2011. A smartphone-based augmented-reality app developed for Freshkills Park, the 2,200-acre former landfill site on Staten Island. The experience was constructed using the Layar browser, which makes use of a phone’s camera, GPS, compass and accelerometer to enhance what is seen with a layer of digital information. Users are able to view the landscape through their phone, andFreshkills Park+ provides relevant information, audio, video, links and downloads in real time.

The project was a collaboration with Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena of media architecture studio Med44. The use of a smartphone app to provide information to site visitors doesn’t just provide the opportunity for a handheld self-guide–it also responds to site constraints.  Physical, foundation-supported signs are not currently a viable option on site due to the vast network of underground landfill infrastructure.

Tags: Mobile, Urban Planning

2006. To get acquainted and share our experiences of a common geography, I set up a daily archive and evening broadcast of phone messages left by residents of my neighborhood.  In their messages, contributors were asked to report on amazing or inspiring experiences in their daily lives.  They could listen to the evening broadcast via phone or web stream. About 50 neighbors contributed messages over the month, and 300 people listened to the broadcasts. I advertised for the Museum via hand-signed letters and various types and versions of posters. 

Tags: Graphic Design, Web, Mobile, Programs, Community

2013. New logo, social media sites and website—which I both designed and built—to launch comedian/rapper Zach Sherwin under his own name after years of performing under a stage name. Goals were straightforwardness, simplicity and playfulness. The site was built with custom PHP on Wordpress, to allow easy updating with no coding required by Zach. Also built a mobile-friendly version of the site.  

Tags: Graphic Design, Web, Mobile

2013. Logo and website design for a film criticism blog. The blogger’s long-term project is to review 50 films from each of the 100 years between 1930 and 2030. The reviews are lengthy-but-unpretentious personal essays, and the site abounds with lists of personal favorites. My proposal was to condense as much of the navigation as possible while providing multiple points of entry and legible and reliable structure.

Tags: Graphic Design, Web

2009-2012. I created, designed (on CSS-customized Wordpress), wrote and edited the Freshkills Park Blog, updating content several times per week.  Since the park is a limited-access, long-term development in a remote corner of New York City, it was important to offset by maintaining an active and frequent presence in the minds of its existing and potential advocates; the blog was part of the resulting strategy. It served as a hub for stories related to all of the intellectually interesting aspects of the park: landfills, recycling, landscape architecture, New York City development and history, art, renewable energy and more, in addition to any news and media relating to park development and programming. In conjunction with a lecture series I ran on related topics, the blog was one of the only ways for the general public to easily engage with—and virtually gain access to—the park on a regular basis. The site came to average approximately 2000 unique views per day.

Tags: Strategy, Writing, Web, Urban Planning

2007. My master’s thesis (PDF, 10MB) in urban planning focused on mobile user-generated and location-accessed digital annotation of physical places with text and media, and how this emerging field can be useful to urban planners and designers. The thesis establishes a taxonomy of modes of spatial annotation (both physical and virtual); catalogues annotations made in two neighborhoods each for the projects Yellow Arrow (in New York City) and [murmur] (in Toronto); and develops a preliminary methodology to analyze and compare trends in distribution, placement and content of annotations. So-called ‘placelogging’ content is found to distinguish itself from other forms of spatial annotation by its application a wide range of public and private places with predominantly subjective, first-person content.

Participant interviews and research on related technologies are used to support claims that placelogging could be used to identify sites of shared meaning in the city as well as to foster place attachment, claim to space and social connections among participants. Uses in community development are considered through three case studies of implementation. Uses for revealed meanings are proposed in preservation, identification of development priorities and sensitivity of response in urban development. 

Tags: Research, Graphic Design, Writing, Mobile, Community, Urban Planning, Urban Design