Tag: photography

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Newark Changing: Mapping neighborhood demolition, 1950s to today

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Newark Changing is an interactive visual encyclopedia featuring 2,400 photo comparisons from 1959-68 vs. today. The project illustrates the combined impacts of urban renewal, slum clearance, highway construction, and decades of demolition by neglect. Through a historic map, users can explore dozens of neighborhoods and thousands of demolished homes. This research highlights the devastation faced by communities due to decades of anti-urban policy decisions by the government and anti-black investment decisions by corporations.

Visit: NewarkChanging.org/map VIEW PUBLICATION

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Branch Brook Park Interactive History Map

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As featured by the Branch Brook Park Alliance as the official park map Navigate this interactive history map of Newark’s Branch Brook Park. Click on map features to learn about park amenities, recreational spaces, and historic features. Map annotations are paired with explanatory texts and comparative photos of past and present. Beneath each annotation is the Google Maps link that will display directions to that point in the park from wherever you are standing. All historic images are from the archives of the Essex County Parks Department and Newark Public Library. Browse their digital collections or contact the agency to… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Warren Street School Demolition

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As featured by Darren Tobia for Jersey DigsRead my analysis of campus architecture for some context on this demolition. “Those historians want to keep these old bricks. I can’t see why you’d want that s**t. F**k it. We might just slip in some new bricks. You can’t tell the difference anyway.” – Conversation overheard between demolition workers at the Warren Street School “The university has never demolished any historic building of any value. Name one.” – President of the university during a community meeting in October 2020 When walking past the historic Warren Street School in spring 2021, a demolition… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Bulldozer Urbanism

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As featured in: James Street Commons demolitions completed and proposed as of April 2021 Note: Visiting NJIT’s architecture school at age six and seeing students working there was what initially inspired my desire to study architecture. NJIT is an asset to Newark, and the school deserves the quality of campus architecture to match. I wrote and circulated this essay about NJIT’s under-performing campus design to members of NJIT and the Newark community. I am sharing it online, too, in the hope that future leaders of NJIT will collaborate with the community to create campus architecture that is culturally and historically… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Imagining a world after the coronavirus

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Co-created with the Architectural League of New York The converging and ongoing crises of COVID-19, climate change, radical economic inequality, pervasive racism, and racist violence require that all systems, infrastructures, and institutions, including architecture, space, and cities, be reimagined. This reimagining must include how and to what ends architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design can act in the world. This workshop, organized by The Architectural League of New York, brought architects, planners, and historians in conversation to listen to each other, identify critical issues, and develop ideas about what might and should be done. After the virus ends, millions will… VIEW PUBLICATION

Demolishing Public Space at New York Penn Station

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What does old Penn Station’s loss reflect about the evolution of public space in New York City? Written with Evander Price, recent PhD student in American Studies and chronocriticism at Harvard. Thanks also to Adam Brondheim for his insights about historic preservation in NYC. Download this essay as a PDF file The old waiting room, once the largest indoor public space in New York City, is now a parking lot. Demolition crews began hacking away at the limestone walls, stone eagles, and thirty-foot tall Doric columns of old New York Penn Station in October 1963. In a construction industry where… VIEW PUBLICATION

Excavating Old New York Penn Station

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This historical essay and narrated film comparison of past vs. present explores the historical significance and transformation of Pennsylvania Station in New York City. Originally a grand architectural masterpiece from 1910 that embodied neoclassical design and values, the station was demolished in the 1960s, in order to build a modern structure that lacks its predecessor’s grandeur. This shift reflects both economic decisions and the ongoing struggle between community and capital to shape the future of New York City’s public spaces. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Tour of desolate NYC during Coronavirus

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This NYC tour follows the route of Kenneth T. Jackson’s night tour. As a Columbia University undergraduate, I joined Jackson’s 2016 night tour of NYC by bike, from Harlem, down the spine of Manhattan, and over the bridge to Brooklyn. With a heavy heart, I gathered my courage on 30 March 2020 to revisit my beloved NYC, along this same route in the now sleeping city attacked by an invisible pathogen. The empty streets hit me with emotions in the misty and rainy weather – perhaps fitting for the city’s low morale. The tour route is drawn below.  View this… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Computer models of world heritage sites

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Through digital models, architecture’s audience can expand beyond in-person visitors. Here are a few of my creations that can be explored in virtual reality. The need for models to load in the web browser imposes a creative limit on file size and numbers of polygons and textures model can contain. Too many textures or too much geometry and a model will not load. This process therefore requires me to be economical and to get the most amount of detail with the least amount of file size. All models featured below are about the size of a word document or email… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Columbia University Artwork

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This digital portfolio highlights various artistic projects, time-lapse drawings, and models I created of Columbia University’s campus, during the time I was a student there. The portfolio features a detailed ink and watercolor campus drawing, a mini model of the campus made from paper, and six time-lapse sequences documenting artistic processes. Featured in multiple publications, these creations are now a personal souvenir of my education at Columbia.

Contact me to download source files or to order custom prints mailed to your home address. VIEW PUBLICATION

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New York Chinatown: time-lapse drawing

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This time-lapse of Manhattan Chinatown took sixty hours to complete and measures 26 by 40 inches. The artwork features Chinatown’s tenements in the foreground, with Lower Manhattan’s skyscrapers towering above. This panoramic map depicts Chinatown’s urban core, as bounded by Bowery, Canal Street, and Columbus Park.

Drawing is shared online in lower resolution. Email me for the full-size file. Custom size prints will be mailed to your home address on request. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Newark Metamorphosis

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This digital exhibition originally displayed at the Newark Public Library uses postcard comparisons of past vs. present to showcase Newark’s architectural evolution from 1916 to today. The project highlights the loss of cultural heritage due to urban renewal and demographic change. The resulting interactive map presents 150 comparative views, which illustrate the progressive loss of human-scale small structures that were central to the city’s now vanished identity and neighborhoods. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Model of Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn

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A wind-up music box featuring Jane’s Carousel along the Brooklyn Waterfront. When closed, the antique cigar box measures a mere 7 by 7 inches and 3 inches deep. When opened, the Brooklyn Bridge and historic Jane’s Carousel fold out. The carousel spins to the tune of the music while the moon slides across the night sky. Materials: $4 cigar box, $5 wind-up music box, electrical wire (for trees), plastic lids for wheels, string, tape measure, tin foil, and thick paper VIEW PUBLICATION

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Walking in Manhattan

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This project features a portfolio gallery of my drawings, watercolors, paintings, and photographs of Manhattan island. The portfolio is divided into ten “walks” over the chapter structure of ten “days.” Each “day” features some of my artwork about a different neighborhood of Manhattan: Chinatown, SoHo, East Village, West Village, the High Line, Madison Square, Midtown, Central Park, Riverside Drive, Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Washington Heights. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Murphy Varnish Lofts in Newark

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Murphy Varnish, built in 1886, is one of Newark’s oldest factories still standing. Its brick walls, terracotta ornament, and intricate brickwork reflect a time when industrial structures were more than just functional. Murphy Varnish reflects a time when industry was central to Newark’s wealth and key to its future success. It is a monument to industry, built to last (and landmarked since 1979 by the National Park Service). Recent renovation efforts promise to turn this derelict structure into a community of apartments. The summer after my first year at Columbia University, I had the privilege of working with the Studio… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Say no to Edison ParkFast!

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Newark’s parking and land use crisis Edison ParkFast, among several Newark institutions such as Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, engaged in the systematic destruction of our city’s heritage. In the James Street Commons Historic District, for instance, Edison ParkFast and Rutgers are the single largest contributors to demolition of historic properties from 1978 to the present. Both demolished dozens of historic Newark homes and factories. As Edison ParkFast continues to consolidate its properties into ever larger parcels, the question arises: How will this entity develop this land? Will future development respect old Newark and our history? Too… VIEW PUBLICATION

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The Vanishing City of Newark

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Vanishing City is a visual documentary about architecture and redevelopment in Newark. I am witness to the poetic decay of my city’s cultural heritage. An abandoned barge sinks in murky waters.  A former factory tumbles before the wrecking ball.  A sea of weeds lays siege to a vacant home. An empty lot is a gaping hole, a missing tooth, in the urban body. As a wall crumbles to the ground, a tree, anchored to the wall, reaches for the sky. While my city’s industrial past succumbs to demolition, new buildings grow from old lots. Behind this slow decay, there is… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Pictures of Newark

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. As a lifelong citizen of Newark, I spent much of the past few years painting and photographing my changing city. Pictures features a selection of my work, complemented by classical music. Five of Modest Mussorgsky’s pieces from his composition Pictures at an Exhibition are selected, each of which represents the feel of a certain part of Newark. The following five locations are featured: 1. THE PASSAIC RIVER – music: Mussorgsky’s Promenade 2. OLD ESSEX COUNTY JAIL – music: With the Dead in the Language of Death 3. MOUNT PLEASANT CEMETERY – music: Promenade 4. DOWNTOWN NEWARK – music: Mozart’s… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Mount Pleasant Cemetery

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Mount Pleasant was the resting place of Newark’s leading industrialists, politicians, and first families. Opened in 1844 and landmarked in 1988, it fell into neglect as Newark’s wealth flowed away to foreign factories and Newark’s people fled to suburbia. It is now a tranquil spot in a hectic city. Cars may speed by on the nearby interstate and the surrounding neighborhood may shrink or grow, but this city of the dead moves at a slower pace. The cemetery stones crumble and weather with rain, its trees grow larger, and its grass taller. Names carved in stone are just as susceptible… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Renaissance City

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Growing up in Newark, I was inspired and saddened by my inner-city environment: I am inspired by Newark’s hope of renewal after decades of white flight, under-investment, and urban neglect. I am saddened by the loss of my city’s historic architecture and urban fabric to the wrecking ball of ostensible progress. My Renaissance City photo and art series depicts the Newark of my childhood with garish signage and decayed structures blanketing my city’s architecture in a medley of color and consumerism. Click here to see a film featuring more of my Newark-based artwork. Urban decay in Newark to the tune… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Neon Night

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Cities of consumerism and spending, wherever they are, realize the human desire for energy and movement. Neon Night is a triptych representation of urban life. Each image of city lights is the accidental result of sudden camera movement during the long shutter speed required for night photography. Left to right: lights from Newark, Detroit (Fox Theater marquee), and Santander (Spain) VIEW PUBLICATION

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Reflection on Walking in New York City

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Dedicated to Professor Brendan O’Flaherty for helping me apply to Columbia as an undergraduate. The following video lecture contains paintings and photos I compiled while walking in New York. Learn more about my New York walks in this collection of photos and drawings. They are organized into ten urban walks, with each day in a different Manhattan neighborhood. Strolling in New York City is a world tour. The street fairs of Spanish Harlem mesh into college town Columbia. Columbia gives way to the shabby chic of Harlem. A few blocks farther and I am drowned by the tourists of Times… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Love and Longing in New York

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Selected from undergraduate college application essay to Columbia University. Read more. Walking is my form of enlightenment. I live in Newark.  My city is generally ten degrees hotter than its neighboring environment.  The airport.  The port.  The downtown.  All are blanketed in asphalt that turns my city into a hot desert. Tens of thousands of cars, and one of the largest garbage incinerators in the country, spew their fumes into my city.  Returning home, the smell of burning garbage often greets me.  As a child, I had asthma. At night, I am alone.  Nobody my age lives in my neighborhood…. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Chinatown: a living neighborhood

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View more artwork like this about my experiences walking in New York City. . . Chinatown is both static and dynamic: Static in its resilience against gentrification, dynamic in its cultural interplay between past and present, immigrant and American. Everywhere in Chinatown, past and present intermingle. Dusty and decrepit Jewish textile stores struggle onward; their elderly owners wait to close up shop and sell out for millions to developers. By Division Street rests a former synagogue with an AT&T outlet on one side and a Chinese-language job agency on the other. Bustling bakeries and bodegas abut reminders of past immigration…. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Windmobiles

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This series explores movement. These sculptures made of paper, wire, and wood are powered by the wind. When placed before a light breeze, the pinwheels spin and power the sculptures’ cyclical movements. The bird will soar. The horseman will charge forward, lance at the ready. Each sculpture evokes the theme of movement. Pinwheel is the simplest in this series. A light breeze spins a three-pronged pinwheel, which vibrates a wire. The following sculptures are variations on this mechanism. In Ocean Voyage, the pinwheel rocks a sailing boat. Wind movement translates into wave movement. Liberty symbolizes the search for freedom. The… VIEW PUBLICATION