’ garden renovation project last week - and so is Brooklyn! (Featuring @corey.arena and @jaredrice from the Gans and Co Museum team. Not pictured: @nancyowensstudio , the landscape architects, without whom this project wouldn’t be possible)
This project, undertaken in partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Design and Construction, addresses critical infrastructure needs while enhancing the Museum’s outdoor spaces, creating 20,000 square feet of accessible, outdoor space devoted to earth science programs, gardens and play for young people and their families from across Brooklyn and all five boroughs.
The Hole neighborhood in Brooklyn is named for its elevation far below the surrounding streets and also the massive pools that collect there in the absence of a city sewer. Some Resident keep rafts and kyacks outside their homes to navigate through water on stormy days.
We are supporting the work of Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation and the East New York Community Land trust to reimagine the neighborhood as City blue zone where the historical stream, brought back to life, manages water in concert with a new sewer system.
Oh, to be a Prospect Park dog, chasing and reuniting with a rogue pack of heart balloons in a blizzard. 🎈❤️
Love affairs come in all shapes and sizes. Happy Valentine’s Day!
We are excited to share the recent @artforum piece on our friend and collaborator Marjorie Welish, estimable painter and poet.
It’s an honor to have our design sketches for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum garden court serve as inspiration for her new series, Meander Collab.
Welish translates garden path in the language of painted stroke, masking and barrier tape, addressing conditions of prohibition and permission unravelling and remaking. Read the full piece on Art Forum!
We are excited to be partnering with @thelirogroup on the renovation of the public rooms of Sunwood Mansion, the residence of the President of SUNY Stony Brook.
The building has a rich history- originally designed by Katherine Budd at the time of the first World War in a modified Shingle Style. Alas it burned to the ground in 2002 but has been rebuilt on the same foot print. The design challenge is to enhance the historic character of the house in new ways that support contemporary public functions.
Swipe ➡️ to see the original house become its current avatar over 100 years.
