Thursday, January 17th, 2013
“I think my approach works for a changing field. I’m not dogmatic or doctrinaire. I stay open-minded. If you’re rigid, you can’t be a good critic. I wouldn’t be in it if I didn’t feel optimistic. I’m still full of wonder, I still love it. I like seeing what’s going on with vernacular architecture now, for example. And the arguments over 2 Columbus Circle show that the preservation movement is upside down right now. When they compare its loss to that of Penn Station—I’ve got smoke coming out of my ears! It’s not being lost, it’s being transformed. I live and believe in the present. I don’t live in the past and you can’t live in the future. That’s why I’m basically a modernist.”
In 2005, Board member Cathy Lang Ho interviewed Ada Louise Huxtable for an issue of The Architect’s Newspaper devoted to criticism. Read the full interview here.
Tags: 2 Columbus Circle, Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture criticism, Cathy Lang Ho
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Wednesday, August 15th, 2012
Susan Chin spoke to Metropolis about the Design Trust for Public Space’s new Five Borough Farm initiative (pictured at left), saying “Along the way we learned that urban agriculture is about much more than food. It’s about teaching kids where carrots come from, providing leadership skills and job-training to high-school students, capturing storm water and food waste for compost, and bringing neighbors together to transform underutilized land into vibrant public space.” For a Huffington Post piece examining the spatial backdrop of the Aurora shooting, Board Chair Michael Sorkin commented, “Malls are repressive spaces. They have distorted the nature of the way in which one is able to participate in the life of a city as a citizen.” In an article about the lack of connection between new buildings and the city’s environment, the Vancouver Sun quoted Robert A.M. Stern’s recent warning, “We need to be ever suspicious of trends masquerading as ideas.”
Tags: Design Trust for Public Space, Five Borough Farm, Huffington Post, Michael Sorkin, robert a.m. stern, Susan Chin, Vancouver Sun
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Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Speaking at the Center for Architecture, Susan Chin (left) encouraged women to recognize skill sets within others, urging “It is important to look beyond oneself. People always ask, ‘what does the AIA do for me’? But it’s not about you; it’s about driving business to architects.” In a Toronto Star article about neighborhood improvement methods, Ken Greenberg cautioned, “It makes no sense to be building extremely high density where you don’t have transit, or a real plan to get transit. Saying that you’re just going to put the density there and transit may or may not appear someday is not good enough.” Coming off of the Rio+20 Conference, Board Member Saskia Sassen wrote an article for Newsroom Panama about the power of cities – as opposed to the nation state – to make environmental change. “Unlike nation states, city mayors from diverse countries are able to have productive discussions about environmental sustainability without being bogged down by national interests…In part, that’s because it is in cities that many of the global environmental challenges become tangible and urgent.”
Tags: Center for Architecture, Ken Greenberg, Newsroom Panama, Rio+20, Saskia Sassen, Susan Chin, Toronto Star
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Wednesday, July 11th, 2012
In a Design Observer article reflecting on MoMA’s “Foreclosed” exhibit (pictured at left), Tom Angotti tackles ‘the housing question,’ arguing that “The problem is that we can’t design our way out of the foreclosure crisis…We need to stop looking for the next technological or spatial fix, because it will inevitably reflect and reproduce the entrenched economic and social inequalities that have led us to our current crisis.” Ronnette Riley spoke to the Times Observer about the comparable qualities of architecture and fashion, saying “Architecture is like fashion. There are trends, and they last longer, but it’s constantly evolving.” Robert A.M. Stern joked with the New York Times about his ‘starchitect’ appellation. “That’s a term used for a lot of people,” he said. “But since my name is Stern and “Stern” means star, I think that’s perfectly good. It’s all the other people that are intruding.”
Tags: Design Observer, MoMA, New York City, New York Times, robert a.m. stern, Ronnette Riley, starchitect, Times Observer, Tom Angotti
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Friday, June 29th, 2012
Ken Greenberg spoke at a conference in Hamilton, Ontario about changing transportation habits, stating “Autopia has started to collapse. The new North American dream is about being able to walk to work.” Board Member Toni Griffin (pictured above) discussed the launch of the new J. Max Bond Center for Design on the Just City with Architectural Record, and articulated her goal for the Center as “My long-term vision is to create an academy that raises design awareness among youth of color. As we devise interventions that move toward the “just city”–if we define the just city as being inclusive and equally accessible–then architects must reflect that approach.” In a USA Today article about the Millennial generation of workers, Patricia Lancaster commented, “Cities around the world are competing to become creative digital lifestyle centers…(Young workers) are into culture, parks, working closer to home, having dogs in the office.”
Tags: Architectural Record, Autopia, Hamilton, J. Max Bond Center for Design on the Just City, Ken Greenberg, Millennials, Ontario, Patricia Lancaster, Toni Griffin, USA Today
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Friday, June 15th, 2012
At a community meeting focused on the redevelopment of Sandy Springs, GA, David Dixon affirmed, “You picked the right time if you want to create a downtown. This is probably [the best] time since the Great Depression.” In Metropolis, Nina Rappaport discussed the inspiration behind her “Vertical Urban Factory” exhibit (pictured above), explaining “Industry can now also be ecological–an urban industrial symbiosis where one company’s waste become the others energy source; where one company’s scrap metal is repurposed by another. This symbiosis has not been tried in cities, so opportunities abound.” Moshe Safdie spoke to Vanity Fair about ‘starchitecture’ and opined, “I don’t think I have a signature style that announces, ‘This is a Safdie.’ But I think star architects have seized an opportunity to go anywhere in the world to produce meaningless buildings. You know?”
Tags: David Dixon, Georgia, Metropolis, moshe safdie, Nina Rappaport, NYU, Sandy Springs, Vanity Fair, Vertical Urban Factory
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Friday, June 1st, 2012
Upon the release of a new study entitled “Auckland, Connected” by the AECOM Global Cities Institute, Joseph Brown speculated, “By 2040, [Auckland] will have made the changes necessary in its pursuit to become the world’s most liveable city, or it will have let the status quo prevail.” NYC Parks’ principal urban designer Charles McKinney spoke to The Riverdale Press at a public meeting held to discuss the future of Van Cortlandt Park (pictured at left), asserting “It’s easier to listen to people first than to convince them later.” Speaking at a Stockholm event concerned with migrants’ rights, Board Member Saskia Sassen described the privatization of detention-deportation procedure as “cancer when it enters the kinds of domains that have to do with the governing of people.”
Tags: AECOM, AECOM Global Cities Institute, Auckland, Auckland Connected, Charles McKinney, Joseph Brown, migrants rights, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, privatization, Saskia Sassen, Stockholm, The Riverdale Press, Van Cortlandt Park
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Monday, May 14th, 2012
In a speech to the Burlington Performing Arts Center in Burlington, Ontario, Ken Greenberg said, “The car is a wonderful piece of technology, but like many great elements of technology we tend to abuse them, we test them to failure.” In a New York Times article about the preservation of ‘unloved buildings,’ Nina Rappaport argues, “It’s like saying, ‘I don’t like Pollock because he splattered paint.’ Does that mean we shouldn’t put it in a museum? No, it means we teach people about these things” (image from the article pictured above). Board Member Saskia Sassen commented in the Financial Times about the erosion of the “civic” quality of communities favored by the super-rich buying their fourth or even fifth house. Sassen cautions “It can feel less like a neighbourhood and more like a corporate district in the low density of street life.”
Tags: Burlington, Burlington Performing Arts Center, Financial Times, historic preservation, Ken Greenberg, New York Times, Nina Rappaport, Ontario, Saskia Sassen, unloved buildings
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Friday, April 27th, 2012
In an Observer article about New York City’s Economic Development Corporation, Tom Angotti commented, “They pass for being a government agency, and in fact they have more power than many of the line agencies under the mayor.” In speaking about his Seaside, FL development (pictured at left), Robert Davis speculated that the future “push for new urbanism will be in cities on urban renewal land and in the suburbs where former shopping centers will be redeveloped.” Ken Greenberg wrote about the need for new urban manners in Planetizen, asserting “the real measures of successful urbanity may be in the demonstrations of mutual respect while living at close quarters, the degree to which we are comfortable with each other…and the accumulation of small acts of kindness.” On the importance of aesthetics in architecture, Michael Stepner said “I use a quote from Garrison Keillor. He said the response to, ‘Why should we build something so nice?’ is, ‘It’s to lift our hearts and to inspire us.’”
Tags: aesthetics, EDC, Florida, Garrison Keillor, Ken Greenberg, Michael Stepner, new urbanism, New York Observer, NYC Economic Development Corporation, Planetizen, Robert Davis, Seaside, Tom Angotti, urban manners
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Friday, April 13th, 2012
Revisiting Death and Life (pictured at left) in last week’s City Builder
Book Club, David Dixon discussed how today’s approach to urban poverty “offer[s] a sort of post-Jane Jacobs “laissez faire” approach to unslumming.” In an Atlantic Cities article, Anthony Flint declared that “my confidence in mankind’s ability to plan for growth was restored” by MCNY’s “The Greatest Grid” exhibit. In conversation with Architectural Record, Deborah Gans spoke of the architectural profession as “still split between form-givers and the social pundits–a false dialectic.” She explained, “After overreaching our limits as modernist social planners, architects now struggled to renegotiate our discipline as one of both form and participation.”
Tags: Anthony Flint, Architectural Record, Atlantic Cities, City Builder Book Club, David Dixon, Death and Life of Great American Cities, Deborah Gans, Goody Clancy, Jane Jacobs, MCNY, The Greatest Grid, unslumming
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