In April of 2024, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice (MOCEJ) published their Environmental Justice NYC (EJNYC) Report, which identifies and maps environmental inequity across the five boroughs. The report establishes Environmental Justice (EJ) Areas based on 45 indicators of environmental/climate risks in Disadvantaged Communities. According to MOCEJ, the study found that “67 percent of the population of historically redlined areas live in EJ areas today” and that EJ areas have higher exposure to polluted air and water, hazardous materials, and climate change related effects. Residents of EJ areas also have less access to safe and healthy housing, including cooling, leading to increased risk of heat-related illness.
Working in small teams, the studio researches, speculates, prototypes, tests, iterates and develops proposals for urban interventions in public spaces, addressing site-specific environmental and micro-climatic challenges in NYC neighborhoods. These small-scale interventions serve as case studies demonstrationing the potential of these material systems and how hey might be applied to other sites and to speculate on larger scale urban propositions, asking how might architectural/urban form come out of a direct response to energy flows and the invisible forces that contribute to human comfort, health, and community resilience?
—Darrick Borowski, AIA | Visiting Associate Professor