Connection
Nimble pandemic response An interview with NYCxDesign Design Corps founder, Sreoshy Banerjea Sreoshy Banerjea Sreoshy is an urban designer and entrepreneur who finds interest in urban conditions and how they contribute to an equitable cultural model of development. This combines her degrees in architecture and urbanism, and helps her understand the context of projects through design development and resolution. She believes in socially conscious planning and design while maintaining a high standard of aesthetics. Professionally over the last decade, she has worked with a variety of internationally renowned architects, including Rafael Vinoly Architects in New York and Dominique Perrault Architecture in Paris. She has worked with Dattner Architects on civic-minded urban projects as well as affordable housing master plans, including Lambert Houses and Hallets Point. For the past five years, she has led urban design at New York City Economic Development Corporation’s planning division, where she uses visualization as a decision making tool for a diverse portfolio across all five boroughs. She guides design direction and manages urban design retainers for work on several visionary master planning efforts. More recently at NYCEDC, she founded NYCXDesign Design Corps in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Aside from her professional obligations, Sreoshy is a champion of increasing diversity and equity. She has founded the Creative RFP Toolkit, an online course that provides a five step toolkit that helps design professionals respond to RFPs with a powerful storyline. Sreoshy received her Bachelor of Architecture in 2010 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She received her Masters in Architectural Studies with a specialization in Urban Design from MIT in 2013.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the spring, New York City’s approximately 27,000 restaurants have been constantly forced to adapt to changing regulations and guidelines from city and state officials. Initially reduced to only takeout and delivery service in the spring, restaurants were allowed to participate in an outdoor dining program over the summer. By fall, the city permitted indoor dining at 25 percent capacity. Now due to rising cases, the city’s restaurants are faced with another end to indoor dining amid winter temperatures. To help offer solutions to spatial problems arising from these restrictions, NYCxDesign’s Design Corps program aims to connect designers and restaurants through pro bono design services. Over 30 designers and firms are currently registered to assist restaurants in need of site assessments based on state and city outdoor/indoor dining requirements, design of barrier elements, and dining furniture layouts layouts. The program strives to provide access to good design while also helping restaurants achieve compliance and maintain operations amid
10
the restrictions. I spoke with Sreoshy Banerjea of the New York City Economic Development Corporation to learn more about her role in the founding of Design Corps and the continued impact it has had for the city’s restaurants.
“Most of the restaurants who need help have specific challenges, situations or site conditions that the city guidelines did not anticipate. Interpreting guidelines to meet specific situations and solving these types of challenges with innovative solutions is what architects are really good at.”
