For a young New York architecture and urban-design practice describing itself as founded “on the belief that the future provides us with opportunity to constantly improve on the past,” Future Expansion couldn’t have based its studio in a more apropos location. It abuts Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, where a (rezoning-spurred) transformation is bringing housing, open green space, and amenities to the banks of one of the borough’s most befouled—and beloved—industrial waterways. Just outside the studio’s door, on the opposite bank of the canal, in the shadow of the Culver Viaduct, a six-story office and retail building fronted by a public esplanade is on the rise where a concrete factory once stood. Anchored in a neighborhood in flux, Future Expansion is in its element, in the thick of it all, as new development in the borough swells upward, outward, and into areas, like the banks of the Gowanus, previously untouched.

Flatiron Reflection (1 & top of page)
Part sculpture, part public stage set, and part material experiment, this temporary installation in Manhattan comprised bundled cardboard sonotubes weighted in place with sandbags. Reflective coatings echoed the tones of the sky and lights of passing cars. Photo © Jon Macapodi, click to enlarge.