Urban Systems Martin S Urban Systems Martin S

City X

City X is a multi-year research program that examines how contemporary urban life is organized by interacting systems of infrastructure, governance, economy, and morphology.

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Typological Futures Martin S Typological Futures Martin S

On-Demand Workspace

On-Demand Workspace investigates how a multi-tenant “storefront” building reconfigures work, access, and reciprocity by extending the sidewalk into flexible office interiors through a calibrated path of public amenities, structural clarity, and service-ready partitions.

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Urban Systems Martin S Urban Systems Martin S

URBAN reduX

URBAN ReduX investigates how Manhattan’s underused office stock can be reorganized into mixed living–working communities, aligning conversion typologies with governance, energy, and public life to translate excess floor area into long-term social value.

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Resilience & Climate Martin S Resilience & Climate Martin S

Insertions

Insertions brings together visionary artists and designers Mel Chin and Ronald Rael for a dialogue on art as intervention—how creative practice can insert new meaning, ethics, and urgency into the built and social environment. Through their work spanning sculpture, architecture, and activism, Chin and Rael explore how art can reshape systems, provoke change, and redefine the boundaries between culture, politics, and place. The discussion is introduced and moderated by Max Wolf (New Canons).

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Resilience & Climate Martin S Resilience & Climate Martin S

Body and Ground Lecture

Body and Ground brings together artists Jeneen Frei Njootli and Manual Axel Strain in a conversation on the interconnections between land, identity, and embodiment in contemporary Indigenous art. Through performance, sound, and material practice, both artists explore how the body becomes a site of resistance and renewal in dialogue with place and memory. The discussion is introduced and moderated by Patricia Marroquin Norby (The Met).

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Resilience & Climate Martin S Resilience & Climate Martin S

The Prison Industrial Complex and Beyond

The Prison Industrial Complex and Beyond brings together writer and performer Liza Jessie Peterson, architect and activist Raphael Sperry, and moderator Elias Beltran for a critical dialogue on incarceration, justice, and the built environment. The conversation explores how architecture, performance, and advocacy intersect within systems of control—and how creative and civic action can envision alternatives to mass incarceration. Through their combined perspectives, the speakers challenge audiences to consider how space, policy, and imagination might be mobilized toward repair, dignity, and social transformation.

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Resilience & Climate Martin S Resilience & Climate Martin S

EHKOOO

EHKOOO brings together artist Kayode Ojo and playwright Olu Obafemi in a cross-disciplinary conversation about beauty, performance, and cultural inheritance. Bridging sculpture, language, and theater, the dialogue examines how form and narrative intersect—how objects and words alike can reflect identity, desire, and power. Moderated by Ebony L. Haynes, the discussion explores the tension between visibility and myth, intimacy and spectacle, within contemporary art and thought.

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Resilience & Climate Martin S Resilience & Climate Martin S

Coastal Resiliency

This project investigates coastal resiliency as an infrastructural and governance problem, examining Lower Manhattan’s East River Waterfront and Nassau County’s South Shore to articulate edge typologies, ecological repair, and policy mechanisms that can adapt over time.

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Resilience & Climate Martin S Resilience & Climate Martin S

Cleveland Sun

Cleveland Sun is a citywide light installation that channels the collective energy of Cleveland into a single luminous event. Using light as its medium, 1,001 mirrors were installed across the city, reflecting sunlight toward one central point—the Sculpture Center. There, through the skylight, the gathered light flooded the gallery, transforming it into a vast, living collector of urban illumination. Acting as both instrument and metaphor, Cleveland Sun turned the city into a unified organism of reflection and radiance.

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