Hudson Valley Initiative

We are pleased to introduce the new Director of the Hudson Valley Initiative, Kaja Kühl. Kaja will oversee and coordinate our work in the region – beyond the classroom – facilitating research and design projects that emerge from discussions with community groups and local organizations. If you have a project in mind or in the works, we’d like to help, so please get in touch with Kaja.

Save the Date

3/31/2018 Hudson Valley Initiative Gallery Meet

Following our inaugural “Barge Meet” in Kingston, we are excited to follow up with a “Gallery Meet” at the Hudson Valley Design Lab in Poughkeepsie. We hope to convene lively roundtable discussions with engaged community leaders from the region around three themes: Social Infrastructure, Regional Ecologies, and Alternative Economies. Look for more information in early March. See a video of our first Hudson Valley Barge Meet.

News and Events

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Film Screening and Conversation of Lost Rondout: A Story of Urban Removal

Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall

March 5, 2018, 6:30pm

Urban Urge Prize

Two teams of current Urban Design students were awarded the Urban Urge Prize to implement physical and programmatic interventions in and around Poughkeepsie, New York. that catalyze urban engagement and change. The Prize was initiated in remembrance of Moji Baratloo, a much-loved professor, and aims to join students with community groups to create small-scale, real-time projects.

This year’s winning projects are: “Whisper Wall”, by Betsy Daniels, Leslie Chuang, Wang-Ting Tsai, and Sofia Valdivieso, engages youth in storytelling. “Solar Place” by Faisal Alzakari, Jose Ponte, Ruilan Jia, and Xiaohan Wang demonstrates alternative energy generation in a public setting. The Prize provides seed funding to each team who, with local partners, are now developing their projects, to be installed later this year.

In the Classroom

Under the guidance of Liz McEnaney, Historic Preservation students are looking at ways to leverage the growing heritage tourism industry in Newburgh. Galia Solomonoff’s Advanced Architecture Studio is using the 258-acre former IBM campus near Kingston for a speculative design for a global research think tank. Second year MArch students are working with Caitlin Tailor using the Hudson Valley Farm Hub to explore future climate scenarios as they relate to the Hudson Valley as a regional foodshed and watershed.