Modeling Community Visions for a Future Without the BQE Workshop
Tuesday, September 30
Community Board 7
6:00pm-7:30pm
4201 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11232
(Entrance on 43rd Street)
Sign-up via email: SBADI@fifthave.org or register to attend virtually on Zoom: https://bit.ly/3IgzW2H
︎︎︎ Modeling Community Visions ︎︎︎ BQE2053
Modeling Community Visions for a Future Without the BQE is a series of free and open to the public community design workshops where Brooklyn residents reimagine their neighborhoods in a vibrant post-BQE future. The divisive and polluting BQE, built by Robert Moses over seventy years ago, is falling apart. With the City’s recent federal funding appeal for repairs denied, local community groups have amplified their call for a holistic rethinking of the entire BQE corridor. To support that effort, IPA Fellows Marcus Wilford and Severn Clay-Youman, with IPA Research Assistant Jennifer Pham, developed large-scale detailed physical models of neighborhoods adjacent to the BQE. The models, with a removable kit of parts including buildings, landscapes, and alternatives to the highway, are modified by workshop participants, with their proposals documented and then shared with local leaders and elected officials. Workshops include presentations by architect Adam Paul Susaneck, founder of Segregation by Design, featuring specific buildings, civic spaces, and social groups in the neighborhood that were destroyed by the construction of the highway.
Since 2020, IPA has highlighted the institutional segregation and environmental impacts created by the highway and helped raise awareness of the historical exclusion of underresourced communities in decision-making about their physical space. Modeling Community Visions for a Future Without the BQE is the crucial next step in reimagining the BQE, with communities deciding what should take place in the threshold between vibrant existing neighborhoods and a re-imagined highway.
The project is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture & Design; and private donations.
Model Fabrication: We are very grateful for the generous participation of New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture & Design. Special thanks to Dean Maria Perbellini; Associate Dean for Academic Operations Giovanni Santamaria; Director of Digital Technologies & Fabrication Brian Polgar; Fabrication Lab Staff Ana Finkelstein, Clare Ronan, and Elijah Williams; and NYIT students Rayhaan Albuquerque, Devam Desai, Anjali Patel, Monica Pena, and Finley Richard for their support.
Since 2020, IPA has highlighted the institutional segregation and environmental impacts created by the highway and helped raise awareness of the historical exclusion of underresourced communities in decision-making about their physical space. Modeling Community Visions for a Future Without the BQE is the crucial next step in reimagining the BQE, with communities deciding what should take place in the threshold between vibrant existing neighborhoods and a re-imagined highway.
The project is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture & Design; and private donations.
Model Fabrication: We are very grateful for the generous participation of New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture & Design. Special thanks to Dean Maria Perbellini; Associate Dean for Academic Operations Giovanni Santamaria; Director of Digital Technologies & Fabrication Brian Polgar; Fabrication Lab Staff Ana Finkelstein, Clare Ronan, and Elijah Williams; and NYIT students Rayhaan Albuquerque, Devam Desai, Anjali Patel, Monica Pena, and Finley Richard for their support.
