The libraries of The New School have been a vital source for scholarly study and creative inspiration throughout the history of the school. Before their incorporation as a unified Library, The New School, Parsons School of Design, and Mannes School of Music each had separate libraries.

Jean McClintock Gardner is a longtime Parsons urban environment faculty member. You can read more about her here.

“I had always seen architecture as landscaping.”

– Michael Kalil, “Seed Vision” interview, 1990

“We dream faster than we can build and we build faster than we accept. We therefore invent the notion of the future until we accept what we have built.” -MK

There’s nothing less utopian and avant-garde than the New York City loft. A symbol of gentrification in Manhattan and Brooklyn, teeming with tech-bros and slumming Wall Street workers, when you see loft construction you can be sure that the artisanal mayonnaise shop won’t be far behind.

The ceiling is painted black, excepting the reflecting area in the center and around the walls which are white. To the level of the tops of the doors, the walls are painted in colors, one section being orange and the next yellow with blue next to that and so on.

The address at 65 Fifth Avenue has a storied past. Back in 1881, when it was a four story brownstone, the building housed the headquarters of Thomas Edison’s “new” electrical company. It became the first building to be lit exclusively by electricity.

Lewis Mumford studied at the New School for Social Research. You can read more about him here.

The Government of India asked for recommendations on a programme of training in design that would serve as an aid to the small industries; and that would resist the present rapid deterioration in design and quality of consumer goods.

What could have been my feeling when Orozco, the greatest mural painter of our time, proposed to contribute a mural. All I could say was, ‘God bless you. Paint me the picture. Paint as you must. I assure you freedom.’

– Alvin Johnson