PUBLIC STUDY FOR PUBLIC DESIGN

Location

This week we’ll meet at the Pratt Institute Library, at Willoughby Ave and Hall St in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Here’s Pratt’s “Getting to Campus” page. If you arrive early or care to stay afterward, Holly Wilson, a Spring 2026 CRC participant, encourages you to explore Pratt’s Sculpture Park. Holly and Brendan Enright, our hosts, will meet us at the circulation desk at 4pm and bring us through the gates, so please do your best to arrive on time!

Agenda

We’ll consider the roles of civic education, public study, and local knowledge in community-based organizing, development, and design. Engaging with the Pratt Center for Community Development, one of the longest continuously running such centers in the country, we’ll examine the value of community-driven participatory research in promoting justice in housing, environment, and social infrastructure. How might public study prepare a community to prevent, say, developer-led urban displacement or climate disaster; or to build more affordable housing or better systems for child care and trash removal? What can we learn from the archival record about the historical contexts from which community design emerged, how it’s evolved to meet new political-economic and environmental needs, and how that evolution reflects cultural and technological changes?

We’ll begin with a short tour of the Pratt Institute Library, guided by Holly Wilson, Pratt’s Liaison Librarian for Design and Architecture and a member of the Search & Discovery CRC cohort. We’ll then turn to the Pratt Center for Community Development. From 4 to 4:45pm, we’ll meet with Janrey Serapio, Communications Manager of the PCCD; and for our remaining time we’ll explore the PCCD’s records with Brendan Enright, Pratt’s Virginia Thooren and Institute Archivist. 

To Prepare for This Week

• Skim through Designing For Democracy, Partner & Partners, and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development’s Community Development Archive, noting in particular the overview of Community Design Centers and the profile of the Pratt Center for Community Development. (Partner & Partners, a worker-owned design collective, also developed the CRC’s website!)
  • Check out other local initiatives in our Community Design Centers Arena channel. The Architects’ Renewal Committee of Harlem might be of particular interest, in part because Brian Goldstein has just published an excellent new biography of J. Max Bond, its former executive director.
• Explore the Pratt Center for Community Development’s website, skim through Pratt’s finding aid for the Center’s records, and review Nick Dease’s LibGuide to Pratt’s community partnerships (April 28, 2022).
  • Please explore, too, documentation of the Fall 2025 exhibition celebrating the PCCD’s 60th anniversary (here are some clearer photos), as well as the Center’s overview of its STREET magazine archive. 
  • The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a WPA Federal Art Project-style program employing tens of thousands of artists and cultural workers in the 1970s and 80s, is among the many, many local, state, and federal government agencies and programs with which the PCCD has collaborated. CETA is the subject of an exhibition at the CUNY Grad Center’s James Gallery through December 12. Here’s more on the City Lore / Artists Alliance alliance that developed the exhibition. There’s also a panel discussion about CETA in the gallery on December 9, right after our final class of the fall; I’m going, and I welcome you to join me!     
• Let’s consider some of the PCCD’s contemporary allies and counterparts: BlackSpace, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, the Design Trust for Public Spaces, the New York Community Trust, the Urban Design Forum (especially its Local Center), and the Van Alen Institute.
• Let’s also consider what roles libraries, archives, and other knowledge institutions (like Pratt) can play in supporting public study and community design. See Greenpoint’s work on environmental education; the BPL’s “How to Create Efficient Cities” series with city commissioners, urban planners, and community organizers; the Sustainable Libraries Initiative. Some libraries have also involved teenagers on design councils; and others prominently display planning proposals, curate relevant collection materials, and host programs contextualizing them. What else is happening?