Parsons Presents U.S. Launch of Alphabet City's Water

Parsons The New School for Design presents the U.S. launch of Water, the latest publication in the Alphabet City series co-published by the MIT Press.

In each volume, writers and artists address a single theme from many perspectives, revealing its processes and possibilities.

The theme of the latest issue, water, tackles how this vital resource - a transportation conduit, industrial feedstock, and agricultural necessity - is coming under new pressures from the nano (migration of pharmaceutical molecules into the system) to the macro (dwindling supplies due to a ballooning global population and climate change).

Parsons Interim Product Design Director Robert Kirkbride and Alphabet City Director John Knechtel will host a reading featuring contributors Mei Chin, a recipient of a MFK Fisher Distinguished Writer Award from the James Beard Foundation; composer Melissa Grey; and Bhawani Venkataraman, an associate professor of interdisciplinary science at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.

The event kicks off a 24-hour "Infrastructure Slam," where students from across the university will work in interdisciplinary teams to brainstorm solutions to issues that threaten local, regional and global infrastructures.

The results of the slam will be exhibited at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center through November 22.