Assistant Professor and Master of Landscape Architecture Program Director Zihao Zhang, along with Shurui Zhang, is one of four Spitzer School faculty members to receive an Independent Project grant. Image credit: Shurui Zhang and Zihao Zhang
Four faculty members and one alumna of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York have received Independent Projects grants from the New York State Council on the Arts in conjunction with the Architectural League of New York.
Each $10,000 award was granted for a self-generated year-long project in design practice and research that sought to answer the question of where design can go next. In the 2024 cycle, 25 proposals were selected out of 120 applications by a panel of 10 designers and educators.
The CCNY grant recipients are:
Assistant Professor and Master of Landscape Architecture Program Director Zihao Zhang, with Shurui Zhang, for Chinatown is Chinatown; Flushing is China: Defining Chinese Diasporic Urbanism in Emerging Chinatowns, which will document, analyze, and characterize “Chinese diasporic urbanism” by investigating two 21st-century emerging “Chinatowns” in Flushing and Long Island City, Queens;
Distinguished Lecturer Cassim Shepard, with Carsten Rodin, for Self-Help Housing: An Atlas of Agency, an online, interactive documentary project that maps a diverse series of late 20th-century architectural and urban development schemes that sought to activate the agency of residents to help solve their own housing challenges;
Adjunct Associate Professor Suzan Wines, with James Wines and Phillip Denny, for What Else Could It Mean? Writings and Drawings with James Wines, a book and video series featuring projects, drawings, lectures, and essays by the American architect and designer James Wines; and
Adjunct Associate Professor Kaja Kuehl for The Northeast Biobased Material Atlas, an investigation into the building sector and construction supply chain of the American Northeast.
In addition to the faculty winners, Christine Facella MLA ’17, an assistant professor of product and industrial design at the Parsons School of Design, received a grant for Warm, Fuzzy, Toxic: Milkweed Softgoods for the Nomadic New Yorker, a prototype bedroll created out of local and repurposed resources, including milkweed fiber and textile waste generated by New York City’s Garment District.
“This is Spitzer’s best showing in recent memory,” said Dean Marta Gutman. “Winning this grant is a huge honor, a very competitive process.”
More details on the project and the program are available here.
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Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Syd Steinhardt
212-650-7875
ssteinhardt1@ccny.cuny.edu