Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s Executive Director Wanda Bubriski and founder Beverly Willis invite you to “A View from the Future,”a morning symposium hosted at the CUNY Graduate Center on 6/5 about future trends and innovation in the architecture/engineering/construction industry. The event will feature a keynote by Futurist Edie Weiner, followed by a panel discussion of experts debating new opportunities in the AEC field.  Board Members Claire Weisz and Tami Hausman serve on the BWAF Board and Advisory Council respectively.

Panelists include: Jane Chmielinski (AECOM), Michael De Chiara (Zetlin & De Chiara LLP), MaryAnne Gilmartin (Forest City Ratner Companies), Jurij Paraszczak (IBM Research), and Ana Bertuna (Related Companies).

Get your tickets here.

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.”

In an interview with New York, Craig Dykers outlined Snøhetta’s proposal for a revamped Times Square; Princeton University submitted plans for their new Arts and Transit project, with work by Patron Steven Holl, to the Regional Planning Board of Princeton; the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved the development of a residential complex designed by David Manfredi (pictured above), one that will include micro-apartments, or so-called ‘innovation units’; Robert A.M. Stern will design a residential tower next to Hudson Yards.

Weighing in on the Loci Architecture blog about the contentious debate regarding NYU’s expansion in Greenwich Village, David Briggs questions if new buildings could strike a balance with the existing community; in the latest issue of The Architect’s Newspaper, Jeff Byles profiles Meta Brunzema’s “Building Exhibition Hudson Valley/Erie Canal” project; Susan Chin wrote an op-ed for the New York Observer about the Design Trust for Public Space’s collaboration on the “Taxi of Tomorrow”; also in Design Trust news, the organization’s “Made in Midtown” project is featured in the newly released book, Designing for Social Change; an HOK team led by Ken Drucker is a finalist to design the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at SUNY-Buffalo; work done for Marc Jacobs by Mark Gardner and Stephan Jaklitsch’s firm is profiled in Interior Design (pictured above); Laurie Kerr discussed cutting building energy use for an article by the Urban Land Institute; Lebbeus Woods published an extensive transcript of his conversation with Board Member Thom Mayne; Mercedes House, a new residential building by Board Member Enrique Norten, was profiled in The Real Deal; Grahame Shane wrote an article in Bauwelt magazine about restoring the urban dream through affordable housing; Don Stastny oversaw a competition to redesign Austin’s downtown Waller Creek, with Robert Rogers’ firm coming in as a finalist.

Our book, By the City/For the City: An Atlas of Possibility for the Future of New York is almost sold out on Amazon. Published in conjunction with Urban Design Week 2011, By the City/For the City is a 352-page compendium of the schemes and dreams of hundreds of New Yorkers and designers for how to improve the city’s public realm.

Planetizen named it one of the Top 10 Books of 2012, commenting “The Institute for Urban Design has done a wonderful job of presenting these out-of-the-box ideas in a way that can inspire tactical urbanists and professional planners to think differently.”

Get your copy here.

Please join us tomorrow, May 1, 2012, 6-8pm at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York to celebrate the launch of the new J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City.