DENSE Magazine Launched By NJIT Alumni
New Jersey was built by design. It’s a strange and complicated place – flawed and often misunderstood. DENSE, a new magazine launched by a group of mostly NJIT alumni, tells the Garden State’s story through a critical lens. Design, in the eyes of DENSE, is a tool for change in a state that needs plenty of it.
“The project came from a desire to get people curious about what design can do and to activate their inner designers,” said Petia Morozov, a practicing architect who graduated NJIT in 1991, and executive director of the magazine’s parent nonprofit, DesignShed, which hosts Montclair Design Week. “At the heart of this change-making design are these powerful stories.”
DENSE is unconventional. As a beautifully designed print product with a digital platform, its subject matter leans into the complexity of the state. Most design publishing tends to focus on the luxury aspect of design and fails to mirror the real-world conversations around designing for environmental equity and social justice.
DENSE, on the other hand, is mission-driven, with storytelling at the core. The magazine covers important design topics impacting places like NJ. Such is the case for the first issue, published in early November, centers on the NJ Turnpike, a vital transit corridor that has historically been at the heart of countless and ongoing political conflict.
"Our contributors are folks who are in spaces of advocacy, whether that’s from a social perspective, cultural, environmental, or political perspective. These are the folks that are doing the work every day to face the challenges that we have as the densest state in the nation." - Petia Morozov
“NJ gets short shrift. It’s one of America’s punching bags,” said Gretchen Von Koenig, an editor of DENSE, industrial design historian, and NJIT alumni. “We’re glad to be a punching bag, but we have unique design considerations as a center for industry and manufacturing. What do you want your built environment to look like? Who built it? For whom?”
“There are these extreme ‘mosts’ in NJ,” said Morozov. “We have the most superfund sites, and the highest mortality among African American mothers. The density is not just dense demographically, but dense in a lot of conditions. We are interested in pulling people in to sit with that complexity.”
“There’s a playful relationship people might have with NJ,” said Morozov. “Our contributors are folks who are in spaces of advocacy, whether that’s from a social perspective, cultural, environmental, or political perspective. These are the folks that are doing the work every day to face the challenges that we have as the densest state in the nation.”
Contributors represent a wide range of disciplines, including Gabrielle Esperdy, professor of architectural theory and history at NJIT’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, former faculty member Brian McGrath, who taught at the school until 1990, and Dalal Elsheikh, vehicle designer at Ford and graduate of Hillier’s Industrial Design program.
“It’s critically important that a magazine like this exists about NJ because while NJ is located at the crossroads of the great urban centers of the northeast, it’s generally understood as the place you pass through,” said Gabrielle Esperdy who wrote the essay, “The City of New Jersey,” for the inaugural issue. “By situating the magazine exclusively as a subject of NJ, it’s making a strong argument for the centrality of that which is considered peripheral. It’s putting NJ on the map.”
“There are many places across the world that are experiencing conditions similar to NJ,” said Lune Ames, cofounder of DENSE Magazine. “The kind of density NJ is experiencing could foreshadow, or offer insight, into the conditions of the future.”
"The Hillier College is proudly located in NJ. Given our size, given our focus on undergraduate architectural education, it’s not surprising we made a big impact.” - Gabrielle Esperdy
DENSE was crowdfunded on Kickstarter, has a limited run of ten, bi-annual themed issues with themed events to go along. Every issue features essays, interviews, and visual stories grounded in an event that’s happened, or will happen, in New Jersey. The first issue begins in 1951 when the Turnpike opened. The editorial team of four approach the Turnpike as a character in NJ’s story, weaving through its tumultuous and sometimes clumsy design choices.
That many of the editors and contributors to DENSE Magazine are current or former students and faculty of NJIT’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design is no coincidence. The school is at the center of NJ's architecture and design community.
“NJIT students bring a lot of willingness and energy to understand design and to find their place in it,” said Morozov. “Having one of the more equitable demographics for a design school has made for a much more street smart and curious designer. I continue to root for that kind of designer. It just so happens to be my alma mater, but I feel there’s a real energy that I think we have that’s unique to the NY/NJ school system at large.”
“NJIT was the locust of my curiosity training,” said Von Koenig, who studied industrial design and theater arts while an undergraduate at NJIT. She also taught at NJIT for five years. “It fostered in me an approach to understand design through critical lenses. I consider NJIT my intellectual home.”
“We are a large design school, a public university that has long made an effort to study urbanism and architecture in NJ,” said Esperdy. “We don’t need to pretend to be located elsewhere. The Hillier College is proudly located in NJ. Given our size, given our focus on undergraduate architectural education, it’s not surprising we made a big impact.”
