Crown Heights Participatory Urbanism

Urban designer and local resident Manuel Avila invites the community in this Brooklyn neighborhood to rethink and program a narrow strip of underutilized space.

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Crown Heights Participatory Urbanism is a nomadic research project by Manuel Avila, SUPERFRONT Brooklyn's 2011 Architect-in-Residence. An independent jury of New York architects and artists selected Avila's proposal from a pool of talented New York-based applicants.

The Crown Heights Participatory Urbanism project takes a landscape urbanism approach to rethink residual spaces adjacent spaces to the Franklin Avenue shuttle train towards a new public space network. The project is founded on the idea of creating a common ground for residents, business owners, governmental entities and local community organizations for more plural public spaces in the context of a diverse emergent community in the Crown Hill/Crown Heights neighborhood.

Participatory Urbanism Crown Heights / Northwest side on St. Marks Avenue. Above: Northwest side on St. Marks Avenue.

Manuel Avila is an urban designer and a resident of the the Crown Heights neighborhood since 2008. The Crown Heights Participatory Urbanism project takes a landscape urbanism approach to rethink residual spaces adjacent to the Franklin Avenue shuttle train. The project is founded on the idea of creating a common ground for residents, business owners, governmental entities and local community organizations to collaborate in the imagination of pluralistic public spaces, specifically within the Crow Hill/Crown Heights neighborhood.

Participatory Urbanism Crown Heights / Comments on notebook set at the Jewish Hospital Laundromat.

SUPERFRONT's Architect-in-Residence program supports emerging artists and architects from under-represented social demographics, especially LGBT women, and/or Black, Latino, Native American and/or Pacific Islander architects of any gender, in their development as artists or architects working with urban space. The Residency selects candidates from a juried selection process, based upon their written statement and portfolio of works. The program emphasizes experimental and interdisciplinary work within the context of contemporary architecture.

Participatory Urbanism Crown Heights / Northwest side on Prospect Place.

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