All the Queens Gardens Book Launch & Film Screening

In honor of Earth Day 2026, join us for an evening conversation and film screening celebrating the new book All the Queens Gardens: Everyday Landscaping in New York's Largest and Most Diverse Borough by architect and artist Rafael Herrin-Ferri.

For the special occasion, we will play an accompanying short film by Sean Mowry which captures the story of Herrin-Ferri's work documenting the surprising beauty of New York City's largest borough. It's a personal story and a larger history about why Queens looks so strange and spectacular.

More about the book:

In his second book exploring the urban vernacular of Queens, New York, Rafael Herrin-Ferri shifts his focus to the green spaces that accompany the houses and small multi-family buildings of the "World's Borough." As varied and colorful as the façades featured in All the Queens Houses (JOVIS, 2021), these spaces introduce an organic, botanical element to the streetscape. Semi-formal lawns in the French and Italian traditions sit cheek by jowl with the improvised arbors of Chinese vegetable gardens, Caribbean-inspired flower gardens, brightly colored Hindu courtyards, elaborate hand-crafted water features, life-size replicas of fauna, and countless other displays of idiosyncrasy and cultural diversity.

Through its photographs and text, this book paints another portrait--softer and greener this time--of the dynamic and multicultural landscape that is Queens.

See you there!

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Rafael Herrin-Ferri is a Spanish-born architect and artist based in Jackson Heights, New York. His professional work includes a mix of high-end residential and cultural projects with Manhattan and Brooklyn based design studios while his artistic production is focused on documenting the multicultural urban vernacular of Queens. In 2017, he exhibited a large selection of photographs at The Architectural League of New York. Four years later, he published his first book: All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough (Jovis, 2021), to critical acclaim. In October of 2025 he published the companion book: All the Queens Gardens: Everyday Landscaping in New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough (Jovis, 2025).

Sean Mowry is a filmmaker from Morristown, NJ, currently based in Astoria, Queens. His short documentary All the Queens Houses, which he directed and edited, premiered at DOC NYC in 2025. He has worked in post-production as an assistant editor on series airing on PBS, Showtime, Food Network and HGTV. And he worked in series development at NorthSouth Productions, where he developed pitches sold to HBO, Discovery+, and Channel 4. One of these was a series on dystopian architecture hosted by rock icon Iggy Pop.

Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art, architecture and design specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, community members and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, art shows, music performances and other events.