Joshua McWhirter is a researcher, writer, editor, and educator focused on built environments, urban governance, public memory, and the politics of adaptive reuse. Currently, Joshua is a PhD student in Global Urban Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, where he is researching the confluence of commercial vacancy and social crisis in New York City, and how place-based strategies and organizing might be leveraged to forge new pathways for community development, public services, economic democracy, and climate adaptation in underutilized and “obsolescent” spaces of labor and consumption. He is also a part-time lecturer at Parsons School of Design, editor for Failed Architecture, and a freelance writer and audio producer. Previously, he was the managing editor for Urban Omnibus, The Architectural League of New York’s digital publication examining the collective work of citymaking. Joshua makes ambient and experimental music under the name Material Park.

CV ︎ 
Contact ︎

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Interview
Urban Omnibus
“An Extremely Normal Architecture Office”
w/ Bernheimer Architecture Union and Andrew Daley

May 2023


Reported Feature / Editorial
The New York Review of Architecture
“Strike Fever”

May 2023


Book Review
The Architect’s Newspaper
Against the Commons documents the often not-ideal role of shared land in urban planning”

February 2023


Editorial
Urban Omnibus
“Second Chances”

September 2022


Reported Feature
THE CITY
“Big Tech Pays to Supersize LinkNYC and Revive Broken Promise to Bridge Digital Divide”
w/ Gabriel Sandoval

April 2022


Interview
Urban Omnibus
“Trust Exercise”
w/ Memo Salazar and Nandini Bagchee

November 2021


Editorial
Failed Architecture
“Adaptive Refuse”

October 2021


Interview
Guernica 
“A Monumental Shift”
w/ idris brewster and Glenn Cantave

February 2021


Audio, Interview
Urban Omnibus
Dispatches series

April—December 2020


Audio, Interview
Failed Architecture
“Design, Mass Protests, Political Dissent”
w/ Jilly Traganou

December 2020


Interview
Urban Omnibus
“Building Structure and Building Power
w/ James Heard, Maya Porath and Shota Vashakmadze

October 2020


Book Chapter
The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art
“Back into the Locative: Theory and Practice in Urban Augmented Reality, 1999—2016”

July 2020


Interview
Urban Omnibus
“Saving Water” 
w/ Matthew Malina

April 2020


Interview
Urban Omnibus
“Co-Op Collectibles”
w/ Rania Dalloul, Lulu Johnson, Greg Mihalko, Maggie Schreiner, and Clara Weinstein 

January 2020


Feature
Urban Omnibus
“Lost in Transit”
w/ Rose Salane

September 2019


Editorial
Urban Omnibus
“Pattern Recogniton”

June 2019


Editorial
Failed Architecture
“Hudson Yards Was Not Inevitable”

April 2019


Editorial
Failed Architecture
“Stop Seeing Climate Change as an ‘Opportunity’ for Architecture”

November 2018


Editorial
Failed Architecture

“City Skins: Scenes from an Augmented Urban Reality”

September 2018