The global climate crisis has again come into focus as unprecedented wildfires ravage the West Coast, casting a smokey haze as far east as New York. At the same time, the city is facing a pandemic-induced economic fallout and needs smart ideas to rebound. It seems serendipitous that the nonprofit Trust for Governors Island has released a proposal to rezone parts of its underutilized waterfront, long set aside for economic development, to incubate a climate research center. Renderings by the local firm WXY depict a sprawling complex that would include public programs, offices for green tech companies, and space for a university or research institute.

“As a city of islands with 520 miles of coastline, the devastating impacts of climate change remain one of the most urgent issues facing our communities,” says Alicia Glen, Trust for Governors Island Chair. “This exciting plan for Governors Island will bring a tremendous resource that not only represents an important step forward for the City’s recovery, but also builds upon our history as the global center for innovation and progress.” If approved, the center is projected to create 8,000 new jobs and $1 billion in economic impact.

Though many institutions are facing budget shortfalls and may dismiss the idea of expanding, history offers a useful precedent. In the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman notes that “Rockefeller Center broke ground at the start of the Depression; Lincoln Center, when thousands of New Yorkers were fleeing to the suburbs.” And in the aftermath of 9/11, when many predicted the end of tall buildings, city officials plotted an economic turnaround that caused a supertall building boom. New York is at a crucial juncture; perhaps a smart investment into tackling the climate crisis is exactly what the city needs.

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When: Sept. 18–Oct. 24

Where: Pace Gallery, New York

What: One of Dubuffet’s last remaining works from the late 1960s and early 1970s to be realized at a heroic size, the monumental black-and-white Le Cirque immerses viewers in what the late French artist calls “a continuous, undifferentiated universe of form” reminiscent of an urban plaza. He was particularly influenced by the frenetic movement of traffic on the streets of postwar Paris, where he worked at a studio in Périgny-sur-Yerres. The colossal sculpture’s writhing forms are engaged in seemingly ceaseless motion, acting as a portal away from New York’s silenced streets and into the artist’s exhilarating alternate universe.

Claudia and Harry Washington founded C&H Washington Studio on the notion that design should connect people to their human nature. The duo experiments with artisanal techniques native to El Salvador, where their studio is based, to create sleek furniture and lighting fixtures, including an ongoing partnership with Bernhardt Design that has yielded contract essentials such as the award-winning Mitt Chair and brand-new La Paz Tables.

After facing controversy for more than two decades, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, finally opens to the public today. Congress first authorized a design competition in 1999 for a memorial to the nation’s 34th president, who helped lead the D-Day invasion, defeat the Nazis, and bring stability to the U.S. during his two terms in office from 1953–61. Frank Gehry’s proposal quickly garnered criticism when it was selected as the winner one decade later. Controversy mired the project at every stage—it was subject to congressional hearings, political squabbles, several rounds of design tweaks, government defunding, and even opposition from Eisenhower’s family.

But that’s all in the past. The memorial’s completion, which once was a holy grail for Gehry, feels like a triumph. Set slightly above street level in an open-air plaza near the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the memorial features two stacked pink limestone slabs that backdrop tableaux of heroic-size bronze figurative sculptures, designed in collaboration with Russian artist Sergey Eylanbekov, that highlight major milestones of Ike’s career. As Phillip Kennicott writes for the Washington Post, the new memorial “is unlike any other memorial in Washington, or the world.”

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