The Design Trust has been unlocking the potential of NYC’s public space since 1995. As we approach the end of our anniversary year, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the past thirty and envision beyond the next, as we launch our 12th open call for project ideas: The Water RFP. Through a mini-series of three retrospective blog posts, we are looking back at the evolution of the Design Trust, remembering breakthrough projects that have redefined how we think about shared urban environments, and how they can inform projects centering equity and water. This week’s installment of the series takes a look at the history and heart we hold in New York’s public realm, past efforts to honor them as the city has changed shape, and a plea to carry them into the future. 

If you can rely on New York for anything, it’s the fact that it will change faster than you can glance away and look back. So much of the city’s identity lies in its permanent impermanence, but in this ever-evolution we stand to lose sight of pieces of our culture: our history, our stories, our art, and our built environment. Our public spaces, which are often the birthplaces of all of that, tend to be the most vulnerable to change. 

The need for active cultural preservation is a product first and foremost of passing time and limited attention. Design Trust knows that public space holds a historical significance that can get easily lost as years pass.

Historic spaces “evoke a particular time and a specific place, serving as visual anchors that ground a community in its history and identity. Incorporating historic buildings and sites into placemaking efforts allows for the preservation and celebration of the community's cultural heritage, fostering collective memory,” according to Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla,  Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Placemaking, the process of shaping public spaces into community hubs, nods to the importance of embedding history and culture within public space.

It’s increasingly necessary that we honor culture in the face of the rapid gentrification of some of our city’s most vibrant and unique neighborhoods. This is by no means a new problem for New York: since the 1970s entire neighborhoods have undergone drastic transformations that have left them virtually unrecognizable. While for a long time gentrification hotspots were in or closer to the city (think Northern Brooklyn), a current wave of transplants to the city has begun to spread into historically Black parts of Central Brooklyn like Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. Cultural preservation in New York City also means working to counter the erasure of Black history and culture. Gentrification makes us question whose history gets recognized in our public spaces. 

Preserving Culture in Design

The intent to honor and preserve culture is embedded in everything that we do—in all of our interactions with public spaces in NYC we must consider their cultural implications. There isn’t a space in the city that doesn’t hold some kind of cultural or historical significance, and over the past 30 years Design Trust has been careful to preserve that: 

• The Design Trust’s inaugural project took on some of New York’s most influential cultural hubs. 30 years ago Design Trust engaged with the Brooklyn Public Library (1995-1996) to develop a plan that would carry them into the future. Brooklyn’s public libraries tell the stories of its communities, and a project to maintain and preserve them is an effort to save that resource. The result was a renovation of thirty five of fifty eight branches that expanded communal spaces and the opening of two brand new branches. 

• Another of DT’s efforts to protect NYC history was the Made in Midtown project (2009-2010). When a proposed zoning change put the area responsible for so much of New York’s economic prosperity and urban identity at risk, Design Trust stepped in. An interdisciplinary team of fellows worked to tell the story of the neighborhood’s value, protecting the future of creative production in our city. 

• From 2022 to 2024, Design Trust participated in citywide collaboration Turnout NYC to create semi–permanent public venues for artists to share their craft because “arts organizations and artists are critical anchors in the city’s recovery and long-term health.” 

• Design Trust is currently working with the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance on Reimagining the Enslaved African Burial Ground at Van Cortlandt Park. The project engages the community to make space for local culture to thrive and prevent historical erasure. 

Preserving Water Culture

So much of the potential for preserving the culture of this city lies in its water. Our history is in our coastlines, our public pools, our fire hydrants. 

Hydrants are the quintessential image of an NYC summer. The classic scene of young kids and adults alike running through the spray, t-shirts clinging wet to their backs and smiles plastered on their faces tells the story of too-hot pavement and a city’s resourceful people. Public pools, too, are a fundamental part of the fabric of city summers. As many fall into disrepair they map the story of changing neighborhoods, shifting priorities, and New Yorkers left behind. 

Year-round, New York is its coastline. Our coastlines have been the stage for the city’s economic prosperity; they’ve housed our ports and our industries. They’ve given immigrants a taste of home and all of us one of our only direct connections with the real natural world. And despite everything coastlines are to our people, so many New Yorkers don’t have access to their nearest one. Not to mention the effect, over time, of flooding and erosion to their safety and integrity. As time and an evolving city eats away at these pieces of our history, Design Trust encourages New Yorkers to consider water as a channel for cultural preservation. 

Stay tuned for our final installation next week on imagining how shifting our relationship with water can help build a more resilient city.