| In
June 1999, the
Design Trust partnered with the Hell's
Kitchen Neighborhood Association (HKNA),
a grass-roots community group,
and four principals of Design + Urbanism
(D+U) to organize a community-planning
conference at the Jacob K. Javits Convention
Center. The conference addressed the future
of Hell's Kitchen South, one of the last
under-developed areas in Manhattan. The
conference enabled a dialogue between residents,
who had been working with HKNA to develop
a planning vision for their neighborhood,
and design and development experts who
helped inform and focus that vision.
The conference served as an interactive
introduction for a subsequent in-depth
design study, again undertaken in partnership
with HKNA. The principals of D+U were
awarded Design Trust fellowships to lead
the project. Fellows Viren Brahmbhatt,
Michael Conard, Richard Plunz, and David
Smiley led this collaboration among urban
designers, developers, and Hell's Kitchen
neighborhood residents to assimilate
research and create design recommendations
that would steer beneficial growth and
impending development in Hell's Kitchen
South.
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Towards
this end, the project fellows organized
a public symposium at which an invited
panel of experts in infrastructure, development
and planning discussed development strategies
and problems of implementation. D+U
also invited and led 18 multidisciplinary
research and design teams to develop program
issues raised at the conference and create
a variety of urban design ideas. Their
design and planning schemes were exhibited
at the Storefront for Art and Architecture
and at the Port Authority and were compiled
into a document that outlines development
strategies for the neighborhood.
The research
and recommendations document, Hell's
Kitchen South: Developing Strategies,
is both a guide and a tool for local
constituents, including the Hell's Kitchen
Neighborhood Association and Manhattan
Community Board 4, as they steer future
development in their neighborhood for
the good of Hell's Kitchen and the larger
city.
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