“Quassaick Creek: A Greenway in the Making” at the Newburgh Free Library will open on January 31 at 5pm. The exhibition is organized by the Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance and the Hudson Valley Initiative at Columbia University GSAPP and will feature work produced by students in the Master of Architecture Program. Founded in 1990, the Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance is a volunteer-based advocacy group that seeks to involve individuals and entities, both public and private, as advocates for the development and implementation of a Quassaick Creek Watershed Plan. The Hudson Valley Initiative is a community design initiative based at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

The architectural proposals for a Nature Center at the soon to be breached Holden Dam were led by Professor Robert Marino in the spring of 2019. The dam will be converted into a weir for better erosion control and to restore the ecology of the creek. Students experimented with ways in which a nature center can inform the reconfigured site. The exhibition will be open to the public through the month of February during opening hours of the library and will offer space for comments and conversation about the future of the creek as a public amenity.

The student projects and the exhibition are part of Columbia University’s ongoing commitment to the Hudson Valley and the City of Newburgh. Since 2014, more than 250 students from GSAPP have been working in and about Newburgh. The work ranges from urban design visions, documentary videos, reports and concrete architectural design proposals.

In 2017, GSAPP expanded its commitment by founding the Hudson Valley Initiative, in order to pick up, where student ideas leave off. Through the initiative, faculty and students continue to engage with the communities they learn from past their semester-based curriculum, convene meetings, facilitate projects, host workshops or help develop design visions.