Institute for Urban Design

Fellows in the News: Angotti, Arad, Gardner, Hausman, Holl, Jaklitsch, Lancaster, Mayne, Pasquarelli, Pollak, & Wakeman

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:26:19 +0000

The Wall Street Journal spoke to Tom Angotti about the Bloomberg-era evolution of zoning in New York City, and published a wonderful profile of Michael Arad; Architect talked to Board Member Tami Hausman about how architecture firms can (and should) use social media strategically; Luca Farinelli’s “53 Questions, 265 Answers” in Log 23 features interviews with Patron Steven Holl and Board Member Thom Mayne; the WSJ features Stephan Jaklitsch and Mark Gardner’s renovation of Marc Jacobs’ private Soho showroom; Patricia Lancaster expressed surprise at Related’s decision to hire a California contractor for the massive Hudson Yards project in Manhattan; Gregg Pasquarelli’s Pier 15 opened along Manhattan’s East River Waterfront Esplanade; Linda Pollak’s new Elmhurst Branch of the Queens Library, which is wrapping up construction, was featured on NY1; and Rosemary Wakeman was quoted in a Corpus Christi Caller-Times article about the relationship between streetscapes and civic pride.

Fellows’ Events & Exhibits: February 1-15, 2012

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:12:23 +0000

The Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at St. Louis’ Washington University announced its spring lecture series, with Craig Dykers set to speak tonight (2/1), and visits from Gregg Pasquarelli and Richard Sennett scheduled for later this semester; Rob Rogers will speak about Rogers Marvel’s recent work (including President’s Park South, pictured at left) at the National Building Museum in Washington on 2/2; Denise Hoffman Brandt and Board Member Toni Griffin have organized a panel, Defining Cultural Landscapes, at CCNY on 2/3 (with opening remarks by Olympia Kazi); the Center for Architecture will host the panel Freedom of Assembly: Public Space Today Redux on 2/4, with Thomas Balsley, Rick Bell, Lance Jay Brown, and Susan Chin all participating (Brown will be back at the Center, with David Dixon, for a discussion about Climate Change on 2/17); Bruce Fowle will speak at the Center’s Active Design 201 on 2/7; Board Member Claire Weisz will speak in New York, also on 2/7, at the Studio-X panel Trash Tubes of the Future; Board Member Enrique Norten will give a talk at the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach on 2/9; that same day, in New York, Ernie Hutton will moderate a discussion on the Miami21 zoning initiative; and a new exhibit at the National Academy, featuring work by Robert A.M. Stern, has just opened and will remain on view in New York through 4/29.

Quoth the Fellows: Angotti, Brunzema, & Sassen

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:03:36 +0000

In a Crain’s New York article about growth patterns in Brooklyn over the past decade, Tom Angotti did not mince words, stating that “The development has been very uneven and unequal. Instead of the vibrant city that was more diverse, it’s becoming a city of separate enclaves.” Speaking in her official capacity as the chair of the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association’s planning committee, Meta Brunzema cheered Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to tear down the Javits Center: “I hate to say it, but [Hudson River Park's] really inadequate around here and everyone knows it. The Javits Center is an obstacle to it really becoming a great park.” And Saskia Sassen, in an Artforum piece on the sociopolitical conditions that led up to OWS (pictured at left), writes that “The Occupy movements are emergent assemblages of fragments of various national (and global) territories. Their reclamation of public space is also a response to the increasingly palpable insufficiency of the logic of the nation-state.”

Fellows’ Awards & Competitions: Gans, Griffin, Guiney, Mayne, Norten, Rogers, Wakeman, & Willis

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:58:04 +0000

Deborah Gans‘ new rose window for the Museum at Eldridge Street, designed in collaboration with artist Kiki Smith (and pictured at left), received a 2011 Faith & Form award from the IFRAA Awards Program for Religious Art & Architecture; the Land Art Generator Initiative design competition announced its kickoff, with Executive Director Anne Guiney on the jury (deadline: 7/1/12); recipients of the 2012 AIA Honor Awards were announced–among the winners are Rob Rogers and Board Members Toni Griffin, Thom Mayne, and Enrique Norten; Rosemary Wakeman was awarded a EURIAS Senior Fellowship, and will spend the next academic year at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies completing her book on the New Town Movement; Womens’ E-News will honor Beverly Willis as one of their 21 Leaders for the 21st Century at a gala reception this May.

Fellows in the News: Arad, Berke, Fisher, Flint, Greenberg, Haley, Kazi, Libeskind, Palmieri, Scott Brown, Stern, Venturi, & Walker

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:45:20 +0000

Since it opened this past September, more than one million visitors have passed through Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero; a Wall Street Journal article on regional minimalism noted Deborah Berke’s influential residential work in New England; on the latest episode of Citywide, Ken Fisher interviews Manhattan Media CEO and first-in-the-ring NYC mayoral candidate Tom Allon; Anthony Flint appeared on the Callie Crosby Show to discuss the redevelopment of the former Filene’s Basement site in Boston; Beth Greenberg, who leads the Dattner Architects team working on Manhattan’s 7-train extension, spoke to ENR New York [PDF] about the project (which, Inhabitat reports, is ahead of schedule and under budget); Gothamist got a peek inside the construction site for the new Fulton Street Transit Center, which is managed by Gregory Haley; Next American City Editor-in-Chief Diana Lind cited Olympia Kazi’s success in establishing the Van Alen Bookstore as a social anchor for New York’s urban design community as a chief inspiration for NAC’s new Storefront for Urban Innovation in Philadelphia; Hugh Pearman raved about Daniel Libeskind’s expansion of the Military History Museum in Dresden (pictured at left) in Architectural Record; John Palmieri’s CRDA launched the website Revitalize Atlantic City to encourage public participation in the Tourism District Master Plan process; Artforum reviewed the V&A’s Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990, which features the work of Robert A.M. Stern and Patrons Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown; and new renderings were released of the 8 Washington development on the San Francisco waterfront, featuring landscapes by Peter Walker.

IfUD Launches New Website & Open Call for Entries for US Pavilion at the Venice Beinnale

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:55:43 +0000

We have just launched a new website for the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, devoted to the theme Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good. The website will continue to grow over the next nine months, expanding to include a news column, curators’ blog, links to related articles and resources, and list of participants and projects. When the Biennale opens in September, the site will include a participants’ blog, a searchable database of projects, and guide to programs in Venice and the United States during the Biennale.

Currently, we are encouraging architects and designers who have realized a tactical urbanism intervention in a U.S. city to submit their projects by February 6 in order to be reviewed during the next curators’ meeting.

Fellows’ Events & Exhibits: January 15-31, 2012

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:44:15 +0000

On 1/17, the Storefront for Art and Architecture will host an opening reception for artist Allard van Hoorn’s 007 Urban Songline, which will transform the iconic facade designed by Patron Steven Holl and Vito Acconci (pictured at left) into a musical instrument; also on 1/17, Rick Bell’s Center for Architecture will hold a “Breakthrough” party to mark the connection of the existing and new gallery spaces; Ken Greenberg will open a conference on the future of Montreal’s Griffintown neighborhood on 1/20; Rosemary Wakeman’s Urban Studies Program at Forham will host the panel Urban Dialogues II: Making Cities Work on 1/23; and that same day, Gregg Pasquarelli and Board Member Thom Mayne will participate in the Columbia GSAPP’s symposium Where is More Manhattan?

Biennale Dates Announced

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:35:43 +0000

The dates for the 13th Venice Beinnale of Architecture have been announced: the preview will take place August 27-28, and the IfUD-curated US Pavilion exhibition, Spontaneous Interventions, will be open to the public from August 29th until November 25th.

Quoth the Fellows: Balsley, Greenberg, & Sennett

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:09:29 +0000

One of the most prolific designers of Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPS), Thomas Balsley (pictured at left), came out in support of these small-scale but recently-high-profile places in the New York Observer, voicing a hope that POPS will not be the ’scapegoat’ of the reaction to the Occupy movement: “The fact that a tiny POPS park was made to act in lieu of a dedicated civic forum for popular protest should serve to remind all of us of NYC’s greater obligation to create a new and more innovative kind of public space to do what POPS can’t.” At the Downtown X-posed symposium in Edmonton, Ken Greenberg made a case for universities as anchor institutions in urban revitalization efforts in his keynote address, stating plainly that “Educational institutions are key city builders.” And in a BBC Radio segment with artist Andrew Gormley on public space and public art, Richard Sennett argued that “The really exciting things that we can do with public art are not monumental…There are lots of small-scale places that need our attention. Grandeur is not what we want in our cities today.” (See also: SFGate has an excerpt from Richard’s forthcoming book Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Collaboration).

Fellows’ Awards & Competitions: Brown, Dykers, Griffin, Handel, Harwick, Hoffman Brandt, Holl, Jahn, Kazi, Libeskind, Manfredi, Rogers, Sorkin, Stastny, Wakeman, & Walker

admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:00:21 +0000

Lance Jay Brown will serve as a juror for the AIANY State 2012 Honors Awards, to be presented this coming April; the teams proceeding to the third and final round of the National Mall Design Competition, managed by Donald Stastny, were announced, with Craig Dykers, Michael Manfredi, Rob Rogers, and Peter Walker all still in the mix; Dykers was also just announced as the chair of the jury for the 2012 Steedman Fellowship in Architecture International Design Competition; Ron Harwick’s Columbia Parc neighborhood in New Orleans (pictured at left) had a banner year, taking home multiple honors–click here to download a full list of awards and more information on the project; Patron Steven Holl’s Cité de l’Océan et du Surf in Biarritz, France, won the sole award in the Play category in Architect magazine’s 2011 Annual Design Review; critic Lee Bey cited the opening of Helmut Jahn’s Mansueto Library on his list of the best Chicago architecture of the past year (echoing Blair Kamin’s list from earlier in the month); the Parks for the People competition, organized by Olympia Kazi’s Van Alen Institute and with Steven Handel sitting on the jury, just announced the selection of nine teams to move on to the second round–one of which is led by CCNY’s Denise Hoffman Brandt and Board Member Toni Griffin; Daniel Libeskind’s Crystals at CityCenter project in Las Vegas won Gold and Sustainable Design Awards in the ICSC’s annual US Design & Development Awards; Urban Omnibus announced an essay competition to complement the Architectural League’s exhibit The Unfinished Grid, with our own Board President Michael Sorkin on the jury (deadline: 2/1/12); and Rosemary Wakeman has received a EURIAS Senior Fellowship to spend the next year at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies completing her book on the New Town Movement.