Karen A. Franck

New Jersey Institute of Technology | NJIT

In 1961, New York City’s Department of City Planning adopted a bonus incentive programme, allowing developers to build larger buildings if they provided public space. Via a series of zoning amendments, changes to the programme have resulted in a series of changes in the design and use of the spaces. Information for the article was drawn from: archi...

In 1956 Lincoln Center became the centrepiece of a large urban renewal project in New York City. In its original design, this cultural complex resembled a fortress, being disconnected from the surrounding neighbourhood and offering people few reasons to spend time in its spacious outdoor public space. In the 2000s, its site plan was changed, making...

As a result of deindustrialization, many urban neighborhoods in the US continue to face challenges posed by underutilized and abandoned properties. The adaptive reuse of these sites for food production is one way of addressing these challenges. This article presents six such cases, in the form of farming and artisanal food production, in post-indus...

In recent decades, counter-monuments have emerged as a new, critical mode of commemorative practice. Even as such practice defines itself by its opposition to traditional monumentality, it has helped to reinvigorate public and professional interest in commemorative activities and landscapes and has developed its own, new conventions. Terminology an...

Poster presented at the International Making Cities Livable Conference in Ottawa, Canada.

In US cities ‘privately owned public spaces’ (POPS) are spaces, indoors or outdoors, that are owned and managed by the private sector and by law are accessible to the public without payment. In exchange for providing these ‘bonus’ spaces, developers are permitted to build larger buildings than would otherwise be permitted under local zoning ordinan...

[Citation: K.A. Franck, Memorials Behind the One We See: The Story of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. In R.C. Aden, (Ed) US Public Memory, Rhetoric and the National Mall, Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2018]

Karsten Harries, Howard H Newman Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, has written one of the most influential essays reflecting on the relationship between time and architecture, ‘Building and the Terror of Time’ (1982). For Harries, architecture is a means of resisting mortality and coping with the fear of human transience. In order to reas...

Nancy Wolf; Prisoner to a Grid; Leon Battista Alberti; Jill Stoner; Federica Goffi; Pennsylvania Station; Cooper Union; Tom Mayne; Pruitt-Igoe housing project; St Louis; Mies van der Rohe; German Pavilion; Barcelona; International Exposition; St Peter's Basilica; Vatican; Eric Parry; Diller, Scofidio + Renfro; Alice Tully Hall; Julliard School; McK...

In Memorials as Spaces of Engagement Quentin Stevens and Karen A. Franck explore how changes in memorial design and use have helped forge closer, richer relationships between commemorative sites and their visitors. The authors combine first hand analysis of key cases with material drawn from existing scholarship. Examples from the US, Canada, Austr...

[Citation: K. A. Franck, Museums of Memory: Remarkable Missions, Daunting Challenges. In Architecture, Memory and Reconciliation: International Public Competition of Architectural Preliminary Designs for the National Museum of Memory, Bogota, Colombia: National Center for Historical Memory, 2016]

[Citation: K.A. Franck and P. Speranza, Food, Time and Space: Mobile Cuisine in New York and Portland. In. M. Lozanovska (Ed) Ethno-architecture and the Politics of Migration, Routledge, 2016]

[Citation: K.A. Franck, As Prop and Symbol: Engaging with Works of Art in Public Space. In J. Lossau and Q. Stevens (Eds) The Uses of Art in Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2015]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. The Words We Choose: Revisiting “Environment” and “Behavior.” In G. Lindsay and L. Morhayim, Eds, Revisiting Social Factors: Advancing Research into People and Place. New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015]

[Citation: K.A. Franck and P. Speranza. Remembering Those Who Did Not Come Home: Challenges of Designing September 11 Memorials in New Jersey. In R. Faruzzi and M. Wolfe (Eds) Recovering 9/11 in New York. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014]

[Citation: K.A. Franck, Security in Support of Safety and Community: Thoughts from New York. In M. Schuilenburg, R. van Steden and B. Oude Breuil (Eds) Positive Criminology: Reflections on Care, Belonging and Security. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2014]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Isn’t all Public Space Terrain Vague? In. P. Barron and M. Mariani (Eds) Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale, New York: Routledge, 2013]

In recent decades, counter-monuments have emerged as a new, critical mode of commemorative practice. Even as such practice defines itself by its opposition to traditional monumentality, it has helped to reinvigorate public and professional interest in commemorative activities and landscapes and has developed its own, new conventions. Terminology an...

Where Eating Healthy is Not an Option: Newark’s South Ward In discussions of the importance of bike paths, parks and plazas, we may overlook more basic requirements for healthy communities. One is the accessibility to healthy, affordable food. This is a requirement that a surprising number of inner city neighborhoods in the US fail to meet. Follow...

[Citation: K.A. Franck and T. Huang. Occupying Public Space: From Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park. In R. Schiffman et al (Eds) Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space. Oakland, CA: New Village Press, 2012]

Two types of urban social experience are distinguished: contacts with friends and contacts with strangers. Traditional theories of urban life have concentrated on contacts with strangers, which for the most part are impersonal. This has led to the popular view that urban residents are socially isolated even though much of the available evidence on...

Completed projects receive more public attention than the processof their creation and so the myth that architects design buildingsalone lives on. In fact, architects work with a great many othersand the relationships that develop, particularly with clients, havea significant impact on design. Design through Dialogueexplores the relationship betwee...

Findings and speculations about the effects of physical design on social behavior in planned residential settings have accumulated without the benefit of any explicit theoretical models (Newman, 1972, 1973; Cooper, Day, and Levine, 1972; Cooper, 1975). Recent research about urban neighborhoods has included the formulation and estimation of models o...

Introducing a basis for design that transcends fixed notions ofstyle and emerging technologies, this book emphasizes feeling,moving and the experiential. Since the book's initial publicationin 2000, architects and writers have been drawn to a more sensoryapproach to architecture. But there is still a need to encourageand to illustrate the pursuit o...

[Citation: K.A. Franck and L. Paxson. Transforming public space into sites of mourning and free expression. In K. A. Franck and Q. Stevens (Eds) Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Public Life. London: Routledge, 2007]

In cities around the world people use a variety of public spaces to relax, to protest, to buy and sell, to experiment and to celebrate. Loose Space explores the many ways that urban residents, with creativity and determination, appropriate public space to meet their own needs and desires. Familiar or unexpected, spontaneous or planned, momentary or...

Food has been sold on the street ever since people have lived in town settlements. Encouraging social exchange and interaction, the public consumption of food brings vitality and conviviality to urban life. In recent years, the sale of food in upmarket cafés and speciality shops has intensified, becoming a tool of urban regeneration. Here, Karen A....

KAREN A FRANCK notes that the luxury of eating and food shopping in slick new spaces often comes at the cost of losing more ethnically diverse small businesses. When we focus on this aspect of food and the city, though, we may lose sight of food in all its diversity - as grown as well as consumed, as available or not available to those in poorer ne...

Amid the chaotic frenzy of Hong Kong emerges an architectural voice of calm Karen A Franck encounters the work of Denise Ho, an architect who distinguishes herself through her quest for harmony and her careful consideration of her clients' needs. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Women and Environment. In R. Bechtel and A. Churchman (Eds) Handbook of Environmental Psychology. New York: Wiley, 2002, 347-362]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. The Space of Food. In K.A. Franck, ed. Food + Architecture. London: Wiley, 2002, 5-13]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Yes, We Wear Buildings, Architectural Design 2000, 70, 6: 94-97 (Invited, reviewed by editor)]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. It and I: Bodies as Objects, Bodies as Subjects. In Architectural Design, 1998, 68, pp. 16-19 (Invited and reviewed by editor)]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Imagining as a Way of Knowing: Some reasons for teaching “Architecture for Utopia,” Utopian Studies, 1998, 9, 1:120-141. (Invited, reviewed by editor)]

Public housing in the US has undergone significant changes in site design and building type over the course of its 60 yr history. These changes fall into three distinct stages: semi-enclosed courts formed by walk-up buildings; expanses of open space in sites composed of row-house, walk-up, or elevator buildings; and most recently private outdoor sp...

[Citation: K.A. Franck. When I Enter Virtual Reality, What Body will I leave Behind? Architectural Design, Profile, 1995, No. 118 20-23 (Invited, review by editor)]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Questioning the American dream: Recent housing innovations in the U.S. In R. Woods and R. Gilroy (Eds) Housing Women. London: Routledge, 1994: 226-246]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Types are us. In K.A. Franck and L.S. Schneekloth (Eds) Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994: 345-370]

[Citation: Schneekloth, L.H. and K.A. Franck. Types: Prison or promise. In K.A. Franck and L.H. Schneekloth (Eds) Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994: 15-38]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. The meaning and use of housing: Overlooked populations. In E.G. Arias (Ed) The Meaning and Use of Housing. Aldershot, England: Avebury, 1993: 445-455]

The new and growing field of women and environments has focused almost exclusively on women’s activities and needs in the home and the adjacent neighborhood with little research on women’s use of urban public spaces.1 The exceptions are studies of specific problems including crime and fear of crime (Gordon, Riger, LeBailly, & Heath, 1981), transpor...

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Overview of single room occupancy housing. In K.A. Franck and S. Ahrentzen (Eds) New Households, New Housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989: 308-330]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. The single room occupancy hotel: A rediscovered housing type for single people. In K.A. Franck and S. Ahrentzen (Eds) New Households, New Housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Overview of shared and collective housing. In K.A. Franck and S. Ahrentzen (Eds) New Households, New Housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989: 3-19]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Shared spaces, small spaces and spaces that change. In W. Van Vliet, et al. (Eds) Housing and Neighborhoods (Eds) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1987: 157-172]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Women's housing and neighborhood needs. In W. Van Vliet and E. Huttman (Eds.) Handbook of Housing in the United States. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987: 285-300]

[Citation: K.A. Franck. Social construction of the physical environment: The case of gender. Sociological Focus (1985) April: 143-160]

The objective of this article is to clarify the major weaknesses of the physical determinist perspective, to understand how the term "determinism" has been used in the field of environment-behavior research and to allay some of the fears that the idea of determinism seems to arouse in researchers. Four major weaknesses of the determinist perspectiv...

Summarizes the natural and social context within which desert settlements have to be planned. Considers that the design of settlements should be sensitive to the benefits as well as the problems associated with desert communities. In particular looks at the relationship between landscape and settlement and the concept of spatial hierarchy. -R.Land

The research that formed the basis of Newman's bookDefensible Space demonstrated that building height is one of the leading predictors of robbery rate in low-income public housing projects. Research reported in this article was undertaken to extend the scope and detail of the earlier work and, most importantly, to examine the causal mechanisms unde...

"A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Psychology ..." Thesis (Ph. D.)--City University of New York, 1978. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 368-375). [Citation: K.A. Franck. Community by design. Sociological Inquiry (1983) 53: 289-313]

This paper discusses a series of presuppositions that have traditionally directed research in environment and experience. It describes, alternatively, a methodology based on different assumptions that will enable the researcher to avoid the biases and conclusions these presuppositions necessitate, and relates a series of studies that display the sa...