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

Tuesday, 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.

Fellows in the News: Angotti, Berke, Bell, Fisher, Floyd, Griffin, Holl, Mayne, Norten, Pasquarelli, Sauerbruch, & Stein

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

A study by Tom Angotti and Picture the Homeless revealed that New York City is home to enough vacant lots and buildings to house its entire homeless population–with room to spare; Deborah Berke’s Yale architecture students are designing an urban bourbon distillery in downtown Louisville; Rick Bell was profiled by the Epoch Times; the latest episode of CUNY-TV’s Citywide program features Ken Fisher interviewing Working Families Party leader Camille Rivera; Chadwick Floyd is designing the expansion of Waterford, Connecticut’s Eugene O’Neill Theater Center; MLive.com interviewed Board Member Toni Griffin about the long-term strategic planning initiative she’s leading for the Detroit Works Program; Patron Steven Holl was selected to design the expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Dallas Morning News walked through Board Member Thom Mayne’s almost-complete Perot Museum of Nature & Science with the architect; Board Member Enrique Norten gave a presentation on how sustainable architecture can catalyze community development at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos; Gregg Pasquarelli’s firm has just released its first monograph, SHoP: Out of Practice; Matthias Sauerbruch’s Low2No complex in Helsinki’s former docklands (pictured at left) is cited as an exemplary mixed use project in a Telegraph piece on the greening of residential architecture; and Achva Benzinberg Stein’s dazzling new Moroccan Courtyard at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is featured in this month’s Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Quoth the Fellows: Flint, Fowle, & Weisz

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Writing for The Atlantic CITIES blog, Anthony Flint comments on the recent surge in freeway demolition projects, remarking that “We’ve reached a unique point in city-building when the destruction of a public works project has all the glamor and buzz of breaking ground on a new one.” With FXFOWLE leading design work on the ongoing renovation of New York’s Javits Center, Bruce Fowle provides a counterpoint to Meta Brunzema’s favorable remarks in our last Update: “The waste of creative energy, money, and material that would result in its being torn down is painful to think about. When you’re worrying about every detail–trying to do the best you can to make something that represents the city–it’s like having the rug pulled out from under you.” And in a Globe and Mail profile of Edmonton-born Claire Weisz (pictured at left), the IfUD Board Member explained her focus on the public space design projects that have defined her career by explaining that she moved to New York “not to make stuff, but to make stuff happen.”

On the Books: Angotti, Balsley, Sennett, Steiner, & Wilks

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

There are two new titles out from Tom Angotti, including Service-Learning in Design and Planning, co-edited with Cheryl Doble and Paula Horrigan, and Accidental Warriors and Battlefield Myths, Angotti’s first collection of short stories; Richard Sennett’s Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Collaboration was excerpted in Salon, reviewed by the New Scientist, and called “a whirlwind of big ideas” by the Washington Post; Frederick Steiner’s latest, Urban Ecological Design, is now available at a bookstore near you; and Barbara Wilks‘ West Harlem Piers Park is featured in John Hill’s new Guide to Contemporary New York Architecture (Update: Hill’s guide also includes several recent works by Thomas Balsley!)

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

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

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.

Biennale Dates Announced

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

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.

Fellows in the News: Berke, Bernheimer, Blesso, Cathcart, Dykers, Ferrandino, Gardner, Jones, Portman, & Wong

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Bentonville’s 21c Museum Hotel, designed by Deborah Berke, broke ground last month; Urban Omnibus visited Matthew Berman’s BLDG 92 museum and visitors center at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; Andrew Bernheimer and his sister Kate, an award-winning fairy tale author, collaborated on a three-part series of posts at Places Journal that gives architectural form to famous fairy tale houses; Matt Blesso and Mark Gardner were both interviewed as part of openhousenewyork’s “I Am OHNY” series; NYC Media released a video extolling the virtues of Colin Cathcart’s Greenhouse Project at Manhattan’s P.S. 333; the first renderings of a curvaceous new Maggie’s Centre in Aberdeen, Scotland, designed by Craig Dykers, made a splash; Vince Ferrandino is leading the effort to build a solid transition team for Mount Vernon, New York’s mayor-elect Ernie Davis; Mary Margaret Jones led a public forum on Hargreaves Associates’ new plan for Richmond’s James Riverfront; John Portman has opened a new office in Hong Kong–his fourth in Asia, after Shanghai, Seoul, and Mumbai; and it’s not every day that you can see a Fellow’s work in a big-screen blockbuster, but the ASLA’s The Dirt recently pointed out that John Wong’s Burj Khalifa Park has something of a “starring role” in the new Mission Impossible movie!

Quoth the Fellows: Dykers & Lancaster

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

Dwell sat down with Craig Dykers to talk about Snøhetta’s design process for the expansion of SFMOMA. On the relationship of the new wing to the museum’s iconic Mario Botta-designed home, he explained that “I think the best way to say it is that we’re working with a dancing partner, and you have to be sure not to step on your partner’s feet.” And back in New York, Patricia Lancaster spoke to the Observer about the recently-announced plans for modular towers (pictured at left, and designed by Gregg Pasquarelli) to rise at Atlantic Yards, stating that “I think prefab is the wave of the future, and I think it will come to New York. The only question is when, and how much power the unions have to do something about it.”

Fellows’ Awards & Competitions: Bell, Crispino, Holl, Enquist, Jahn, Norten, Portman, Sassen, & Steiner

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

The AIA’s New York chapter, led by Rick Bell, has just put out the call for entries for the 2012 AIANY Design Awards (deadline: 2/3/12); Francis Cauffman, led by James Crispino, has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing A/E/C industry firms on ZweigWhite’s annual Hot Firms List; Patron Steven Holl was named as the winner of the prestigious 2012 AIA Gold Medal; SOM’s Chicago Office, where Philip Enquist is the Partner in Charge of Urban Design and Planning, received AIA Chicago’s Firm of the Year award; Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin included the opening of Helmut Jahn’s Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago (pictured at left) in his round-up of the best architecture of 2011; Board Member Enrique Norten will serve as a juror for this year’s Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award, which will focus on Cape Town, South Africa (deadline: 2/24/12); AmericasMart founder John Portman will receive a special honor, the “Legend for Life” award, in recognition of his five decades of entrepreneurship and service to the home decor industry; Board Member Saskia Sassen made Foreign Policy magazine’s list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for her “passionate advocacy of an urban-based society”; and the undergraduate program at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture, led by Frederick Steiner, was ranked second in the nation by DesignIntelligence.