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Public Utility: CITY SINK
Urban Landscape Propositions by New York Prize Fellow Denise Hoffman Brandt
April 21 - 30, 2009
at Van Alen Institute
30 W. 22 Street 6th Floor
New York, NY 10010

CARBON SINK TOUR: Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6:00pm (FULL!)
OPENING RECEPTION: Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 7:00pm

Van Alen Institute is pleased to announce Public Utility: CITY SINK, a proposal for the design and deployment of urban carbon sink infrastructure in New York City by New York Prize Fellow Denise Hoffman Brandt, principal of Hoffman Brandt Landscape Design and a professor of Landscape Architecture at the City College of New York. Hoffman Brandt's CITY SINK investigates the physical, economic, and policy potential to catalyze urban carbon sequestration reservoirs, or sinks, and reframes urban planting practices as an ecologically operative program.

Coincident with the launch of the Million Trees programs in New York and Los Angeles, where street trees dominate the image and implementation of urban landscape, CITY SINK directs our attention to the unseen - to the urban ground as substrate for strategic insertions of biotic activities that balance visible vegetative biomass with organic soil storage capacity. During her fellowship residency, Hoffman Brandt has developed a range of sink apparatus and multi-scale deployment tactics that work with plant and soil ecologic processes to amplify carbon sequestration. These sink landscapes diversify the image of the city to accommodate lifecycles of disruption and decay, demanding a public re-evaluation of the urban landscape as civic investment and coordination of professionals across science, design, law, policy, and economics.

Public Utility: CITY SINK presents Hoffman Brandt’s deployment plans and image projections in Van Alen Institute’s gallery for public review and input, alongside the installation of a sink apparatus prototype for altering the carbon lifecycle of dead urban trees.

Prior to the opening reception on Tuesday, April 21, Hoffman Brandt will lead a tour through the Flatiron District’s streetscapes as they might otherwise be imagined as sink landscapes. The tour will depart from Van Alen Institute at 6:00pm, and will return to the gallery for a reception and discussion at 7:00pm.

The 6:00pm Carbon Sink tour is now full! If you would like to be placed on the waiting list please RSVP to rsvp@vanalen.org by 4:00pm on Tuesday, April 21. Otherwise please join us for the 7:00pm gallery reception and discussion, no reservations necessary.

The Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.