Institute for Urban Design

Congratulations to Board President Michael Sorkin, winner of a 2013 National Design Award!

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:15:49 +0000

Michael Sorkin was announced as the winner of a 2013 National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The category he won is Design Mind, which is “given in recognition of a visionary, such as an educator, author, critic, curator, or designer, who has had a profound impact on design theory, practice, or public awareness.”

For more on Michael’s work—at Michael Sorkin Studio, Terreform, The Nation, Architectural Record, City College of New York, and of course the Institute for urban Design, click here.

Marshall Berman will deliver the Mumford Lecture at CCNY, May 2

admin — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:49:14 +0000

The legendary Marshall Berman is delivering the Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism at City College on May 2, 6:30. p.m. It will be held in the Great Hall of Shepard Hall, Convent Avenue at 168th Street. Attendance is free and open to the public.

Waterproofing New York has been POSTPONED due to bad weather! Stay tuned for a new date…

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:29:22 +0000

Waterproofing New York: Saturday, 2/9 at CCNY’s Spitzer School of Architecture

admin — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:29:54 +0000

With two destructive tropical storms in two years, New York City—like other global cities—is entering a phase of adaptation to catastrophic climate events that are a result of carbon cycle disruption by human, urban, and industrial practices. Superstorm recovery will require more than a simple fix; it will necessitate systemic adaptation to escalating storm surge, precipitation, and wind events through the construction of new urban landscapes that have the capacity to merge social, cultural, and environmental forces.

The Landscape Architecture Program of the City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture, with support from the Municipal Art Society, American Society of Landscape Architects New York Chapter, and the Institute for Urban Design, will host a conference of municipal leaders, scientists, engineers, and designers to explore the impact of past and future storms on New York City’s infrastructural systems: Water/Waste, Power/Data, Circulation/Fuel, Parks/Recreation, and Shelter. The conference will reveal the operating systems of the city to open speculation on Waterproofing New York as an act of coordinated yet opportunistic, pragmatic, and inventive city design.

The conference will explore the potential to imagine city design that transcends risk, which seeks to assess hazard, in order to grapple with propositions in a context characterized by the uncertainty of multi-scalar social and environmental systems.

This event is free and open to the public.

Featured Speakers and Panelists Include:

Waste / Water

Jeanette Compton, Director of Green Infrastructure, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and Adjunct Professor, Fordham University
Paul Mankiewicz, Executive Director, The Gaia Institute
Lydia Kallipoliti, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cooper Union and Columbia University in New York
Kate Orff, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Co-Director of the Urban Landscape Lab at Columbia University, Principal, SCAPE

Power / Data

Frank Ruchala, Associate Urban Planner and Designer, Department of City Planning for the City of New York
Byron Stigge, Director, Level Agency for Infrastructure
Chris Reed, Adjunct Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Principal, Stoss Landscape Urbanism
Miguel Robles Duran, Assistant Professor of Urbanism, School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design, and Director, MS Design and Urban Ecologies

Circulation/Fuel

Petra Todorovich Messick, Senior Officer, Amtrak Outreach and Communications-North, Former Director, America 2050
Kevin Foster, Associate Professor of Economics, The City College of New York
Denise Hoffman Brandt, Associate Professor and Director of the Landscape Architecture Program at The City College of New York, and Principal, Hoffman Brandt Projects LLC
Georgeen Theodore, Associate Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture, and Director of the Infrastructure Planning Program

Parks/Recreation
Dennis Burton, Administrative Horticulturist/Forest Restoration Manager of Van Cortlandt Park, Past President of the Society for Ecological Restoration
Erika Svendsen, Research Social Scientist, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station
Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, The City College of New York, and Principal, Catherine Seavitt Studio
Gullivar Shepard, Associate Principal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

Shelter

Thaddeus Pawlowski, Long Term Planning Advisor, Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery
Mark Ginsberg, Partner, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects LLP, New York and National Housing Conference Board of Directors and Citizens Housing and Planning Council Board President
Lance Jay Brown, ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture, The City College of New York, and Co-Chair, AIANY Committee on Design for Risk and Reconstruction
Deborah Gans, Professor, Architecture School at Pratt Institute, and Principal, Gans Studio
Hilary Sample, Associate Professor, Columbia University GSAPP, and Principal, MOS

Closing remarks by

Michael Sorkin, Director, Graduate Program in Urban Design at The City College of New York, and Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio, Terreform

Featured Speakers and Panelists Include:

Waste / Water

Jeanette Compton, Director of Green Infrastructure, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and Adjunct Professor, Fordham University
Paul Mankiewicz, Executive Director, The Gaia Institute
Lydia Kallipoliti, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cooper Union and Columbia University in New York
Kate Orff, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Co-Director of the Urban Landscape Lab at Columbia University, Principal, SCAPE

Power / Data

Frank Ruchala, Associate Urban Planner and Designer, Department of City Planning for the City of New York
Byron Stigge, Director, Level Agency for Infrastructure
Chris Reed, Adjunct Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Principal, Stoss Landscape Urbanism
Miguel Robles Duran, Assistant Professor of Urbanism, School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design, and Director, MS Design and Urban Ecologies

Circulation/Fuel

Petra Todorovich Messick, Senior Officer, Amtrak Outreach and Communications-North, Former Director, America 2050
Kevin Foster, Associate Professor of Economics, The City College of New York
Denise Hoffman Brandt, Associate Professor and Director of the Landscape Architecture Program at The City College of New York, and Principal, Hoffman Brandt Projects LLC
Georgeen Theodore, Associate Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture, and Director of the Infrastructure Planning Program

Parks/Recreation
Dennis Burton, Administrative Horticulturist/Forest Restoration Manager of Van Cortlandt Park, Past President of the Society for Ecological Restoration
Erika Svendsen, Research Social Scientist, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station
Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, The City College of New York, and Principal, Catherine Seavitt Studio
Gullivar Shepard, Associate Principal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

Shelter

Thaddeus Pawlowski, Long Term Planning Advisor, Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery
Mark Ginsberg, Partner, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects LLP, New York and National Housing Conference Board of Directors and Citizens Housing and Planning Council Board President
Lance Jay Brown, ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture, The City College of New York, and Co-Chair, AIANY Committee on Design for Risk and Reconstruction
Deborah Gans, Professor, Architecture School at Pratt Institute, and Principal, Gans Studio
Hilary Sample, Associate Professor, Columbia University GSAPP, and Principal, MOS

Closing remarks by

Michael Sorkin, Director, Graduate Program in Urban Design at The City College of New York, and Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio, Terreform

Finding Common Ground exhibit opens February 4th at the Bond Center

admin — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:21:10 +0000

Board Member Toni Griffin and Fellow Denise Hoffman Brandt led a team of students from City College’s Landscape Architecture program on their winning entry in the Van Alen / National Parks Service competition Parks for the People. Their site is the 4-acre Nicodemus National Historic Site, in Nicodemus, Kansas, the only remaining western town established by African Americans during the Reconstruction Period following the Civil War. Celebrate the CCNY team’s success and see the project up close at the opening of “Finding Common Ground,” which will be up at the J. Bond Center on Design and the Just City at the City College School of Architecture, 141 Convent Avenue. The opening is from 6:30 – 8:30, and the show will be up through March 1.

Remembering Ada Louise Huxtable

admin — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:55:55 +0000

“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.

Quoth the Fellows

admin — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:50:06 +0000

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.”

Fellows’ Honors, Awards, and Competitions

admin — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:47:41 +0000

Thomas Balsley and Lyn Rice’s firms both won New York City’s Awards for Design Excellence for their respective projects, Phase 5 of Riverside South Park and Three Carriage Houses at the Staten Island Historical Society (pictured above); David Briggs’ Gowanus By Design announced their second Water_Works design competition, with Robert Rogers on the jury, to “explore water’s role in recreation, quotidian uses, and in contaminated urban environments.

Fellows’ New Projects

admin — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:46:53 +0000

Steven Holl released the first image for his new Maggie’s Cancer Care Center in London (pictured left); the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, led by John Palmieri, is planning a mixed-use development project for Atlantic City’s blighted South Inlet; Linda Pollak’s firm celebrated the ribbon-cutting of a new pavilion and outdoor performance space at the Staten Island Children’s Museum.

Fellows in the News

admin — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:34:02 +0000

Matt Blesso discussed Bushwick’s burgeoning real estate future in Metro New York; an Architectural Record article about Via Verde (pictured left) included comments by Lance Jay Brown, a founding member of the development’s steering committee; Brown, and the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee he co-chairs, was also featured in an Architect article about rising sea levels; Anthony Flint wrote about digital public art in Atlantic Cities; the Washington Post reviewed Daniel Libeskind’s exhibit at the Goethe Institut in Washington, DC; Engineering News-Record gave an in depth account of the structural engineering of the forthcoming Barclays Center designed by Gregg Pasquarelli’s SHoP Architects; Linda Pollak’s transformation of Queens Plaza was featured in the Wall Street Journal; Metropolis profiled Robert Rogers’ firm; Michael Stepner spoke to the U-T San Diego about planning lessons learned from teaching in Madrid.