On the first weekend of November, while walking my neighborhood, I passed by a flyer with an intriguing picture (see above). It showed the small green space that sits between Leni’s playground and the promenade, with a kiosk in it. It asked the question: would you like to see a European-style cafe or kiosk in […]
Author: the.vonz.himanen
Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
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Presurging
Since about 2012, Charlotte and I have been observing a phenomenon that it’s about time to mint. Sometimes you walk into a restaurant or cafe and the place is blissfully empty. No line to the counter, every table unoccupied, an idle staff member ready to take your order. Instead of pinching yourself you check the […]
As a first step into the larger project that is Reverse Commute, it’s essential to first draw the map of the communities I’m drawing together. Who are the folks living on the edge of the transit system? Is the presence of a station in their neighborhood relevant or impactful? How might livelihoods improve if the […]
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Community-Blindness
Developers build houses and call them “homes.” They build socially sterile subdivisions and call them “communities.” It’s called “warming the product.” It’s also happening with alleged third places. Officials of a popular coffeehouse chain often claim that their establishments are third places, but they aren’t. Roy Oldenburg, Introduction to Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories About the […]
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Lights Up, Bitches
This is a work of fiction. It was given Honorable Mention for the As Seen On [] writing contest for Urban Omnibus in 2016. I am the meanest mother in Kings. Other Method Man, they call me. But even that’s a short sell, because I don’t just De Niro that shit. I make it real. […]
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Reverse Commute – A Prospectus
Public works, writ large, are manifestations of modern democracy. If towns and cities are artificial organisms built on human cooperation and consensus more than anything, then the transit networks, parks, and utilities are vital organs that likewise require cooperative maintenance and attention. A wastewater treatment plant, for example, is not a plug-and-play automaton– it works […]
This is a work of fiction. This article was retrieved from the (pre)archives of Forward Health Quarterly Review, Issue 31, October 2032. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Anaya v. Lacey decision eleven months prior, all articles authored by algorithms are no longer considered intellectual property and must therefore be made available to the public prior […]
I live in a 120-year-old, 8-floor, 25-unit, brick-and-wood-framed apartment building in Brooklyn Heights. The first thing that crossed my mind circa 2018 was that the building will be hit by the new Local Law 97 passed in by City Council in 2015 as part of the ambitious Climate Mobilization Act. Beyond the intent of the […]
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A Morning with Galen
This is a work of fiction. We sit across from each other. It’s an obtuse but intimate angle, bisecting the corner of the table so that my knees touch her dangling toes, and our faces are both within grabbing radius of the other’s arms. I realize the position is reserved only for these situations, third […]
The longer I practice architecture, the more I learn about what I do not know. Particularly stinging are the “unknown unknowns” as a U.S. Secretary of Defense might call them. For architects, “known unknowns” might include specialized knowledge within categories that we were introduced to in school but never had time to dig into. For […]