Fellows taking “A View from the Future” (6/5)

May 15th, 2012

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.

Quoth the Fellows

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.”

New Fellows

May 11th, 2012

Please join us in welcoming five new additions to our urbanist community: Mark Fiedler, co-founder of New York’s Fiedler Marciano Architecture; Kaja Kühl, founder of youarethecity, a research, design, and planning practice in Brooklyn; Yale-based architecture critic Nina Rappaport (image from her book Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation pictured at right); Glenn Smith, a principal at Smith + Murray Studios in Washington, DC; and Suzanne Stephens, Deputy Editor at Architectural Record.

Fellows’ New Projects

May 9th, 2012

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.

Fellows in the News

May 7th, 2012

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.

Fellows’ Events and Exhibits

May 3rd, 2012

During the month of April, Larry Wayne Richards was a Visiting Professor at the National Cheng Kung University Department of Architecture in Tainan (Taiwan), where he also presented a lecture, “Is Everything the Same Now?”; Patron Denise Scott Brown will be at the Center for Architecture on Friday (5/4) for a conversation about the National Mosque of Baghdad competition; the final tours of David van der Leer’s stillspotting nyc exhibit will take place on 5/5 and 5/6 in Jackson Heights, Queens; Board Member Saskia Sassen will be at the Frieze Art Fair on 5/6 for a panel about land occupation; on 5/8, Rick Bell will introduce a moderated discussion about “Practice in the Middle East” at his Center for Architecture; the next day in D.C., Lance Jay Brown will be at the National Building Museum to present on public space in the nation’s capital; Sassen will also be at the Megaprojects symposium hosted by Columbia’s GSAPP and CURE on 5/11, and will then participate in the New Cities Summit in Paris (5/14-16), along with Daniel Libeskind; an exhibit of Patron Steven Holl’s work is now on view at the Meulensteen Gallery through 6/2; also on now through 7/29 is an exhibit about Buckminster Fuller at SFMoMA (image from exhibit pictured at right) that includes work by Board Member Thom Mayne.

Fellows’ Honors and Awards

May 2nd, 2012

Society of Marketing Professional Services honored Richard Dattner’s firm and Andrew Whalley’s Grimshaw Architects for their green, affordable Via Verde; Craig Dykers’ Snøhetta won an Honor Award from the Toledo chapter of the AIA for the Wolfe Center for the Arts at Bowling Green State University (pictured at left); tomorrow (5/3), Beverly Willis will be named a Leader for the 21st Century at the Women’s eNews gala in New York.

ALMOST SOLD OUT

May 1st, 2012

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.

TOMORROW: You’re Invited to the J. Max Bond Center Launch

April 30th, 2012

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.

There will be a brief program at 6:30pm including remarks from Chancellor of CCNY Matthew Goldstein, President of CCNY Lisa S. Coico, and Dean of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture George Ranalli. Meet the Director of the new J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City, Professor and Institute Board Member Toni L. Griffin and find out about the Center’s mission and programs.
This event is free and open to the public.
141 Convent Avenue @ 135th Street New York NY 10031

Quoth the Fellows

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 architectureMichael 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.’”