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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260507T080000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260902T170000
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SUMMARY:CFA Lab: Repair — Democracy and Urban Spaces
DESCRIPTION:Overview\nThe Center for Architecture presents “CFA Lab: Repair — Democracy and Urban Spaces\,” a multi-month exhibition and residency running May 7 through September 2\, 2026\, at 536 LaGuardia Place in New York City. The exhibition opens as part of the Center’s Spring Exhibitions Opening Night on May 7\, 6 to 8pm. \nCFA Lab is the Center for Architecture’s annual multi-disciplinary residency programme that offers new voices in architecture and design full authorship over dedicated areas of the Centre’s platforms. The 2026 cohort was selected through an open call inviting architects\, urban planners\, designers\, artists\, cultural conservationists\, and community activists to respond to a single prompt: Repair. Two group residents were selected whose projects operate at the intersection of ecological systems\, energy infrastructure\, community power\, and the politics of the ground. \nFocus\nThe prompt “Repair — Democracy and Urban Spaces” frames the concept of repair as simultaneously material and political. The CFA Lab brief positions repair not merely as the maintenance of physical infrastructure but as a lens through which to examine and reimagine democratic\, equitable urban spaces\, addressing the political and social inequities embedded within the built environment. \nThe two selected projects approach this prompt from different but complementary positions: one working through the lens of community energy and fossil fuel infrastructure; the other through the ecological and political implications of pavement and the ground beneath cities. Together they propose that the repair of democratic urban space requires attending to both who controls energy and what covers the ground. \nResidents will address the urgent need to repair not only the physical infrastructure of our environments but also the political and social inequities embedded within them.\nCenter for Architecture\, CFA Lab 2026 Brief \nResident Projects\n\nEnergies of Repair: Visualizing Community Power in NYC\nAndrea Johnson and Ashley Dawson. Examines fossil fuel infrastructure across New York City’s waterfront communities\, mapping the relationship between environmental harm\, community vulnerability\, and the potential for energy repair as a form of democratic reclamation.\nDEPAVE: An Ecological Repair of the Ground\nFriends Making Work (Christine Giorgio\, Amelyn Ng\, and Gabriel Vergara). Addresses the ecological and political dimensions of pavement removal and ground restoration as an act of urban repair\, connecting surface conditions to questions of land access\, stormwater\, and community space.\n\nGraphic design for the exhibition is by WSDIA. Both projects were developed over the Lab’s multi-month residency period\, with public programming running alongside the exhibition throughout its run. \nRelated Events\n\n\nMarch 29\, 2026\nEnergies of Repair Tour: Sunset Park Toxicity with UPROSE\n\n\nApril 11\, 2026\nEnergies of Repair Tour: Fossil Fuels on Newtown Creek\n\n\nMay 7\, 2026\, 6–8pm\nSpring Exhibitions Opening Night\n\n\nMay 18\, 2026\nReclaiming Power and Ground: Two Projects in Urban Repair (Networking and Programme Event)\n\n\nResidents and Context\nAndrea Johnson and Ashley Dawson bring together community organising practice and academic environmental humanities to focus on New York City’s fossil fuel infrastructure as a site of both harm and potential repair. Their project\, developed across the Lab residency\, maps the geography of energy inequality in the city and argues that energy transition is inseparable from democratic repair of urban communities historically burdened by extraction and pollution. \nFriends Making Work\, the collaboration of Christine Giorgio\, Amelyn Ng\, and Gabriel Vergara\, addresses the ecological violence of urban pavement: the suppression of ground hydrology\, heat island intensification\, loss of soil ecology\, and the foreclosure of community green space. DEPAVE frames the removal of pavement as an act of design and civic repair simultaneously\, connecting material ground conditions to the democratic access to urban nature. \nAbout CFA Lab\nCFA Lab is the Center for Architecture’s residency programme for new voices in design. By offering full authorship over dedicated platforms\, it provides an institutional infrastructure for emerging practitioners to develop content beyond what the conventional exhibition format typically allows. Past Lab cohorts have addressed food systems\, climate adaptation\, housing\, and civic technology. The 2026 edition is the first to take repair as its central framework\, a choice that is both timely and politically specific given the current condition of public infrastructure\, democratic institutions\, and urban ecology in the United States. \nAudience\nThe exhibition is open to the general public at the Center for Architecture\, free of charge\, through September 2\, 2026. Its four-month run allows for extended public engagement. The related events programme\, which includes field tours to specific New York City sites\, extends the exhibition’s frame beyond the gallery into the urban landscape it addresses. The audience spans architecture and design professionals\, community advocates\, educators\, students\, and general visitors. \nEvent Details\n\n\n\nExhibition Dates\nMay 7 – September 2\, 2026\n\n\nOpening Night\nMay 7\, 2026\, 6–8pm (Spring Exhibitions Opening Night)\n\n\nVenue\nCenter for Architecture\, 536 LaGuardia Place\, New York\, NY 10012\n\n\nAdmission / Fees\nFree and open to the public\n\n\nResident Projects\nEnergies of Repair (Andrea Johnson and Ashley Dawson); DEPAVE (Friends Making Work: Christine Giorgio\, Amelyn Ng\, Gabriel Vergara)\n\n\nGraphic Design\nWSDIA\n\n\nOrganizer\nCenter for Architecture / AIA New York\n\n\nFunding\nNew York State Council on the Arts; NYC Department of Cultural Affairs\n\n\nSponsors\nGensler; Sciame; Thornton Tomasetti; Zetlin & De Chiara\n\n\nContact\ncenterforarchitecture.org / 212-683-0023\n\n\n\n\n✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight\nThe choice of “Repair” as the 2026 CFA Lab prompt is doing more than thematic work. It names a specific condition: the simultaneous deterioration of physical infrastructure\, democratic institutions\, and urban ecology in American cities\, and the inadequacy of conventional architectural and planning responses to all three. The two selected projects read the brief precisely. “Energies of Repair” treats fossil fuel infrastructure as a political and spatial problem whose solution requires democratic reorganisation of energy\, not just engineering. DEPAVE treats pavement as a political act that has been performed against communities\, whose reversal is equally political. Both projects refuse the apolitical framing of repair as maintenance\, insisting instead that what gets repaired\, and who does the repairing\, are the actual design questions. The four-month run and the field tour programme\, which takes participants to Newtown Creek and Sunset Park\, are the right format for this content: the argument these projects are making requires leaving the gallery. Whether the programme reaches the communities whose spaces are being discussed\, or remains an architecture-sector audience event\, will determine whether it delivers on its own premise. \n\n\nClosing Note\nCFA Lab 2026 runs through September 2 with a public programme that extends well beyond the gallery walls into New York City’s waterfront and pavement politics. For those engaged with the intersection of urban design\, environmental justice\, and democratic practice\, the two resident projects offer a grounded and site-specific set of arguments about what repair actually means when it is taken seriously as a design framework rather than a metaphor.
URL:https://archup.net/event/cfa-lab-repair-democracy-and-urban-spaces/
LOCATION:Center for Architecture\, 536 LaGuardia Pl.\, New York\, NY\, New York\, NY\, -\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibitions
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