New Media

  • Housing Works History
  • GRANTEE
    Gavin Browning, Glen Cummings & Laura Hanna
    GRANT YEAR
    2015

Andrew Coamey and architect Alan Wanzenberg at the Keith D. Cylar House Health Center, 743 East 9th St, New York City, December 2015.

Housing Works History is a timeline that surveys twenty-five years of housing and supportive services built by Housing Works for homeless individuals and families living with HIV/AIDS in New York City. From its emergence out of the direct action group ACT UP in 1990, the organization built over 200 units of permanent and transitional housing and served over 20,000 people by 2015—weathering intense political hostility or indifference by offering care and hospitality to communities in need. Housing Works confronted NIMBYism in Soho, Harlem, and the Lower East Side; sued the Giuliani Administration and won; opened a popular bookstore/cafe and thrift stores that fund housing and provide jobs; built residential and medical facilities, and never stopped speaking out. The timeline features archival media, T-shirts, posters, architectural drawings, HIV and AIDS infection rate data, key moments in US housing policy, and original films spotlighting advocates, architects, and residents.

Gavin Browning is director of public programs and engagement at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Previously, he was director of events and public programs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He served as the first director of Studio-X New York, and worked at the independent publishers Verso and The New Press. He cowrote and produced the animated short, The Commons (2009), and he edited the books The Studio-X New York Guide (2010) and Group Efforts: Changing Public Space (2015). He holds a BA in English from The New School and an MS in urban planning from Columbia University.

Glen Cummings is a graphic designer and founding partner of MTWTF, a design studio whose clients include the Brooklyn Museum; Lincoln Center Theater; Dia Art Foundation; Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA); and the city of Newark. He has served as vice president of AIGA/NY, as a Design Trust for Public Space fellow, and as the cofounder of Design/Relief and GDNYC. He has taught in Yale School of Art's Graphic Design Program since 2002 and has been a visiting critic at Princeton, UCLA, Columbia, OCAD, MICA, SVA, and Parsons. Prior to founding MTWTF, he was senior art director at 2x4, directing projects for MTV, Chanel, and the Muhammad Ali Center. His work has been exhibited or presented by The Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Van Alen Institute, the Architecture League, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Laura Hanna is a filmmaker and organizer. She is director of Williams, Gattis, Hammer, and James, four long-form films about death row inmates in Indiana, Delaware, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, respectively. She created a short film with Birgitta Jonsdottir for Jeremy Hammond called Wikileaks and the War on Whistleblowers, and produced The American Dream for Creative Time Reports. She codirected the Perpetual Peace Project, a series installed at the New Museum, the Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Utrecht Library. In 2008, she made A Housing Urbanism Made of Waste, now part of MoMA's permanent collection, and was commissioned to produce a series of short films for the Venice Biennale of Architecture with Kyong Park and Ted Smith. She has produced and directed shorts for the Nation, the New Press, SEIU, the Art Review, OR Books, the New School, and the Slought Foundation.