Just Places Lab

Freshkills Park: An Introduction (Part 1)

In operation from 1948-2001, Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island became the largest household garbage dump globally, receiving 150 million tons of New York City's solid waste. It was in the early 2000s that the conceptualization of landfill-to-wilderness park entered the civic conversation, and thus began a radical transformation. Today, it is the largest of its kind on the planet. 

This is a film following artist Jade Doskow at Freshkills Park. The video was created by Just Places Lab videographer Melody Chen and the videography and research team: Wyeth Augustine-Marceil, Kellen Cooks, Jennifer Minner, Yu Wang. 

Freshkills Park: Jade Doskow Photographer-in-Residence (Part II)

Jade Doskow, as the Freshkills Photographer-in-Residence, is creating a photographic archive of a major chapter within the story of New York City's infrastructure, no less massive an undertaking than the creation of Central Park in the 1850s. Doskow's photographs make clear the site's ethereal, paradoxical beauty and infrastructure, highlighting the undulating meadows as well as the methane pipes punctuating the rolling hills.

This is a film following artist Jade Doskow at Freshkills Park. The video was created by Just Places Lab videographer Melody Chen and the videography and research team: Wyeth Augustine-Marceil, Kellen Cooks, Jennifer Minner, Yu Wang. 

A New Wilderness: Freshkills Lecture by Jade Doskow at Cornell University

Lecture on October 14, 2022 as part of the Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial. 

During this time of climate catastrophe, Freshkills Park offers a compelling view of how visionary urban planners can take a landscape that has been destroyed and resurrect it, transforming the garbage of the U.S.'s most populous city and creating grasslands replete with rare species of flora and fauna and waterways once again attracting marine life. Doskow's work asks: if 2,200 acres of New York City's household waste can be transformed into glorious meadowlands and woodlands, what else is possible?

CR0WD: An introduction (2021)

This video was created by Just Places Lab film-maker Melody Chen. The video includes Jason Rearick and Jennifer Minner of the Just Places Lab, Felix Heisel and Andrew Boghossian of the Circular Construction Lab, and Susan Holland of Historic Ithaca. 

Wall Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn, New York

CR0WD performed a site visit to the Wall Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn, New York in 2020. The City of Auburn demolished this historic structure in 2021. The Just Places Lab and other CR0WD partners, such as the Preservation Association of Central New York Circular Construction Lab, Historic Ithaca, and the Susan Christopherson Center for Community Planning have studied this case to understand opportunities and barriers to building reuse and deconstruction and salvage potential. Footage by Jennifer Minner.

Northland Pattern Wall: City of Past and Future Craft

Drone footage of the Northland Pattern Wall: City of Past and Future Craft, in Buffalo, New York. The assemblage artwork by Dennis Maher and Instructors and students of the Society for the Advancement of Construction-Related Art (SACRA) program. October 2018. Footage taken by Eden Marek.

Assembly House 150 in October 2018 by Eden Marek

Assembly House 150, a nonprofit directed by artist, architect, and educator Dennis Maher and faculty in the Department of Architecture at University at Buffalo.