PRO participated in the Storefront for Art and Architecture's second annual souvenirs show, Souvenirs: New New York Icons. P.R.O.'s submission, Aestimamus Omni Publica represented Brooklyn Community Board 16 and the neighborhood of Brownsville.

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the largest public housing authority in North America and home to 1 in 14 New Yorkers. If NYCHA were its own city it would be about the size of Miami. 

Community Board 16, which includes much of the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, contains the most densely concentrated area of public housing in the United States, comprising over 100 NYCHA buildings in a single square mile.

NYCHA is one of New York City’s largest and most important public assets, like the public parks system, public transit, and the public schools.  What distinguishes NYCHA from these other public infrastructural systems is its iconic architectural identity.  The tower-in-the-park developments are based on utopian European planning models, and typically distinguished by geometric forms arrayed across superblock sites and skewed from the surrounding street grid. The buildings are highly recognizable to every New Yorker, and as much a symbolic embodiment of New York City as our most iconic skyscrapers.

Mischaracterized for too long as a failure, these structures represent our highest social ideals and should be celebrated, cherished, and memorialized.

Souvenirs: New New York Icons is on display September 16 — November 18, 2017.