A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE (it’s bound to come tumbling down)
2022
A glimpse of the future (it's bound to come tumbling down), uses cardboard blocks to visualize the distribution of affordable housing, market rate units, and hotel rooms in the recently rezoned Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD). When children play with the blocks, they preform the roles of urban planner, developers, community board members— a surprisingly accurate performance, as community board members, developers, and urban planners often act like children. Parents and passerby’s look on as kids build up a small city that continuously crumbles around them.
The SFWD recommends 13 new towers to be built in 29 acres along the Flushing Creek coastline, in Flushing, Queens, with 1725 new residential units, and 879 new hotel rooms. In this project, the combined 2604 units are represented as 160 12"x6"x3" cardboard boxes, sized to match children blocks commonly found in nursery schools. All 1719 units of market rate housing are represented as 102 blue blocks, 61 units of affordable housing are represented by 4 black boxes, and 879 new hotel units are depicted by 54 orange boxes, representing a scale of about 6% of the total SFWD project. The SFWD plan was approved by the NYC City Council, City Planning Commission, and Community Board 7 in 2020.
Photos by Sihan Cui