Place Yourself in History. BLDG BLOK is creating the tools for discovering the wonders of cities. BLDG BLOK is a history and technology company. memorial.
At its heart, we’re interested in how the past and future collide. And, to that end, we’ve created a collaborative of historians, preservationists, archivists, digital media arts, and programmers who are inventing and creating new ways to present history. Our team of experts is currently building a digital tour guide to cities that will be available as an app. The New York City app will be availab
le in Summer 2013. We also love throwing events that bring people together for discussions, performances, and coding to invent new storytelling algorithms. At our last event over a hundred people turned up during a tornado for The Programmer vs. The Historian, featuring architectural historian Francis Morrone, musicians Kodomo and Zach Layton, filmmaker Gary Breslin, poet Justine El-Khazen, and writer Sean Kennedy. THE FOUNDERS: Liz McEnaney & Dana Karwas
Liz and Dana crossed paths while working as consultants on artist Maya Lin's What is Missing? They are now leveraging their combined experiences -- working on large-scale projects across the digital media, art, academic, history, and civic communities -- to make BLDG BLOK. Together they make a killer team. Dana is notorious for finding programmers and designers at the drop of a hat. Liz is able to reach out to institutions that she’s worked with in the past and sign them on as data partners and to call famous historians to curate content. Dana teaches interactive design, UX, and IA at NYU-Poly, Columbia University, and ITP at NYU. She is a spokesperson for the start-up scene at NYU and is a role model for students, as one of the few professors that also has a company in the NYU-Poly incubator. Dana graduated from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, and served as the Media Director for Maya Lin Studio from 2008 - 2012 where she ran a team of 50 programmers, designers, artists, and architects on installations around the world. Liz is an urban historian and teaches historic preservation in the graduate school at Columbia University. She is an experienced curator whose most recent exhibition was a history of Staten Island on view at the Museum of the City of New York. She also directed a documentary about cities in New York’s Hudson Valley that will air on PBS this Fall, and worked on a public/private tourism initiative for New York State in 2009 - 2010.
