Residents Propose Design Plans for Home Development in Spring ARCscholars Course 

If Gisselle Nunez’s vision comes to life, dog owners at Brooklyn’s Marcy Houses may one day have a dedicated space to call their own.  

The high school junior and Marcy Houses resident recently spent several weeks studying her development to consider ways to improve its campus and surrounding area for the community. One option, she suggested, is to provide a place for residents to take their dogs to play outdoors. 

“There’s a lot of people who own dogs and they don’t have anywhere to train them, so I thought a dog park would be good for that,” said Ms. Nunez, who has lived at Marcy for about 11 years.   

This spring, Ms. Nunez joined more than a dozen other NYCHA residents who proposed design ideas to enhance the Marcy property’s built environment as part of the free ARCscholars program. Funded by the Public Housing Community Fund (formerly known as the Fund for Public Housing), the program pairs young NYCHA residents with architecture students from CUNY’s New York City College of Technology (City Tech) to research outdoor spaces at NYCHA developments and develop various planning interventions. The scholars also work with a group of professional architect mentors who help them cultivate their concepts.  

For the spring cohort, which concluded with student presentations at the FXCollaborative Architects office in Brooklyn on May 7, the ARCscholars focused on Marcy Houses as the class case study. It was the first time since the program launched in 2021 in which some residents of a specific NYCHA development were able to look to their home site for design inspiration.  

Ms. Nunez said she learned about the program from staff at the Marcy community center and thought its focus on architecture would be a new creative field to explore before she attends college. 

Through weekly workshops and separate site visits to the Marcy campus, the scholars devised design upgrades focused on rooftop amenities, increased gathering and active spaces such as exercise stations, and improved wayfinding and site identity around the Brooklyn property. Ms. Nunez was a member of the wayfinding project group, which presented solutions such as maps, structural landmarks, and lighted pathways to help residents and visitors better navigate the Marcy grounds.   

“We created things that would help people get around the Marcy community and different types of things that would help people find the areas they’re looking for,” Ms. Nunez explained.  

ARCscholars instructor and architect Naomi Langer-Voss noted that the class projects were given “a new lens” this spring by including the perspective of Ms. Nunez and other Marcy residents, who could offer a personal connection to the campus environment.  

“I think that having the Marcy students participating was really helpful because they were able to share their firsthand experiences of what it’s like to live there,” said Ms. Langer-Voss, adding that the residents took pride in having their home as the subject of study.    

The ARCscholars instructor also pointed to the benefits of collaborating with architect mentors, who provided additional guidance to the young students on how to fine-tune the features of their design interventions and increased their exposure to other aspects of the profession.   

“The mentors are all professional architects who can help synthesize the ideas that the students have and direct them into more specific design proposals,” Ms. Langer-Voss noted.  

Ms. Nunez, who hopes to attend John Jay College of Criminal Justice after graduating next year, welcomed the feedback of both the mentors and City Tech students to foster her creativity and expand her knowledge of the architectural field.   

“It was a good experience; I followed their steps and learned how to create new things,” she said.  

Following the spring cohort’s graduation, Ms. Langer-Voss said ARCscholars is now launching a paid summer internship opportunity for program alumni. The interns will gain exposure from both public and private-sector design practices, working with NYCHA Asset and Capital Management’s Architecture and Engineering Services Department, FXCollaborative, and Shakespeare Gordon Vlado Architects. 

To learn more about ARCscholars and the summer internship opportunity, visit arcscholars.org