The Daily Hub

Pratt Center released “Creating Corner Stores and Cornerstones: How NYC Can Help Mission-Driven Housing Developers Create and Sustain Commercial & Community Spaces,” a report responding to the growing problem of commercial vacancies in New York City. It provides solutions that both the City and State can take to protect commercial businesses in a rental market that is pricing them out.

Luka Lucic, associate professor of social science and cultural studies, was interviewed for Nature’s story “COVID school closures cost children one-third of a year’s learning”: “Kids were getting super familiarized with the cyberspace and technological context, and will in the future be much more native to the digital world.”

George Ranalli, BArch ’72, was profiled in the Bronx Times about his decades-long architecture practice and its connection to growing up in the Bronx: “It’s been a long relationship with the architecture of the borough.”

Fashionista’s story “How Fashion Schools Are Teaching the Metaverse” highlighted technology electives at Pratt like AI and interactive installations. Assistant Chair of Fashion Tessa Maffucci told the publication: “We felt it was important to introduce curriculum exploring ethical questions and considerations about how this technology is restructuring the relationship between fashion creation and consumption.”

Alumnus Roxy Paine was interviewed by Artforum about his recent work on time, technology, and how we perceive the world: “I want to take what is so instantaneous about machine learning and slow it through making.”

Mickalene Thomas, BFA Fine Arts ’00, created the show set for Dior’s haute couture collection presented this month in Paris. Thomas’s portraits of pioneering Black and mixed-race women complemented the fashion inspired by Josephine Baker. The work was covered by Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Wallpaper.

Spring semester means it’s time for Pratt Shows, the annual celebration of creative work by Pratt’s graduating students that runs through May. Pratt Shows 2023 kicks off with the opening of the first BFA in Photography thesis exhibition on January 30. Check out the work on campus and stay tuned for more Pratt Shows to come!

Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation by Rosetta S. Elkin, the academic director of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program, was reviewed by Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Samantha Black, BFA Fashion Design ’05, collaborated on a collection for Target timed with Black History Month. The Sammy B X Target collection was covered by Black Enterprise.

Ann Gillen, BFA ’59, was featured in the New York Times for her long career creating public sculpture, including 30 commissions around New York: “You want light that shifts, you want to see how it works with people.”