In the coming decades, New York will confront the challenge of housing another million people in a built-up city with limited area for new construction. Aging infrastructure and environmental concerns pose additional impediments to growth. Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC addresses the need for housing, and targets eight other quality-of-life issues including open space, air and water quality, and contaminated sites. Public and private developers have also begun responding to, and even anticipating, these concerns with mixed-use, hybrid designs. +Housing focuses on eight current examples which illustrate this phenomenon: public uses combined with, and often financed by housing. The essential urban institutions – parks, schools, places of worship, museums, and hospitals – are being combined with residential developments, fusing diverse typologies and increasing density. This observation creates the rubric, [fill in the blank] + Housing. The phenomenon is observable at multiple scales, from infill Hybrid Buildings with condos sitting on top of a public space, to Transformed Blocks rebuilt and rearranged into places for living, performing and gathering, to New Neighborhoods that attempt to remediate and improve old sites, shaping parks, creating spaces for culture and childcare, adding new density.

+Housing helps keep the city affordable, accessible, sustainable, and architecturally ambitious. Projects that include cultural institutions, new schools, improved infrastructure, and green roofs are often built faster and more efficiently. That said, all pluses have their minuses, and this exhibition looks beyond the benefits of the +Housing formula, examining its potential impact on the look, economy and public life of New York City.

Exhibition Curator: Alexandra Lange

Exhibition Designer:Team ProAm

Champion: Studio Daniel Libeskind

Gallery Hours
Monday–Friday: 9:00am–8:00pm, Saturday: 11:00am–5:00pm, Sunday: CLOSED

Related Events

Wednesday, October 1, 2008, 6:00 — 8:00pm
Exhibition Opening

Saturday, October 11, 2008, 11:00 am — 5:00pm
Exhibition Symposium

Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 6:00 — 8:00pm
Panel Discussion

Center for Architecture