The entirety of nyc land

Materials and dimensions:

Hard maple, acrylic, metal base, and aluminum hardware

79” l x 36" w x 39” h

 

This installation was displayed at the Data Through Design 2025 exhibition “Corpus Bodies of Data”. The installation included three objects and a map, two bases representing the watersheds that support the water supply system of New York City, and the third representing the city itself. Each acrylic layer represented the land acquisitions and expansion by the city each decade from the start of the infrastructural project in 1849 all the way to present day. The maple base is a CNCed terrain model of the corresponding area. The map of the city, playing off the NYC subway map, expresses the extent of land the city owns and operates, allowing viewers to view the city in its entirety. The project plaque read the following:

 

The map of NYC is always depicted as the five boroughs, however, this map is an incomplete showing of the entirety of land the city owns and operates. Nearly half of the land under city government jurisdiction can be found upstate, all revolving around its water source. This includes a series of reservoirs, open land, and infrastructure that allow the people of both the city and upstate communities to survive. This incredible infrastructural achievement requires a symbiotic relationship between both populations, an attribute that has been neglected for much of its history, however, has been attentively harmonizing in the past few decades. This is not a history project, though it depends upon what has come before to understand its current position. This relationship is an ongoing political and cultural debate, with the city acquiring land in the Catskills up until present day in order to maintain the city’s water source as an unfiltered surface water collection system. Exploring and explaining these bodies of water, the lands that surround them, and the populations they support is critical for these watersheds’ future environmental, political, and sociological success.