• This website includes dozens of videos, hundreds of essays, and thousands of drawings created over the past twenty years. Search to learn more about the history of buildings, places, prisons, Newark, New York City, and my PhD research on spatial inequality.

  • Or scroll down for the latest publications.

Category Archives: Browse All Work by Date

No comments

New York City Subway Ridership

  19 December 2018 ,
Created with data from the MTA.
Published by Gothamist on 22 January 2019.
Related: my data visualization of London Underground commuting patterns.

.

The visual language of data addresses a deeper need to humanize and soften the concrete jungle.

.

Sounds of breathing, heartbeat, and subway from Freesound

.

In this animation based on subway ridership statistics by station:
● Dots are color-coded according to the subway lines they serve.
● White dots are for junctions between two or more lines of different color.
● Dot size corresponds to the number of riders entering each station within a 24 hour period.
● Larger dots are for busier stations. Smaller dots are for less busy stations.
Movements through the New York City subway are analogous to rhythmic breathing.
People often describe cities in relation to the human body. Major roads are called “arteries” in reference to blood flow. The sewers are the city’s “bowels” in reference to our own digestive systems. Central Park is the city’s “lungs.” At various times in history, key industries like garments and finance were described as the “backbone” of New York’s economy. Although cities are complex organisms, wordplay makes the giant metropolis somehow more human and familiar.
The 424 subway stations and 665 miles of track are analogous to the human circulatory system. Every weekday pre-coronavirus, the subway carried 5.4 million people, mostly commuters. This daily commute is ordered, structured, and rhythmic – as Manhattan’s population swells during the daily commute and then contracts by night. Each passenger symbolizes the movement of a single red blood cell. With each paycheck, the oxygen of capitalism flows from the heart of Manhattan to the cellular homes in the outer boroughs.
Commuting patterns mirror the rhythmic expansion and contraction of the human body while breathing. By contrasting weekday and weekend ridership patterns, we detect the city’s respiratory system.

.

.

Interactive Map

.

Research Method

In this video lecture, I walk you through how I manipulated MTA and NYC open data
to create this animation.

.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) publishes statistics on weekday and weekend (Saturday + Sunday) ridership for all 424 stations. These statistics, updated yearly, are public and can be analyzed to track trends in urban growth. I downloaded the MTA data and assigned each station a geographical coordinate (latitude + longitude) so that the data points would appear at their corresponding map locations.

I have a love-hate relationship with the New York City subway. At rush hour, it is crowded, hot, and slow. From years of riding its squeaky trains, it’s given me a ringing tinnitus sound in my ear. Despite its flaws, the subway is one of the few urban spaces where all social classes and ethnicities mix, where their separate lives are momentarily shared. Rich or poor, everyone rides the subway. I hope this animation renews appreciation for this engineering and the people behind it.

.

Sources

No comments

Where in the world is modernism?

  17 November 2018
What if the nationality of every artist represented in the Museum of Modern Art’s collections were mapped to illustrate the museum’s evolving geographic diversity through time? Watch the data visualization below of 121,823 works at MoMA.

.

.

Introduction

“The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) acquired its first artworks in 1929, the year it was established. Today, the Museum’s evolving collection contains almost 200,000 works from around the world spanning the last 150 years. The collection includes an ever-expanding range of visual expression, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, photography, architecture, design, film, and media and performance art.
“MoMA is committed to helping everyone understand, enjoy, and use our collection. The Museum’s website features 79,870 artworks from 26,215 artists. This research dataset contains 135,804 records, representing all of the works that have been accessioned into MoMA’s collection and cataloged in our database. It includes basic metadata for each work, including title, artist, date made, medium, dimensions, and date acquired by the Museum. Some of these records have incomplete information and are noted as ‘not Curator Approved.’
“The Artists dataset contains 15,757 records, representing all the artists who have work in MoMA’s collection and have been cataloged in our database. It includes basic metadata for each artist, including name, nationality, gender, birth year, death year, Wiki QID, and Getty ULAN ID.” – from MoMA’s website.
I downloaded this dataset and dissected it with this question in mind:
What trends might this dataset reveal about the history of curating and the growth of a museum’s collections?
In the three interactive features below, hover over the graphs to explore the data in depth.

.

1. Geographic and Gender Diversity

This map visualizes the nationalities of ~15,757 artists whose work is displayed at MoMA. There are 121,823 data entries displayed below. The data can be browsed by year or by department. This illustrates the evolving geographic breadth of collections. Beginning in the 1930s, over 80% of artworks were from the four key countries of the US, UK, France, and Germany. Beginning the 1960s, the museum acquired some of its first works from Latin America and Japan. Post-1991, the museum acquired the bulk of its collections from Russia and China. Recent years have also seen a slight growth in collections of African art
An important distinction: This map does not show where each artwork was made. Rather, it shows where each artist is from. Nationality and national identity are, depending on the artist, an important influence shaping the unique perspective artists bring to their work.

.

.

The bar chart below shows the gender distribution of artworks by date. On the horizontal axis: the date acquired. On the vertical axis: the number of artworks acquired in this year. Each bar is divided into three colors: Blue for artwork by a male artist. Pink for art by a female artist. Grey for art where the gender of the artist is not known.
This data can be explored by year and by department. Across departments, male artists represent the clear majority. The departments with the greatest number of works by female artists: Photography and Drawings. The department with the least female representation: Prints & Illustrated Books. The department with greatest number of works where the artists’ gender is unknown: Architecture & Design. However, across departments, the representation of female artists has slightly increased over the past few decades from around zero to somewhere around 20%.

.

.

2. Do newer acquisitions tend to be smaller?

The two graphs below plot the relationship between year produced, year acquired by MoMA, and the dimensions of each artwork (width in cm). I’ve plotted 12,250 points. They are color coded with the same blue, pink, and grey system as the previous chart.
In the first graph, we see that newly produced paintings are becoming progressively larger. In 1929, the year of MoMA’s founding, the width of the average painting being produced was less than 100cm. Today, the average width of newly produced paintings is around 400cm – and is steadily increasing.

.

.

In the second graph, we see that MoMA’s new acquisitions are becoming progressively smaller, even though newly produced artworks are larger than before. In 1929, the average width of a new acquisition was over 300 cm. Today, the width is less than 150cm.

.

.

In other words, while artists seem to be working in ever larger dimensions, MoMA seems to be acquiring ever smaller paintings from these artists. Have the growing costs of buying and storing art priced MoMA out of acquiring larger artworks? What is the relationship between size and the decision whether or not to acquire a work?

.

3. Is the scope and definition of modernism expanding?

The challenge facing any museum dedicated to modern art is keeping up-to-date. Modern art is constantly being produced. Like any leading museum, MoMA is:
  • growing its collection of newly-produced contemporary works
  • while also enhancing its collection of older works
  • and expanding the geographic and national representations of artists and artworks
The graph below compares the relationship between production year and acquisition year for 7,797 data entires. Dot size indicates the size of the acquisition (i.e. number of pages or number of paintings from said artist). The red trend line indicates the linear relationship between when a work was produced (vertical axis) and when it was acquired by MoMA (horizontal axis). The vertical gap between the trend line and the upper reaches of the graph indicates the time elapsed between when the work was produced and when it was acquired. With time, the number of years elapsed between production and acquisition has grown.
In 1929, most new acquisitions were produced in the 1920s – modernism was a new movement and a new idea. Today, new acquisitions range in date from the early nineteenth century through present day. The temporal definition of modernism is growing, with origins that stretch ever further back in time.

.

.

Modernism is not geographically restricted. With globalization and the march of capitalism, the world is becoming more modern and interconnected. As new regions adopt modern technology, materials, and ideas, the character of art and artists will change. Cultural institutions, particularly modern art museums, are positioned to curate these global trends through the kinds of works they acquire and display. However, the kinds of stories museums and curators can tell are limited by the size and diversity of the collections available.

.

Related Data Projects

.

Sources

Download MoMA’s data from GitHub. The analysis above reflects this dataset as of 17 October 2018. New entries after this date are not included as these infographics are not updated in real-time.

Download my analysis of this data and the infographics above from Tableau Public.

No comments

A History of Historic Preservation in New York City

  4 November 2018 , ,

Data analysis of NYC landmarks since 1965 reveals trends and biases in the landmarks preservation movement.

Developed with urban historian Kenneth Jackson at Columbia University’s Department of History

.

.

A visual history of landmarks preservation in NYC. Data from NYC Open Data. Music from Freesound.

.

Introduction

There is ongoing debate between in NYC between developers seeking to rebuild the city in the image of global capitalism and preservationists seeking to slow the rate of change and protect the appearance of the city’s many and distinct neighborhoods. Several factors drive historic preservation: fear of losing heritage; fear of change; historians, public servants, and well-intentioned activists in the spirit of Jane Jacobs. This debate has played out every year since 1965 through the hundreds of structures that are added to (or rejected from) the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s running list of landmarks (LPC). Once added, landmarked buildings cannot be modified without first seeking approval from the city. Landmarks preservation is contentious for developers because the protections of preservation law are permanent and affect all current and future owners. Preservation law further restricts significant rebuilding, even if demolition and rebuilding are lucrative for the property owner.
Historians decide the future of the city’s built environment. The sites they preserve will become the architectural lens through which future generations will appreciate the past. The sites they approve for demolition will be lost to history. Preservation is a response to larger historical questions: Which aspects of the past are worth preserving? How should the city balance the economic need for development with the cultural need for history?
This paper will assess the landscape of historic preservation through analysis of publicly-available landmark records from NYC Open Data. We identified two datasets, both containing ~130,000 spreadsheet entries for every single LPC listing from 1965 to 2019. The first dataset is titled “Individual Landmarks” 1 and includes the structure’s address, lot-size, and date landmarked. The second dataset is titled “LPC Individual Landmark and Historic District Building Database” 2  and includes the construction date, original use, style, and address of all structures. We downloaded both datasets as .csv files, imported them into a visualization software called Tableau, merged them into a single map, and then analyzed the data. The results of inform the conclusions presented here. This analysis is broken into four case studies:
  1. Distribution of Landmarks over the Five Boroughs
    Assesses where landmarks preservation is densest or least dense by neighborhood.
  2. Contextual Preservation?
    Analyzes how protecting a landmark limits redevelopment of neighboring properties of less aesthetic value
  3. How does the preservation movement reflect economic patterns?
    – Factor affecting the preservation of city-owned structures
    – Factors affecting the preservation of residential structures
    – Relationship between preservation and gentrification?
  4. Keeping up to pace?
    Questions the degree to which landmarks preservation succeeds in protecting recently-built landmarks
From this data, hidden trends and biases in historic preservation become visible. Firstly, we identify a higher-density of landmarks in certain (and usually higher income) neighborhoods. Secondly, we identify a marked preference among historians for protecting structures pre-1945. (Is there so little in the city’s recent architectural history that is worth preserving?) And thirdly, our analysis hints at the strength of market forces and developers in shaping the scope and definition of preservation.

Read More

.

.

  1. “Individual Landmarks,” NYC Open Data, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Housing-Development/Individual-Landmarks/ch5p-r223 (retrieved 5 November 2018). ↩
  2. “LPC Individual Landmark and Historic District Building Database” NYC Open Data, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Housing-Development/LPC-Individual-Landmark-and-Historic-District-Buil/7mgd-s57w (retrieved 5 November 2018). ↩
1 Comment

A Brief History of Mulberry Bend

  21 October 2018 , ,

At the intersection of history and the immigrant experience

Written for Kenneth Jackson’s Columbia University undergraduate course “History of the City of New York”

.

Mulberry Bend

Mulberry Bend c.1896. Buildings on left side of street are now demolished.[1]

.

Mulberry Bend, nestled between the New York County Criminal Court and the tenements of Chinatown, is at the geographic crossroads of New York City history. At 500 feet long and 50 feet wide, Mulberry Bend is between Bayard Street to the north and Worth Street to the south. Named after the slight turn the street makes midblock, the Bend has a rich, over 350 year history: marsh, city slum, site of urban renewal, and now heart of the Western Hemisphere’s largest Chinese enclave.[2] Through its rich history, the Bend’s brick and wood-frame tenements hosted waves of immigrant groups: Irish, Italians, freed blacks, and now the Chinese, one of New York’s most resilient immigrant groups whose presence in Chinatown reaches as far back as the 1830s. Consistent to these immigrant groups is their struggle to survive and prosper in America. Many of these immigrants, such as the Irish and Italians, have long left the Five Points neighborhood where the Bend is located, leaving few traces of their presence. But the neighborhood was vital as their first point of contact in the New World, a way station between their country of origin and future prosperity in the Promised Land. As such, the Bend exemplifies some of the trademarks of the immigrant experience: a working-class community populated by an immigrant diaspora that emulates the language and tradition of their country of birth. Though their homeland may be distant, in Italy, Spain, Germany, Ireland, or China, they recreated a familiar world beneath the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan. Neither fully American nor fully foreign, neither a quiet residential street nor busy commercial thoroughfare, the Bend existed and exists as a community of transient identity.
When the Dutch first settled New York, the area of Mulberry Bend and Chinatown was wooded and marshy land. The Bowery, one block east of what would become Mulberry Bend, was a Lenape Indian trail traveling from the tip of Manhattan to the heights of Harlem, about ten miles distant. The New York County Criminal Courts, one block west of the Bend, was the site of colonial New York’s main source of drinking water, the Collect Pond.[3] Change came when the city’s tanning industry developed at the adjoining Collect Pond because it could carry away their industrial waste. The Ratzer Map of Manhattan, dated 1776, even plots the Bend, which bends to avoid the marshy topography of the Collect Pond. Despite this moderate industrial development and gradual filling in of the pond with soil, the area remained marshy and unfit for living.[4]

Read More

.

Ratzer Plan 1776

Excerpt from the 1776 Ratzer Map of Lower Manhattan. The area labeled as “Common” is now City Hall Park, the “Fresh Water” body was known as Collect Pond, and the “Tanners Yards” was the center of the future Five Points Slum. Mulberry Bend is the line in bright red. The dotted land pattern indicated low-lying marshes and woods that have yet to be developed. The grid of streets had been laid out, but had yet to be populated with tenements and businesses.[5]

.

No comments

The Geography of Art History

  14 October 2018
According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

.

Related: Data analysis and visualization of 120,000 works in the Museum of Modern Art

.

.

In this film, each colored dot indicates one location represented by art in the Met’s online database. Dot location indicates artwork provenance. Dot size indicates the number of objects from this place. The time each dot appears corresponds to the year this work was created. This data is assumed to be an accurate sample size.

.

Over the past few years, the Metropolitan Museum has catalogued over 25% of its holdings online. This represents ~590,000 objects, covering over 5,000 years of human history from 17 curatorial departments. The diversity of objects in a museum’s collection (and the amount of contextual information known about these objects) may reflect the kinds of narratives a museum can curate about artistic and global history. This visualization charts the provenance and year of production of every single object that is catalogued on the Metropolitan Museum website, whenever this information is known.
The geography of art history is uneven. Certain regions, particularly cities, are home to diverse and famous artistic output. Thomas Friedman similarly describes globalization as being spiky and concentrated in big cities. Other regions are comparatively less productive and less studied. Either this reflects museum curators’ historic bias against Africa, Latin America, and the “Global South” in favor of Europe. Or this might reflect a more fundamental historical reality: If geography guides artistic production and privileges regions with good geography, like areas surrounding the Mediterranean, then landlocked and inaccessible regions with poor geography will have less artistic output.

.

.

Art objects from ancient cultures like China, Egypt, and Sumeria frequently have known provenance but unknown year of production. Unfortunately, they are therefore excluded from this visualization. There are many objects in the collections with known provenance but unknown production date. Figure one illustrates objects with known provenance and known year. Figure two shows objects with known provenance only.

.

Figure 1: All art with known provenance AND known year.
Figure 1: All art with known provenance AND known year.
Figure 2: All art with known provenance
Figure 2: All art with known provenance

.

The original data was downloaded here from the Met Museum’s website.
This visualization and interactive map are free to view and download here.

No comments

The University of Oxford in a Box

  1 October 2018 ,

 

.

Music: Minuet in G Minor by Bach

.

This paper model of Oxford folds out of a leather suitcase. This is a souvenir of my Oxford experience.
Half the model features university’s main buildings: The Radcliffe Camera, Bodleian Library, Sheldonian Theatre, University Church, and the Clarendon Building. The other half is the campus of Saint Catherine’s College in Oxford.
Attaining precision in a small model is difficult and took about two weeks to build. It is made from paper cutouts, which were folded into various shapes. Below are two of the cutouts before assembly. Dimensions: 7 by 14 inches and 1.5 inches deep.
Below is the image of one of these cutouts before assembly, and the ground plan of the campus before the paper buildings were mounted on cardboard.

.

grounplan-u301g9

 

.

oxford-11-uujbf6
oxford-10-12zy67w
oxford-9-18vxcja
oxford-12-1dc0lb9

.

Saint Catherine's College in foreground. The center of campus in background.
Saint Catherine’s College in foreground. The center of campus in background.
Radcliffe Camera - History Library
Radcliffe Camera – History Library
oxford-2-13t0d4y
Clarendon Building - the original home of Oxford University Press
Clarendon Building – the original home of Oxford University Press
Saint Catherine's College
Saint Catherine’s College
Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in foreground.
Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in foreground.
oxford-7-2n4hr0u
oxford-4-26axkq3
No comments

Computer models of world heritage sites

  6 September 2018 , ,
Through digital models, architecture’s audience can expand beyond in-person visitors. Here are a few of my creations that can be explored in virtual reality. The need for models to load in the web browser imposes a creative limit on file size and numbers of polygons and textures model can contain. Too many textures or too much geometry and a model will not load. This process therefore requires me to be economical and to get the most amount of detail with the least amount of file size. All models featured below are about the size of a word document or email attachment.

.

Notre-Dame of Paris
Notre-Dame of Paris
Eastern State Penitentiary
Eastern State Penitentiary
Eastern State Penitentiary
Eastern State Penitentiary
Panopticon
Panopticon
Notre-Dame of Paris
Notre-Dame of Paris
Brooklyn Brownstone
Brooklyn Brownstone

.

Models reveal aspects of construction and design that are otherwise invisible. Amiens Cathedral and the Kaaba in Mecca are illustrated from below as if the ground were invisible. The view of the Kaaba from above is only possible through computer models, due to religious restrictions on flying above the Kaaba. When viewed below, the cathedral appears to float in the air as if it were an image of heaven, as its medieval masons in fact intended when they built vaults and towers that reached so high.
I can also strip away later changes or decay to restore a building to its original, imagined, or ideal appearance. Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque (which are surrounded by trees and Roman-era walls) or Amiens Cathedral (surrounded by the modern city) appear more complete in my models than they are in reality. To quote from Viollet-le-Duc, the restorer of French cathedrals like Notre-Dame of Paris:
“To restore a building is not to preserve it, to repair, or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time.”

.

The Kaaba

.

Plan of Al-Aqsa Mosque

.

Plan of Amiens Cathedral

.

Section of Amiens Cathedral, based on a drawing by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

No comments

Interactive surface parking map of central Newark

  12 August 2018 ,
Explore an interactive map of the 300+ acres of parking in Downtown Newark. This map is part of PLANewark’s ongoing fight against the expansion of surface parking in Newark. Click the rectangle icon on upper right hand corner of map to view full screen. Click on individual, color-coded lots to view information on the property owner and acreage.

.

Interactive map of Newark’s blight of parking

.

.

Destruction of the James Street Commons: 1975-2020

This map (accurate as of April 2021) illustrates buildings demolished in one Newark neighborhood, the James Street Commons. When historians first considered this neighborhood for landmark status in 1975, there were 425 historic buildings. Even after earning landmark status in 1978, demolitions and urban decay continued. Rutgers, Edison Parking, St. Michael’s Hospital, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have demolished dozens of old buildings, mostly to construct surface parking lots as an “interim” land use. It is time that the local and state governments be more proactive in preserving the city’s history.

.

No comments

Columbia University Artwork

  5 August 2018 ,
Featured in:
– The Columbia Daily Spectator in September 2016
– The Columbia student newspaper in October 2016
– The 2018-19 edition of the Asia Pacific Affairs Council journal
– And the Columbia College Today alumni magazine in winter 2019-20 (last page) and summer 2022 (pages 18-22)

.

A map of campus

.

This ink and watercolor drawing shows every building, window, and architectural detail on campus. The number of windows on each façade are faithful to reality. There are at least 2,000 windows. The perspective was formed from Google Earth satellite and street view images. The image measures 26 by 40 inches and is framed in my dorm room. I wanted to create a souvenir of my four years at Columbia. Years from now, I will look at this image and remember.
The scan below is suitable for viewing but not for large-format printing. Please request access to the full-size scan at ~300dpi
View more artwork like this about my experiences walking in New York City.

.

.

Columbia Campus

.

.

Ink sketches of campus

.

Hamilton Hall at Columbia University
College Walk
College Walk
College Walk and Broadway
College Walk and Broadway
Van Am Quad
Van Am Quad
Low Library
Low Library
Fayerweather Hall (History Dep't)
Fayerweather Hall (History Dep’t)
Faculty House
Faculty House

.

Columbia in a Box

.

Before my first year at Columbia University, I assembled this tiny model of the campus out of painted and folded paper. Each building was measured out on a flat sheet of paper, decorated, painted, cut out, and then folded. Each building is made with no more than one sheet of paper. This creation folds out of a vintage cigar-box. Dimensions: 5 inches wide, 9 inches long, and 3 inches deep.

.

Music: Columbia University Fight Song

.

Morningside Campus
Morningside Campus
Columbia University in a box
Columbia University in a box
Low Library
Low Library
Lerner Hall
Lerner Hall
Barnard students
Barnard students
Student with mattress
Student with mattress
Hamilton Hall
Hamilton Hall
Butler Library
Butler Library
Panorama of Low Library
Panorama of Low Library
Philosophy Hall at Columbia University
Philosophy Hall at Columbia University
Riverside Church
Riverside Church
Grant Memorial
Grant Memorial
Riverside Church
Riverside Church
Low Library at Columbia University
Low Library at Columbia University
Van Am Quad at Columbia University
Van Am Quad at Columbia University
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
Philosophy Hall at Columbia University
Philosophy Hall at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University

.

Timelapses of Morningside

.

This project features six time-lapse sequences of Columbia University’s campus. I mounted a camera above my desk as I drew and painted each watercolor.

.

Music: Columbia University Fight Song performed by Justin Zhao

.

College Walk
College Walk
Alma Mater
Alma Mater
Van Am Quad at Columbia University
Van Am Quad at Columbia University
Butler Library
Butler Library
Hamilton Hall
Hamilton Hall
Van Am Quad
Van Am Quad
Low Library
Low Library