“I’d really come to peek at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, where each year a surprising volume and variety of wildlife gathers to enjoy an eccentric urban oasis.”
A mini series about how animals put human-built infrastructures to unanticipated uses.
A website made of stairs
“It’s become a ritual of sorts: drafting a list of ingredients, grabbing a canvas bag, driving the vehicle of my body along the same streets there and back, selecting my produce, paying, unloading my goodies, and packing them away at home.”
An installment in a Romantic Urbanism series
An artist book
“Forty years after its inauguration, there is still much to learn from a mold-breaking NYC playground that provided space for disabled kids to play alongside their non-disabled peers.
An essay about playgrounds
“Eighty years ago, the City attempted to counter that exclusivity through a theater guided by a public mission.”
An article about the making of municipal arts center in the 1940s
An online viewing room
“A toxic mix of sewage, trash, urban runoff, and chemical waste released indiscriminately by the factories located along the banks of the Bronx River has wreaked havoc on its ecology for over a century.”
All about a map
“The Women’s Mountain Bike and Tea Society wants to rub out the image of mountain biking as an extreme sport.”
An article about a feminist bike collective
“My grandmother, who is a potter, always insisted that she makes ceramic vessels, not art.”
A personal essay
“I have become a hoarder of dreams. Since high school, they’ve slowly piled up. They’re strewn across journals and loose slips of paper, and in the last few years stored on the Cloud, a nice place for dreams.”
A personal essay about grieving and dreaming.
“This short swimming season, mostly due to a shortage of lifeguard and security staff, leaves the pools and their grounds unused for more than two thirds of the year.”
Five ways to keep NYC's pools open year-round
Editorial illustrations
A website with a sunset cam
A circular music player
A book that spans the life of a pencil
A video made of cartoon screenshots
A website with an auto-generated pattern
“This story is already out of date: New changes have come to the blue-grey cast-iron building at the corner of Grand and Eldridge Street where our story begins. ”
An article proposing a new model for historic preservation
“The ghost of Annie’s brother was said to go into the pantry for a drink every night at 10 o’ clock.”
An article about a haunted house
A video in the style of a tarot deck
An video with animated emojis
“Budgets are moral documents.”
An interview about budget justive
“The parade offers a glimpse at what the neighborhood could be: a place where people are free to be themselves and celebrate who we are. A place where we can be familiar. A place where we can move and breathe.”
An article about a fish parade
A website with the color eigengrau
A magazine about hitchhiking
An artist book
Interviews with artists who do it for the love of it
A website that uncovers alt-text
A video in the style of a ransom note
“Parasite. noun. par·a·site ˈpar-ə-ˌsīt. : an organism living in, with, or on another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host.“
A class assignment about web extensions
“The way that elements and parts of a dream connect with each other is a complex problem, yet, like a language, there are rules and frameworks.”
A photo book
Teaching sites made with google docs
“Vladia Brooks kneads bread in the same spot that her father, Vladimir Nevl, kneaded bread for almost 50 years.”
An article about a Czech family restaurant
“Telling time, taking time, keeping time, time out, time to kill, time is money, time is on my side, race against the clock, ahead of time, a stitch in time, a hard time, buy time, big-time, and so on.”
A class assignment about keeping time
“Browsing the web, what you see can be described as a series of containers, some seen and some unseen.”
A class assignment about containers
An article about the MTA map
“One publishes to find comrades.”
A class assignment about publishing
A negative clock
A newspaper fold
“Create a microsite around an Earth Month event or event series.“
Class assignment using real-time data
“In the Bronx, a parks steward and activist takes on the campaign of a lifetime.”
An article about a campaign to cap the Cross Bronx Expressway
A series of one minute videos
A painting show
A series of artist interviews
“Each day, trucks arrive at the Soil Bank from 7 am until 1 pm, with the last truck no later than 1:30. The materials they deposit are delivered to a screener via front-end loader and sifted before they are homogeneous enough for reuse.”
An article about New York's soil
A magazine in the style of a manila folder
“When his family made fun of him for being lost in books, he would read in the closet.”
An obituary
“In any case, now is a moment to understand what exactly the city has lost with the closure of Hester Street, as well as how it came to be what it is, drawing out any lessons for others who might aspire to fill in the gap it’s leaving behind.”
An article about an influential nonprofit
“It’s illustrated in a topographic style, with the region seen from above and stretching out to the horizon. The artist even included the sky. . . that’s nice.”
A note from the editors about making a map of New York City
A series of digital billboards
“Some of our deepest and most intimate relationships are formed living with other people.”
An installment in a Romantic Urbanism series
“I ventured out into the sick world to take leave of the city and spend a week with my old friend Annie at her cabin on the North Fork of Long Island.”
An essay about dreaming and digestion
A video featuring Taylor Swift
“Just type the word ‘Chinatown’ into a Google image search and it will return pages of brightly colored Chinatown gates.”
An article about Manhattan’s Chinatown
A website about medieval animal trials
“Creating a space that appeals to locals and visitors is a balancing act. The New York that exists in the imagination of a tourist isn’t going to be the same as the many New Yorks 8.25 million residents know as their own.”
An article about the redevelopment of Rockefeller Center
Editorial illustrations
“When all the other mothers wore heels, stockings and hair spray, Esther would come to events with no stockings, no hairspray and no heels.”
An obituary
“It’s the year 2044, and New Yorkers are commemorating the tenth anniversary of the MAGA regime’s fall from national power.”
An installment of NY 2044, a newspaper from the future
“The litter box may have brought us physically closer to our feline companions, but that doesn’t mean we understand them any better than when they lived mostly outdoors.”
An essay about cat litter
“Advertisements are so prevalent in New York’s urban landscape that they almost disappear from view.”
An exegesis of New York's blank billboards
MFA thesis book
A video in the stye of a comic strip
“As tides and storms bring big changes to the cityscape, what landmass is most likely to become New York's next island?”
An article about New Yorks next island
An article seen through windows
A set of animated icons
“The original meaning of the word ‘comprehension’ is ‘to grasp, to seize something with the hands and hold it tight...’”
A class assignment about hands
“Over two decades of twists and turns and promises unmet, one journalist has been keeping a close eye on the saga of Atlantic Yards.”
An article about a development nightmare
“The Lower Manhattan skyline is an icon of glass and steel, global wealth and power. But just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, the profile turns to mountains of brick.”
An article about overcladding
A website about climate crisis
“The highest point in Central Park, Summit Rock once looked out over a thriving rural community. Established in 1825 by free Black New Yorkers seeking respite from the discrimination and bustle downtown, Seneca Village flourished.”
An article about a forgotten village
A video featuring FKA twigs
“Since acquiring a disability three years ago, I get around the city primarily using Access-A-Ride (AAR), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s paratransit service.”
An installment in a Romantic Urbanism series
“Behind the unassuming and conventional exteriors of public housing project buildings, behind the deferred maintenance and enduring stigma, there are apartment units with unique, enthralling, and expressive interiors.”
An article about a crowdsourced archive of family photos
A website that is also a rebus
“As an architecture student in the 1990s, I puzzled over my instructors’ and classmates’ reflexive dismissal of suburbs, suburban form, and, by extension, suburbanites.”
An article about suburbia
A text about fostering cats
@nytimes Instagram
A Site for Sore Eyes
An exhibition catalogue
“Starting with the New York Public Library Picture Collection and Digital Collections, build a collection of images with the theme of your choice.”
A class assignment engaging the NYPL image collection
A stereoscopic anthology
An article with a dancing lobster