Course Syllabus

Throughout the 20th century, Downtown Brooklyn has served as a laboratory for experiments in architecture and urban design....The area around Atlantic Yards once served as a manufacturing center, and may now become home to one of the country's most dense developments, Atlantic Yards, generating controversy and counter-proposals.

Such change in Downtown Brooklyn is driven by agencies (developers and government officials) that are typically outside of but dependent upon the design community. Examining the history and present of Downtown Brooklyn, we will interrogate and clarify the roles of design in inventing a more just and creative means of "developing" Brooklyn. What will a dense regional center look like? Who will go there, what will happen there? And how will it be designed?

To respond to these questions, we'll explore techniques for researching and exhibiting changes in urban areas. With Downtown Brooklyn as a site, we'll examine how architecture and urban design have transformed the city's downtown, and how these transformations relate to the politics of race, class, and development in New York.

For our final project, students will collaborate to produce a small exhibition of our research, which will be shown in the storefront gallery at the Metropolitan Exchange in May 2009.