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237 GLOBA LIZING ARCHI TECTURE / Flo ws and Disrup ons
Spaal Stories in Northern
Manhaan
The comparavely recent resurgence of community engagement in architecture
and architectural education has produced a host of methodologies and tech-
niques for approaching unloved spaces and addressing populaons tradionally
under- or poorly served by architecture.1 The opportunity to take stock of these
techniques is a chance to compare them to their precedents in Event Art and
community acvism, both dierent manifestaons of the producve dissasfac-
on that characterized the late 1960s and 1970s. The loose contemporary use
of the term “Parcipatory Design”, with its roots in Human Computer Interacon
research in Scandinavia, deserves equal scrutiny. But it also begs the question
of whether any of those methodologies are inherently “architectural” – or how
architecture’s contribuon can compare to a methodological approach derived
from sociological pracce or to ephemeral event or installaon art.
Dr. Mindy Fullilove’s book, quoted above, documents her undertakings to
restore urban communities progressively destroyed by the practices around
“urban blight.” Through desigNYC, a New York-based not-for-prot that matches
designers and not-for-prots, we worked from January, 2013 to October, 2014,
with CLIMB (City Living is Moving Bodies), a group co-directed by Dr. Fullilove,
Professor of Public Health at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia
University, and Lourdes Rodriguez, Program Officer at New York State Health
Foundaon. It is dedicated to the revitalizaon of Northern Manhaan’s most
easterly parks. The quotaons correspond to two aspects of the “urban alchemy”
described by Dr. Fullilove and central to our collaboraon: the recognion of a
spaal story’s power to aect the strength and health of a community, and the
“I urge you,” Cantal continued, “to find the paths to the rivers and to rec-
reate those paths…to celebrate your ancestors and the way they lived.”
“Tamanika Howse stopped me at that point. “You mean to tell me
my community is dead?” she asked accusingly. I was terrified by
the look in her eyes. If I did mean that, I wanted to take it back.”
Mindy Fullilove, Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted
Out Cities (New Village Press: New York, 2013), p.59 and 58
AKI ISHIDA
Virginia Tech
LYNNETTE WIDDER
Columbia University
Realizi ng the Righ t to the City 238Spaal S tories in Nort hern Manhaan
surprisingly indirect communicaon lines along which diverse cohorts can con-
tribute to that recognion.
On the basis of our work with CLIMB, our paper suggests architecture’s unique
contribution is its capacity to locate that story and communicate it within the
spaces at stake.
EVENT ART, HAPPENINGS AND COMMUNITY WORK
The history of art and design as social catalysts is complex, but one definitive
shift from ar tifact to explicitly social, participatory occurrence is allied to the
politicization of everyday life in the late 1950s and 60s. From Alan Kaprow’s
“Happenings” to Fluxus’ Food restaurant in Soho to Ant Farm’s DIY videos or pick-
up truck university, the era’s art producon showed disciplines how visual culture
oered techniques, outcomes and eects with which to include people outside
the usual audiences. More earnest inclusionary work was done by architects and
schools of architecture in support of Community Development Corporations,
first created by an amendment sponsored by Senators Robert Kennedy and
Jacob Javits to the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act; Pra Instute’s Center for
Community and Environmental Development (PICCED), founded the same year
under the directorship of Ron Shiffman, is the oldest university-based CDC in
the US. Using the visualizaon techniques of architecture and urban design cou-
pled with parcipatory meengs and outreach educaon, such organizaons as
PICCED (now PCCD) proved the ecacy of visual pracce and design as tools of
polical advocacy (Pra Center Story, accessed September 16, 2013).
Event Art, Fluxus and such Neo-Avantgardists as Ant Farm have been lionized by
recent exhibions and publicaons as part of the resurgent art historical interest
in the 1960s. Their advocacy contemporaries have garnered less aenon, per-
haps because their “design” quoent is less obvious. They are nonetheless valu-
able and understudied precedents for engaged architectural pracce.
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN AND ITS ROOTS IN IT RESEARCH IN SCANDINAVIA
The phrase Parcipator y Design was rst used in the Human Computer Interac on
(HCI) eld in the 1970s. As the Routledge Internaonal Handbook of Parcipatory
Design describes, “Parcipatory design is about the direct involvement of people
in the co-design of the technologies they use. Its central concern is how collab-
orave design processes can be driven by the parcipaon of the people aected
by the technology designed.” This approach has its roots in 1970s Information
Technology (IT) research in Scandinavia, some of the least hierarchical countries
in the world. Parcipatory design aimed to increase workers’ parcipaon in how
the design and use of computer applicaons aected them. The rst example was
the Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union in which IT researchers and union
workers collaborated to improve working condions through the use of comput-
ers; both pares became stakeholders and beneciaries of the research (Bodker
2009, 276). The Florence Project, conducted between 1984 to 87 by the Instute
of Informacs at University of Oslo and State Hospital of Oslo iniated a series of
participatory design efforts in healthcare. High on the project’s agenda was to
elicit input from female nurses whose voices were oen suppressed by those of
more skilled male colleagues (Kensing and Greenbaum, 29).
By definition, CLIMB’s desire to draw out its constituency shares similarities
with these studies. When the residents of areas near the parks partake in com-
munity input acvies, they become stakeholders and are more likely to invest
239 GLOBAL IZING ARCHIT ECTURE / Flow s and Disrupo ns
themselves in the projects’ success, an eect well known in the social sciences.
This approach to expanding the users’ stake in their workplace (or parks and
institutions) has parallels in the design of architecture. As the Scandinavian IT
researchers did for the workers who ulmately used the soware, architects can
acvely assist the client in reecng upon their spaal interacons.
One of the primary insights offered by Dr. Fullilove’s books is the impor-
tance of the physical, spatial context of social interactions, even if that space
is only vaguely or subconsciously registered. The charrettes and workshops
we designed foregrounded the spatial context of CLIMB’s cohort, drawing out
insights anchored in the physical world that will make for acve users/occupants
in the long run.
DESIGN THINKING
By the early 1990s, the disparate threads of IT, post-war Avant Garde and visual
communicaon for community acvism were entangled with what had been des-
ignated “design thinking.” In a Neo-Liberal twist on the enthusiasc conaon of
art and life, innovaon and creavity are now marketed as a proprietary consult-
ing methodology that conjoins a “human centered” approach to the capacity for
business “growth” by “uncovering latent needs, behaviors, and desires.” (Ideo.
com accessed 9.19.13). The business community’s acknowledgement that risk-
taking and creativity have now been outsourced should ratify design culture’s
validity. Instead, it seeks to make repeatable methodologies out of art and archi-
tecture’s potential to act inclusively, focusing on ensuring that companies will
“innovate without interrupon to drive growth and protability” (Turnali 2013).
In many corporate conference rooms, the Post-it and Sharpie have become the
sine qua non of design engagement. “Public art ” struggles to innovate when its
techniques have been appropriated as a xed consulng repertoire. As design
threatens to become saturated with facile symbolism, what should architecture
contribute, beyond the clichéd workshops? As we worked to understand the
value of our contribuons to a group of clients well versed in the human centric
and parcipatory pracces of urban public health, both physical and psychologi-
cal, we were cauous to foreground our essenal goal: to capture the spaal con-
text and its signicance for CLIMB’s cohort.
WORKING WITH CLIMB
CLIMB is founded on the belief that safe parks and neighborhoods are essenal
to community health. Its mission is to enhance the physical, social, psychologi-
cal and economic health of deprived neighborhoods by re-integrating a series
of parks into everyday life (CLIMB report 2007, 1). Advocating for Northern
Manhattan’s economically and culturally diverse communities, CLIMB is com-
prised of an equally diverse group of individuals and organizations. This area
includes Washington Heights and Inwood’s 71% Hispanic and 17% African
American population, and Morningside Heights and Harlem, which are 67%
African American and 20% Hispanic (CLIMB report 2007, 4) within a total popu-
laon of ca. 530,000. This area suered from ‘planned shrinkage’ in the 1970’s
where the city shut down re staons in poor neighborhoods and let them burn
down. This caused population displacement and triggered epidemics of AIDs,
crack cocaine, mental illnesses, and related violence. (Fullilove 2013, 16-17).
CLIMB formed out of a group of social and medical sciensts studying the impact
of such illnesses, division, and neglect suered by these residents.
Realizi ng the Righ t to the City 240Spaa l Stories in Nor thern Manhaa n
Although CLIMB is led by public health exper ts and promotes the parks as a
means of maintaining physical and mental tness, it does not communicate its
mission overtly. There is no preaching about obesity or bad eang habits; rather,
the focus is on taking back spaces and reinforcing the identity of the archipel-
ago of parks as a shared physical and social asset. This attitude is reflected in
the name CLIMB gave to the trail unifying the parks: the Girae Path. The name
derives from the parks’ outline on a map, with Fort Tryon Park at the north as the
girae’s head, followed by its neck - Highbridge Park, Jackie Robinson Park, St.
Nicholas Park, Morningside Park - ending with Central Park at the south.
The most visible, ambitious event that CLIMB organizes is the annual Hike the
Heights, in which thousands of residents walk from six dierent starng points
along the Girae Path, culminang in a party in High Bridge Park. For the “Parade
of Girae” organized by Creave Arts Workshops for Kids, one of CLIMB’s part-
ners, school children make giraes that are displayed along the path.
When CLIMB submied their applicaon to desigNYC, they had recognized the
need to consolidate the path’s identity. The design collaborators, led by two
teams of architects and educators, Aki Ishida and Lynnee Widder, and Kaja Kühl,
agreed to 1) run a series of charrees and workshops, including a laboratory for
community input during the annual event; 2) design a hiking path map to fore-
ground the unique idenes of these parks; 3) provide a concept design of physi-
cal markers and connecons to be installed in city streets and parks; and 4) assist
CLIMB in seeking ways to idenfy and enhance those park features that are dis-
nct from other iconic parks in Manhaan such as Central Park and the Highline.
WALKING IN SEARCH FOR PARKS’ IDENTITY
We began our work with a cold February walk through the parks from top to bot-
tom. At the first charrette shortly thereafter, CLIMB’s key members each con-
tributed ten printed photos of their favorite places or items along the Giraffe
Path, which were then located on a large printed map of the trail. Seeing the
photos together allowed us to identify six spatial categories of primary fea-
tures: Topography, Vista, Nature, Historical Reference, Infrastructure, and
Microclimates. This process revealed that dening the parks’ shared identy was
no less signicant than the map. CLIMB had asked for help in “making the path”: a
clear identy would in turn ‘make’ the path, rst psychologically, then physically.
We noted that the Latin root of the word identity is identitās, which means to
repeat again and again. Taking cues from this root, we speculated that those physi-
cal features, which repeat along the Girae Path, were synonymous with its iden-
ty. We dislled these features to the vastness of infrastructure; the overgrown
park as wilderness; and the dramatic views that juxtaposed infrastructure with
wilderness. We then proceeded to verify these features within a larger cohort.
THE STORY: 100 BLOCKS OF DRAMA
At the outset, we took a more instrumental view towards the charrettes and
workshop, assuming that they would produce informaon to be directly incorpo-
rated into a printed map. By the end of the first charrette, however, the focus
changed. The images captured ephemeral qualities – seasons, passing views,
ora – rather than stac landmarks. The parks’ story unfolds through revising:
identās. Personal favorites were extrapolated to general spaal qualies. It was
at this point that the two design teams disentwined their eorts to focus either
on arfacts or, as CLIMB called it, “the story,” which we took on.
241 GLOBA LIZING ARCHI TECTURE / Flo ws and Disrup ons
The parks all express dramatically Manhattan’s geological past: a steep
schist escarpment runs north from the western edge of Central Park through
Morningside Park, where it dies into Amsterdam Avenue. Just north of 125th
Street, it reappears, subdividing St. Nicholas Park longitudinally, with basketball
courts on the atland and City College’s Neogothic campus on its western ridge.
The public pool at the south end of Jackie Robinson Park lies below an enormous
40-foot retaining wall cut from the escarpment. In Highbridge Park, the most
feral of all, the living rock creates promontories vast enough to face o with the
I-95 extensions through the Bronx to the east as well as rock walls and craggy
climbs appropriate to urban rock climbers and mountain bikers. The escarpment
became the backbone of the spaal story: 100 blocks of drama.
THOUGHT BUBBLES AND CHALKED MAP
June 1st, 2013 was the ninth Hike the Heights, the acvity around which CLIMB
has coalesced each year since it’s founding. Some 1,200 children and adults,
many aliated with organizaons sharing common values, hiked the linked parks
from the north and the south to converge on a playground at the escarpment’s
upper side in Highbridge Park. The playground party was a vibrant, cacophonous
mixture of dance contest, picnic, arts and crafts stands, nutritional coaching,
sacks of apples for the taking. With its mobile and celebratory moments, Hike the
Heights was the ideal, producvely unruly environment to gather informaon and
responses from the people who already knew the Girae Path, and to make obser-
vaons that could fuel producve speculaon about how to expand that cohort.
Part life-size comic book dialogue, part out-sized Post-it note, yellow and brown
construcon paper “Thought Bubbles”/locaon markers were distributed to each
hiking group; several of our volunteers accompanied each group to encourage
their fellow hikers to record wishes for or direct responses to the park spaces
through which they were moving. Planted into the ground on small stakes, elds
of Thought Bubbles were meant to recall girae markings and to chart anies
among ideas, people and places. The inscribed bubbles were then photographed
on locaon and posted onInstagram, where they were logged with geographic
coordinates. At the playground, we chalked a 16 foot-long version of the map
with the path people had just hiked in red. Although we had intended for people
to write in chalk, cross-referencing their experience with map locaons, our best
intenons were oset by the arrival of a group of kids who just wanted to chalk.
The map lled up prey quickly, amid stories of trails that included quicksand,
barracudas and tentacle-grass – a chalked video game? – but also became a cen-
ter for acvity, conversaon and introducons over the course of the aernoon.
That rst enthusiasc group of kids proved just how recepve they were to the
idea of a trail, especially one that oered adventures along the way.
Learning from Happenings and parcipatory community meengs of the 1960’s,
our workshops gathered data from a wide secon of parcipants, including those
who regularly aend community meengs to those who otherwise may not, such
as children and enthusiasts who came as a result of desigNYC associaon.
SPATIAL DEPI CTION OF DATA
By the end of June 1, we had amassed information for a more differentiated
assessment of CLIMB’s cohort and its interests. We grouped the 170 photo-
graphed Thought Bubbles according to several dierent categories, each of which
highlighted dierent readings of the data:
Figure 1: top: 16 -foot long chalk map of the Girae
Path became a center of conversaons during Hike
the Height s 2013, boom: Under Highbridge, hikers
show the thoughts they wrote on their bubbles.
One says, ‘I like how much COOLER it is in the
pa rks ’.
1
Realizi ng the Righ t to the City 242Spaa l Stories in Nor thern Manhaa n
· age of contributor (there were plenty of kids)
· locaon of comment, and presumed locale to which it responded
· expectaons of how a park would be used, based upon the comments’ content.
This last category proved most relevant to the queson CLIMB had rst posed:
what is the parks’ story and what lines of communicaon can convey it?
Our findings are summarized in the Thought Bubble map. The comments on
some Thought Bubbles reected the idea that the parks were spaces for reec-
on and codied recreaon. These appeared as requests for beer maintenance,
more seang, playgrounds, tended playing elds. Other Thought Bubbles chal-
lenged these expectaons, advocang for the unique landscape space that has
developed in these parks, especially in Highbridge, aer years of disinvestment:
the wild or feral park, the forest, the sheer rock walls, the expanses of untamed
vegetation to contrast the scale of the adjacent highway infrastructure of the
Cross Bronx and Bruckner Expressways. Between these two extremes of tamed
and wild were Thought Bubbles that documented the park’s cool, breezy micro-
climate; its animals; and its varied ora.
Conversaons around the chalked map resulted in other insights: that CLIMB’s
current strength is its capacity to draw together a broad set of aligned groups
and acvists, including city agencies, school groups, Eagle scouts, not-for-prots
and university aliates. An inventory of these groups and people suggested com-
municaons paths forward, to expand the cohort of CLIMB parcipants. It also
gave a context to our Thought Bubble analysis: the comments upon which we
were basing our assessment were all drawn from a group that already acvely
knew and used the parks. What could their comments tell us about how to reach
CLIMB’s yet-untapped cohort, including those who live near to the parks? What
were the limits of our data and how could we avoid preaching to the converted?
Figure 2: Le: Map of Nor thern Manhaan with
thought bubbles located geographically.
Right: Enlarged detail of map with red and blue
bubbles keyed into the map.
Basemap by youarethecity, Thought Bubble
summary by Aki Ishida A rchitec t.
2
243 GLOBAL IZING ARCHI TECTURE / Flow s and Disrup ons
Parcipant input from Hike the Heights 2013 on Thought Bubbles was related to
its spaal triggers on a Girae Path trail map. Comments in blue were wrien by
adults, red bubbles by children, and they are keyed into the map. The green bub-
bles are comments that were not locaon-specic.
EXPANDING CLIMB’S COHORTS
The DesigNYC project marked a watershed for CLIMB, aer three earlier collabo-
raons with architects. They had consolidated the groups and individuals who are
part of their constuency, and wanted to extend knowledge of the trail to access
new groups. Our work helped to disll the parks’ identy as dependent upon shared
spaal characteriscs, especially the escarpment; and to chart in visual terms the
spatial desires that the parks inspire. As Dr. Fullilove explained to us, “East-west
movement is how people use the park…the escarpment and its stairs were a really
central conceptual insight. Your work brought in more voices but also helped to pull
together what other designers had already said to us.” (In conversaon, 1.16.14)
The diagram we developed below maps the way CLIMB and the Girae Path reg-
ister within the current key cohort. Within the innermost circle is the Girae Path
trail. The next ring includes current parcipants in Hike the Heights. The le-hand
side of the diagram shows tangible, targeted outreach tools; the right-hand side
focuses on more ephemeral and exible approaches. Each vector indicates the
means by which CLIMB could expand to new potenal constuencies. For exam-
ple, the scaled map, one outcome of the desigNYC/CLIMB collaboraon, can, in
its printed form, become a tool for local business owners to inform people who
frequent their stores about the trail. It can also be used to demonstrate synergies
to the Parks Department, as Parks invests in some of the more neglected sites.
The strategies mapped here play out a conclusion drawn from Hike the Heights,
the potenal eecveness of intergeneraonal communicaon: many children
parcipated in the hike and the Thought Bubble exercise, indicang the strength
of CLIMB’s ability to motivate kids. Providing these kids with artifacts (such as
maps or booklets) and ideas that will also interest their parents could have signi-
cant posive eect. Intergeneraonal communicaon could anchor the parks as
a shared space in the daily life of the adjacent neighborhoods.
CONCLUSIONS
As Dr Fullilove remarked, “the dierence is not in architects’ data collecon but
in the cognive frame: architects look at spaal data whereas public health peo-
ple see social processes, whereas space is a black box.” (In conversaon, 1.16.14)
Neither our data per se nor the conclusions we drew, although useful to CLIMB,
were beyond the capacity of a careful survey or study. We concluded that the
disncon was in the ways we staged events at which informaon was gathered,
and our spaal depicons of that informaon. We took the post-it notes from the
conference room whiteboards into the real space of the Girae Path in the form
of Thought Bubbles. Coupling story and space allowed us to summarize the out-
comes on a trail map, keying narraves to locaons along the path. To further
transmit this spatial component, we developed a binder of working strategies
that now funcons as a guidebook for CLIMB’s future path-making, oering ideas
for spaally located acvies and ways of asking quesons which will provoke
visually communicable responses.
Parcipatory Design, as the term is loosely used, does not reside in formulaic rec-
ipes for acvies or outcomes. Instead, its principles support mutual learning, in
3
Figure 3: Thought bubbles and park features
were photographed, posted on Ins tagram,
and geographically located on map of Nothern
Manhaan.
Realizi ng the Righ t to the City 244Spaa l Stories in Nor thern Manhaa n
which architects learn about the context of their project just as clients and future
occupants of a space learn about themselves: it gives populations not usually
empowered to speak new inuence on design decisions and facilitates co-real-
izaon through visual prototyping among parcipants that may have conicng
interests and a range of visualizaon skills (Breeteig et al 2013, 132-133).
By helping to record the dialogues that residents of Northern Manhaan have
with their park spaces, we began to discover aspects of these methodologies
that make architects’ contribuons disnct. We helped CLIMB visualize in spaal
terms the physical and social assets that they already have. Qualitave analyses
and documentaons of their hiking acvies existed as reports, papers, photos,
and videos. As architects, however, we applied our skills to move uidly between
the full-scale of the parks, which we marked with the paper bubble narraves,
and the scale of paper representaons that will help them tell disnctly spaal
stories. Learning from, rather than applying formulaically, methodologies devel-
oped by Human Computer Interaction, the social sciences, and Event Art may
suggest eecve principles by which architects could give their clients and their
constuencies’ voices through the power of spaal stories.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank CLIMB, desigNYC, youarethecity, New York City
Park Partners, and our adviser Alfred Zollinger for this collaboraon. We are also
grateful for volunteer designers who contributed their me and talent: Catherine
Cieslewicz, Carolina Cohen Freue, Claire Davenport, Dan Dobson, Colin Embrey,
Vanessa Espaillat, Marisa Ferrara, Sagi Golan, Nancy Kim, Kevin Lê, Adrienne
Milner, Floren Clare Poliseo, Natalie Sippel, and Krisn Washco.
4
Figure 4: Diagram of future cohor ts. Graphic design
by Catherine Cieslewicz.
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Neighborhoods hurts America, and what can we do about it.
New York: Ballanne, 2005.
245 GLOBAL IZING ARCHI TECTURE / Flow s and Disrup ons
5
Figure 5: ‘Making the Girae Path’ Resource binder
edited by Aki Ishida and Lynnee Widder. Graphic
design by Catherine Cieslewicz.
Fullilove, Mindy Thompson. Urban Alchemy: R estoring Joy in
America’s Sorted-Out Cies. New York: New Village, 2013.
“History,” accessed September 16, 2013, hp://www.restoraon-
plaza.org/about/histor y
Kensing, Finn and Joan Greenbaum. “He ritage: Having A Say.” In
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edited by Jes per Simons en and Toni Rober tson, 21-36. New
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“The Pra Ce nter Story ”, accessed Sep tember 16, 2013, hp://
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ENDNOTES
1. The foundi ng of Architecture for Humanit y in 1999 and it s
meteori c growth, as well as its two Des ign Like You Give a
Damn bo oks, is but on e high-pro le story of the recent move -
ment toward s civic enga gement in architecture and desig n. A
combinaon of case studies, graphically represented stascs
and IKEA-style how-to diagr ams, the books describe a world in
which ingenuity, some fundraising and design/build commit-
ments are enou gh to change so ciety.
