OCTOBER 2025
Loving the Bronx, Montefiore, and DSI #CapTheCrossBronx at the Center for Architecture
“The Searching for Superpublics exhibition explores current directions in the design of New York City’s public space. The work on view introduces a search for additions to city life that overcome the boundaries of neighborhoods, communities, boroughs, and typical public spaces.” – Center for Architecture
#CapTheCrossBronx is a community led movement to right the wrong, to cap, or deck, 2.5 miles of the below-grade portions of the Cross Bronx Expressway at Parkchester. Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway is part of a Department of Transportation NYC project to “Reimagine the CBE.” This project is a community-driven effort to offset the negative impacts of the highway on communities while promoting residents’ well-being.
Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway means to build a public space on top of the existing highway to filter our harmful emissions from traffic, reduce the constant noise, provide new green spaces, and reconnect communities.
In MFA Design for Social Innovation’s course, Communication Design, taught by Chair, Miya Osaki and Corwin Green, students work with external clients and organizations to design communications as a system with intentional impact on outcomes. In Spring 2024, a student team of Susanti Vijaykumar, Héctor Ruiz, Ruisi Fu, Haoyu Chen, and Xiang Li partnered with Nilka Martell at Loving the Bronx, Montefiore’s Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine (PCSIM) program, to design a community-centered communications campaign to help the Bronx community connect the dots between the daily respiratory health challenges and their built environment and encourage them to contribute their voice to imagine the future of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Their project in communicating the #CapTheCrossBronx movement will be on display in the The Center for Architecture’s Searching for Superpublics exhibition October 3, 2025 through March 28, 2026 at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Pl., New York, NY 10012.
PHOTO COURTESY OF The Center for Architecture and Susanti Vijaykumar.
