2022 – MAY 2

firm news

DLANDstudio Joins Sasaki

On May 2, 2022, Sasaki—a global design firm with offices in Boston, Denver, and Shanghai—announced that DLANDstudio—an award-winning design firm with an office in Brooklyn, New York—are joining forces. This union enhances our capacity to collectively solve 21st century design challenges centered around climate adaptation, biodiversity loss, environmental justice, and social equity. This partnership establishes a new location for Sasaki in New York that will serve local, national, and international clients.

2020 – October 1

2020 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award

Gowanus Canal Sponge Park is the winner of the inaugural 2020 National Design Award for Climate Action

On 1 October, DLANDstudio was honored at the first-ever National Design Awards Virtual Gala. The Awards are bestowed annually by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in recognition of design impact and innovation. Designed by DLANDstudio, the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park™ in Brooklyn, New York is a proven new form of green infrastructure that captures and cleans dirty urban stormwater runoff and addresses the global problem of contaminated streams, rivers, aquifers, and oceans.

2019 – FEBRUARy 20

BROKEN NATURE SYMPOSIUM

Susannah Drake’s presentation from the 2019 Broken Nature Symposium is now online

On 21 January, New York’s Museum of Modern Art hosted the second Broken Nature Symposium, featuring speakers from the interconnected fields of architecture, urban planning, geopolitics, linguistics, as well as other areas of research.

Susannah Drake was invited to speak on the topic of restorative design, and presented projects illustrating DLANDstudio’s work to help repair broken systems and connect people to their natural environments.

2018 – JUNE 21

On Point

Susannah Drake Discusses Sea Level Rise for On Point

Susannah Drake, Rachel Cleetus, and Jonathan Forét joined Anthony Brooks to discuss how sea level rise threatens communities along the U.S. coast. Chronic flooding due to sea-level rise brings devastation but most homeowners, communities, and investors are unaware and unprepared.

The conversation follows the release of a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

2018 – May 25

THE PLAN

Bight: Coastal Urbanism wins The Plan Award for Urban Planning

“Bight: Coastal Urbanism,” a collaboration with Rafi Segal A+U, won the 2018 Plan Award for Urban Planning. The awards recognize and elevate quality work by designers, academics, critics, and students in the fields of architecture, design, and city planning. The project will appear in the July issue of The Plan.

2018 – March 20

dlandstudio

Arrochar Playground Opens

Arrochar Playground, part of New York City’s Community Parks Initiative, opened today in Staten Island. Celebrating the first day of spring, Arrochar was one of five renovated playgrounds to open today.

NYC Parks Commissioner, Mitchell J. Silver, said “The Community Parks Initiative is about creating a fairer and more accessible park system for all New Yorkers – and there's no better expression of that than opening fully renovated parks across the city in a single day."

Photos courtesy of Staten Island Advance/Erik Bascomet

2018 – March 15

The Municipal Art Society of New York

Gowanus Canal Sponge Park Wins 2018 MASterworks Award

We are delighted that the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park was awarded the 2018 MASterworks Award for Best Urban Landscape. The award will be presented during the Celebrating the City program on April 11th. The MASterworks Awards, presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS), pay tribute to projects that make a significant contribution to New York City’s built environment. This year also marks the 125th anniversary of MAS.

2018 – MARCH 5

NEXT CITY

Building resilience into Honolulu’s parks

With Honolulu increasingly threatened by climate change, Next City looks at how the the city’s parks can become a key part of its long-term resilience strategy. DLANDstudio’s work with UH-Manoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources is highlighted, and Susannah Drake discusses her vision for holistic, watershed-based stormwater management on Oahu.  

2018 – February 3

AIA Fort Lauderdale

Susannah Drake speaks at Florida Atlantic University

Susannah Drake will be giving a lecture Tuesday, February 6th at Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture as part of the AIA Fort Lauderdale Fall/Spring Lecture Series. The lecture, entitled “Mountain to Shore: Rethinking Our Relationship to the Urban Landscape,” will look at the firm’s recent work including projects at the University of Hawaii and the University of Colorado Boulder.

2018 – January 31

Architect’s Newspaper

Architect’s Newspaper takes a look at the RPA’s 4th Regional Plan

Projected rising sea levels could impact 23 million people in the tri-state area. Architect’s Newspaper examines the context of the 4th Regional Plan and DLANDstudio + Rafi Segal’s plan for how the region can address the growing threat to the coastline.

2018 – January 4

DLANDstudio

DLANDstudio has moved!

We are happy to announce we have moved into downtown Brooklyn's historic Temple Bar Building. The new studio, located on the 5th floor, overlooks Brooklyn Borough Hall and Columbus Park. DLANDstudio spent 12 years in its prior space on Clinton Street.

2017– November 30

Regional Plan Association

With the release of the Fourth Regional Plan, the RPA advocates for decking over stretches of the BQE

Recognising that many of the tri-state area’s highways currently divide and blight adjacent communities, the RPA advises that depressed roadways could be decked over and rebuilt with new open space that reconnects communities to the street grid. DLANDstudio’s proposal for BQ Green is cited as an example that can “stitch neighborhoods back together at the same time that opportunities are created for open space, green infrastructure and adjacent neighborhood development”.

2017– November 1

The Municipal Art Society of New York

Susannah Drake’s talk at the 2017 MASNYC Summit is now available online

The theme for the 8th annual MAS Summit, Pushing the Limits, explored the ways in which New Yorkers can push the limits of conventional thinking to envisage new strategies that will maximise our increasingly strained resources and infrastructure in the context of urban population growth and climate change. Susannah’s talk, ‘On The Waterfront’, presents her vision for Bight: Coastal Urbanism—a future shoreline where land and water create new spaces for habitation, conservation, work, and play.

2017– September 29

The Guardian

DLANDstudio & Rafi Segal's work for the RPA highlighted by the Guardian

With climate change both a reality and threat, the Guardian reports on the ways in which many architects and urbanists are pushing creative initiatives for cities that treat stormwater as a resource, rather than a hazard. DLANDstudio & Rafi Segal’s proposal for the Bight is highlighted as a project that addresses New York’s projected 6 feet of sea-level rise.

2017– August 22

Fast Company

FastCompany reports on our narrative of Receive/Protect/Adapt for the tri-state coast

“By 2067, most of Jamaica Bay, the neighborhood near JFK airport, will be a sunken, underwater park, with the airport protected by a higher seawall; a new development called Bight City, built on three piers, will be filled with ‘Zuckerhuts,’ President Zuckerberg’s program of universal basic housing...” Storytelling was key to helping us shape our design proposals for the Bight. It helped the team to imagine in concrete terms what the coasts of New York and New Jersey might look like in the coming decades.

2017– May 18

The QueensWay

Schematic Design proposals for Phase 1 of The QueensWay released

The Trust for Public Land and Friends of the QueensWay today finished the schematic design for the first half-mile of the proposed 3.5-mile linear park and trail, and released the new plans and images which depict and locate key public amenities. Phase I, “The Metropolitan Hub” will greatly improve access to Forest Park, running from Metropolitan Avenue south to Union Turnpike, where an existing path provides pedestrian and bike access to the park.

2017– March 8

Architect Magazine

Principal Susannah Drake shares her thoughts on 'A Day Without a Woman'

ARCHITECT asked several women in architecture how they are participating in "A Day Without a Woman," and why it is important to them and the overall profession: “I will wear red in solidarity with my sisters as my grandmother wore white in marching in Washington for a woman's right to vote a century ago. My small WBE will allow people who want to protest to take to the streets as desired”, Susannah said.

2017– February 22

Planetizen

A call for a new approach to green infrastructure planning — Op-Ed by Susannah Drake and Armando Carbonell

The challenge facing the nation's infrastructure is massive in scale, requiring ambition lacking since the New Deal and Eisenhower eras. Building on those historic models, this op-ed suggests a "WPA 2.0" approach to infrastructure. This framework is infused with new thinking about the environment and resilience, to make future infrastructure longer-lasting and with greater economic payoff.