In Brooklyn, the latest iteration of BEYOND THE STREETS lets visitors check out the work of more than 150 street artists from around the world. Curated by graffiti historian and “urban anthropologist” Roger Gastman, who’s also known for co-authoring books on street art and co-producing films like Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop, the show first opened in Los Angeles last year. Now, it’s up at the new 25 Kent Avenue space on the edge of Williamsburg and Greenpoint with a whole new collection of art spread out over two floors.

Among the biggest names you’ll find at the show include conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls, Shepard Fairey and Takashi Murakami. Sculptures, works on canvas and immersive installations share space with a Beastie Boys installation featuring “artifacts and ephemera” from the band’s 4-decade history, a functioning tattoo parlor by Bert Krak & Alexis Ross and a room of puppets made of trash by Paul INSECT and BAST.

For Gastman, what distinguishes the show isn’t just its diverse array of work, but the fact that it celebrates artists who spent years illegally working on the street. While the developers who are drastically changing cities and making them more homogenous might actually like to see officially sanctioned murals around as a way to “clean up the neighborhood,” graffiti artists who broke the rules (and sometimes paid the price) shaped street art as we know it, says Gastman. Many of the artists in the show started working under the cover of darkness, but now have their own prolific studio practices.

“You know, this culture—which was started by youths writing their names over and over again for the sake of fame and fun and notoriety—has ballooned into a worldwide cultural phenomenon,” says Gastman in an interview with Artnet. “So many of the pioneers are still with us today. A lot of them are getting older. But let’s learn from them. Let’s respect them. And let’s preserve the history as much as we can while they’re with us, before it’s too late.”

BEYOND THE STREETS NYC opened on June 21st and will run through the end of August 2019. If you can’t make it in person, peruse the artists and their work on the BEYOND THE STREETS website and check out some of the standout pieces at Gothamist and High Snobiety.

Sweetwater playground at the former Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn, New York is a colorful children’s fun park that’s dandy as old-fashioned candy.

A park with good taste? It’s more likely than you think thanks to locally-based artist Mark Reigelman and what used to be the world’s largest sugar refinery. A Williamsburg waterfront icon for the better part of two centuries, the old Domino Sugar Refinery has been transformed into Domino Park boasting a site-specific play environment called Sweetwater: “the sweetest playground in New York City.”

How Sweet It Was

Reigelman set out to create more than just a playground, though the result is eminently playable on its own. Instead, the artist elected to pay homage to the former Domino Sugar Refinery and, by extension, the long history of sugar manufacturing in America’s vibrant northeast. In a glazed nutshell, the playground invites children to explore the sugar refining process without getting their hands sticky, no matter what the weather..

Sweet (American) Dreams

The Domino Sugar Refinery was built in 1856 and additional infrastructure made it the world’s largest sugar refinery by 1882. The location on the banks of the East River facilitated the import of raw sugar cane from around the world. The factory employed approximately 4,500 people at its height, giving countless numbers of immigrants a boost into the American workforce – melting pots made for sugar AND people (though not at the same time).

Let the Dominos Fall

The factory ceased sugar refining operations in 2004 and stood abandoned until 2017, when the James Corner Field Operations-designed waterfront space known as Domino Park was created. Opened to the public on June 10th of 2018, Domino Park invites visitors of all ages to enjoy the remnants of this historic site, the soaring Williamsburg bridge, and the iconic Manhattan skyline. The youngest among us might have the most fun, however, as they climb up and down ramps, worm their way through tubes, trundle across conveyor belts and zip down slides from one end of Sweetwater to the other.

Sucrose For Comfort

Reigelman designed Sweetwater in three distinct interconnected stages: Sugarcane Cabin, Sweetwater Silo, and Sugar Cube Centrifuge. Following the path of raw sugarcane as it arrived at the refinery in days of yore, kids will be chopped up and crushed inside a replica industrial cabin, strained and filtered into sweet water syrup, and finally emerge fully-processed into freshly refined raw sugar… figuratively, of course. Fear not, helicopter parents, your precious progeny will return as sweet (or sour) as they entered.

Fun Factory

Reigelman’s tribute to the old sugar factory relies much on the inclusion of preserved and replica industrial artifacts scavenged from the old refinery complex. Wood floor planks enjoy a second life on the walls of the elevated cabin while colorfully-painted valve wheels cast from the original factory artifacts allow park guests to get a “hands-on” feeling of what the factory was like. Reigelman also sought to disabuse any thoughts of grim Industrial Age workhouses by liberally employing the vibrant yellow, turquoise, green and brushed metal hues that made up the original factory color palette.

Sugar High

Kids might be having too much fun negotiating Sweetwater Park’s 3D twists and turns to notice there’s a method to the interactive “madness”. Reigelman’s master plan envisioned three primary structures: an elevated cabin, a towering silo, and an industrial container.

Refined Recreation Redefined

Stainless steel slides, ramps, ladders and catwalks evoke the atmosphere of the old Domino Sugar Refinery’s complex and complicated architecture and infrastructure. Think of those “Powerhouse” scenes from old Looney Toons shorts and you’ll get the picture. “Truthfully speaking, we might have to join the kids during their outdoor playdates,” according to TimeOut Magazine.

A Treat Grows In Brooklyn

“Domino Park Playground was inspired by the ingenuity of the industrial age, the sugar refining process and the incredible site of the former Domino factory,” to quote from a statement by Reigelman. “The playground is not a celebration of sugar, but a reflection of industrial infrastructure that promotes physical activity, social engagement and a reminder of the unique history of the Domino Waterfront.” One would hope disquieting aromas off the nearby East River don’t cramp the fun factor.

Park Your Pancreas

“With a sugary color palette, dynamic graphics and an industrial visual narrative, Domino Park Playground sets children and adults alike into a space that ignites the adventurous spirit,” adds Reigelman. Best of all, a visit to Sweetwater Park won’t prompt a round of tooth-brushing nor a painful trip to the dentist.

When glimpsed from above, this stack of vivid orange shipping containers on a Brooklyn rooftop looks like an add-on structure, but it doesn’t end where the original house’s roof begins. It continues straight through the building, all the way to the ground floor, creating a sort of house-within-a-house to subdivide the space in dynamic new ways. The four reclaimed crates that can be seen from higher floors of neighboring buildings are just the penthouse portion, which opens onto a connected rooftop patio.

Designed by LOT-EK, the crate creation reinvigorates the 1930s carriage house, separating the kitchen from the living area on the ground floor and acting as a staircase and room divider on the second level. The containers are cut diagonally to let light pierce through the home from the front to the back.

Placement directly in the center of the building effectively slices the living space into thirds, creating new rooms, like the master bedroom in the back of the intermediate level and the children’s room in the front. On the penthouse level, the same diagonal slices that can be seen below are filled in with glass to frame views of the treetops and other buildings on the block.

When standing at street level, you can just barely see the corrugated orange metal sticking up beyond the matte black facade of the home, but the neon color and diagonal lines of the crates are definite attention-grabbers through the glass garage door.

Check out 9 more architectural shipping container creations by LOT-EK.

Building on the strategy of the Roosevelt Island Tramway (connecting to Manhattan over the East River), this proposal promises record commuting times, bypassing subways, streets and ferries to use the sky instead.

The East River Skyway project aims to make the jump between Boroughs faster, cleaner, safer and cheaper, all while reducing the load on the subway system, already packed to more than capacity under the ground below.

The design proposal calls for an initial connection between Williamsburg and and Lower Manhattan, followed by extensions deeper into Brooklyn and, ultimately, links to Queens and Long Island City as well.

Beyond the ultra-fast transit time boasted by the system there are some non-financial considerations as well: tourists and locals alike can also take the tram (as they already do to and from Roosevelt Island) in part simply to get a better view of the city from above.

Its designers cite other major international cities deploying and contemplating similar initiatives, from Singapore to London, England and  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

A tiny slice of real estate in Brooklyn is now an affordable, low-impact multi-level residence made of five stacked and renovated shipping containers. Williamsburg couple Michele Bertomen and David Boyle bought a 6×12-meter lot that had been vacant for 60 years, squeezed between two brick buildings. Conventional building materials would have stretched their budget, so they set out to design and build a shipping container house with a total cost of just $50,000 (not including the lot).

That price is unheard of in New York City, and it took a lot of innovation – with more than a few bumps in the road – to make it happen. Getting the right permits took ten months, with city officials repeatedly requiring changes to the couple’s plans. Luckily Bertomen is an architect and Boyle a contractor, saving them a lot of money. Once the plans were done and the materials acquired, it took just a few hours to put it all together.

The shipping containers were purchased for $1,500 each and once assembled, create an interior space measuring nearly 1,600 square feet. The container walls are insulated with Super Therm, a paint that contains ceramic particles, and the home is heated with radiant heat that runs through the concrete floors.

Believed to be the first shipping container residence in New York City, the house features multiple outdoor areas (including a private porch for the couple’s dog) and a roof terrace. See a complete tour of the interior at Inhabitat and DNA Info.