Cover Image by Tim Hursley

Public space doesn’t only exist in plazas and parks, but also in the margins—on boardwalks, between stoops and sidewalks, in curbside dining sheds and windswept dunes. These are the places people pass through, gather in briefly, and return to every day.

Aerial view of the Rockaway Boardwalk, Queens, NY. Environmental graphic design by Pentagram. Architecture and urban design by WXY. Video by Albert Vecerka/Esto.

At WXY, we believe these transitional spaces carry more potential than we give them credit for. And when designed with care, they become flexible, civic frameworks—built not just for use, but for change. This summer, that belief took form in Venice, where WXY’s work was featured in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

In the U.S. Pavilion, PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, co-organized by Peter MacKeith, Dean of the Fay Jones School; Susan Chin of DesignConnects; and Rod Bigelow of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, participants responded to the prompt: What Makes a Porch Public?

Our answer: it’s not about scale—it’s about how a space holds people.

What Makes a Porch Public? highlighting The Coastal Conservation Center, Photo by Tim Hursley

WXY’s had two designs in the U.S. Pavilions exhibition, What Makes a Porch Public?, contribution, including “Coastal Porchscapes”, which reimagines the porch as a shared civic threshold, especially along vulnerable coastal areas. Focused on Arverne East and the Rockaway Boardwalk, this layered photographic display shows how coastlines—often framed only as zones of risk—can become platforms for connection and stewardship.

From dune restoration to civic hubs, our work along the peninsula reclaims the in-between as a vital civic asset—where infrastructure, ecology, and daily life converge.

Urban Dining Porchscapes, highlighting WXY’s work with NYCDOT on Open Restaurants, Photo by Tim Hursley

The second design, “Urban Dining Porchscapes,” highlights the rapid rollout of NYCDOT’s Open Restaurants program developed with WXY and fabricated by SITU. Born during the pandemic, these street-level structures transformed curbs into spaces of relief, recovery, and routine.

By applying design thinking to the most everyday of edges—the curb—we helped reimagine what public space can be: nimble, generous, and grounded in local need.

The Dunes: Resilient Communities, by WXY and RISE at the19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. Curated by Carlo Ratti, Photograph by Marco Zorzanello, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

Beyond the Pavilion, WXY was also included in the Biennale’s main Arsenale exhibition, Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. curated by Carlo Ratti, with “The Dunes: Resilient Communities”—a panel that explored a systems-based approach to coastal resilience and our work with RISE across the Rockaway Peninsula.

We showcased how layered, adaptive interventions—like dune gardens, porous trails, and multi-use pavilions—turn environmental buffers into spaces for public life. These are thresholds that function as both protection and participation.

Weisz Speaking at Saint-Gobain Sustainable Construction Talks. Photograph by Marta Buso. Courtesy Havas Events.

While in Venice, Claire Weisz joined the Saint-Gobain panel Future-Ready Architecture to speak about how sustainable design begins with listening—to people, to place, to shifting conditions. From porches to public rights-of-way, WXY’s work insists that the overlooked deserves attention, ensuring equity and durability in the in-between. These projects remind us that designing for flexibility means designing with care, for now and for what’s next.

The Biennale is on view through November 23.

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