Destination Nostrand

by VAMOS Architects with Nostrand Park

Nostrand Park is a placemaking organization committed to fostering continued arts, community and commercial development in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Through the guidance of desigNYC, Nostrand Park was partnered with a design team from VAMOS Architects and given the challenge of reimagining the creative potential of vacant storefronts along ten blocks of Nostrand Avenue. The goal? - Get people to see the potential of Nostrand Avenue as an exciting urban destination.

 In the end, VAMOS delivered a final design product outlining the challenges and opportunities of a pop-up streetscape concept. This included a map documenting open storefronts along Nostrand Avenue and a vision for each type of prototypical intervention. These interventions include proposals for temporary street furniture, a series of “porch” conversions to activate shuttered storefronts, new window display concepts, and the rehabilitation of awnings and interior spaces to bring a sense of design to the street.

 Nostrand Park then coupled that information along with renderings into a video, which helped garner the attention and support of the community. The process has fueled new creative ideas for prototyping urban strategies with low budget/high impact approach to design.

 Destination Nostrand is meant to be a prototype strategy for addressing distressed or maligned streets and to encourage business development and community involvement in any blighted urban environment.

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