Fellows’ Events & Exhibits: December 15-31, 2011

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Today (12/15), Ken Greenberg will be in Edmonton (pictured at left) to speak about urban design at the Downtown X-posed symposium; Lance Jay Brown will introduce, and Rick Bell & Board President Michael Sorkin will speak at, the Center for Architecture’s Freedom of Assembly panel on 12/17; Michael Arad will go gastronomical to serve as a juror for Edible Brooklyn’s 3rd Annual Latke Festival on 12/19; and the work of Robert A.M. Stern and Patrons Steven Holl and Denise Scott Brown is on view at the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture through 2/18/12.

Quoth the Fellows: Bell, Hardwicke, & Stern

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Speaking to the New York Observer about the AIA’s growing role in New York City politics, Rick Bell noted that “It used to be we were more reactive, waiting for the forum to air our views, and by then it was usually too late. Now we want to be there for the start of the discussion, or even initiating the discussion ourselves.” Chris Hardwicke explained the 220-page report that he just completed on downtown Saskatoon as an innovative effort to gather hard data on day-to-day use of the city by its citizens: “It’s an atlas of public life. It’s unique to study people spending time in space…I think most people assume planning is for people, but because you don’t measure it, you can’t actually plan for it.” At the Zoning the City symposium earlier this month, Robert A.M. Stern responded to Mary Ann Tighe’s lament about Asia’s nascent preeminence in the great skyscraper race (and the related falling-behind of New York’s “romantic” skyline) with a cutting quip: “Let’s be real. There’s a lot of crap out there. I’m happy to come home.” (Video of all of the panels from that event, by the way, are now available online).

IfUD On Screen: Enquist, Greenberg, Manfredi, Palmieri, & Terragni

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

A video by Philip Enquist’s Great Lakes Project (which, we recently discovered, has a great new blog) lays out a broad vision for the Great Lakes region; Ken Greenberg stopped by Global Toronto‘s Morning Show to discuss his international slate of urban design projects; David Manfredi spoke about his design for the Edgewater Hotel in a video clip about the Madison project; NJBIZ spoke to John Palmieri about his plans for New Jersey’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority; and Elisabetta Terragni’s Trento Tunnels project (image at left) was featured in a video about Future Mind Award winners.

Fellows’ Events & Exhibits: November 1-15, 2011

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

The World Architecture Festival, for which Board President Michael Sorkin chaired the Grand Jury, kicks off tomorrow (11/2) in Barcelona; Steven Handel will deliver the Benjamin C. Howland Jr. Memorial Lecture at the University of Virginia School of Architecture on 11/4; that same day, Board Member Thom Mayne will speak at Architectural Record‘s 2011 Innovation Conference; also on 11/4, Board Member Enrique Norten will speak at Yale’s Catastrophe and Consequence symposium; on 11/5, Colin Cathcart will participate in the Center for Architecture symposium Buildings = Energy; on 11/7, Deborah Gans, Matt Blesso, Mark Ginsberg, and Mark Strauss will all participate in the Architectural League’s Making Room symposium; Craig Dykers will speak at La Ciudad de las Ideas in Puebla, Mexico, on 11/11; Board Member Saskia Sassen is co-chair of the Committee on Global Thought’s Ecogram IV: China event on 11/11; Stuart Pertz will join a discussion on Planning the Future of Coney Island’s Amusement District, also on 11/11; the Reconsidering Postmodernism conference, to be held in New York from 11/11-12, will feature Robert A.M. Stern, as well as a session focusing on the work of Patrons Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown; Board Member Tami Hausman is a co-organizer of the 11/14 CfA panel What’s Your Story?; and on 11/15, Jack Nyman’s Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute will host the Zoning the City conference in New York, featuring Rick Bell, Stern, and Board Members Mayne and Toni Griffin.

Fellows’ Events & Exhibits: October 15-31, 2011

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Board Member Saskia Sassen will participate in the Columbia GSAPP’s Injured Cities Conference on 10/14-15; Barbara Wilks will give a talk at the New York Botanical Garden’s Midtown Education Center on 10/24; Board Member Enrique Norten will speak at the Pratt Institute on 10/24 in conjunction with the new exhibit Breaking Borders: New Latin American Architecture; Richard Sennett will join the Institute for Public Knowledge’s discussion of the new publication Living in the Endless City in New York on 10/25; Jack Nyman’s Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute will host the symposium The Waterfront: A Brooklyn Model for Preservation and Change on 10/26; Deborah Berke will talk about Development, Design and Financing Strategies for Urban Revitalization Using Hospitality and the Arts at the ULI Fall Conference on 10/26; Board Member Toni Griffin will visit Notre Dame University on 10/26 to deliver the lecture Can Planning Save the City: Facing the Challenges of Urban America; Olympia Kazi will host Board Member Thom Mayne at Van Alen Books on 10/28 for a presentation on his new book, Combinatory Urbanism; Board Member Winka Dubbeldam is on the Host Committee for the Storefront for Art & Architecture’s Critical Halloween party on 10/29; and Tom Angotti will participate in the panel Where is New York? Apparitions at Willets Point at the Columbia GSAPP on 10/31.

Quoth the Fellows: Angotti, Dykers, & Sauerbruch

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

In criticizing the methodology behind the Bloomberg administration’s PlaNYC sustainability plan, Tom Angotti explained his chief concern thusly: “It’s an accountants’ approach to the city, not a planners’ approach.” At the public debut of Snøhetta’s re-design of Times Square (pictured at left), Craig Dykers stated that his much-anticipated plan was “not taking its cues from some pretty little things in Europe or something. Our design has a film noir feel to it; it’s more muscular.” Speaking to the Globe and Mail in advance of his keynote address at IIDEX/NeoCon event in Toronto last week, ‘crusader for color’ Matthias Sauerbruch noted that color “is slowly, slowly coming back, as a way of tuning buildings, almost like you would tune an instrument–slightly shifting their appearance, their identity, their atmospheric quality.”

Fellows’ Awards & Honors: Berke, Boddy, David, Sassen, & Wong

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

The Kentucky Society of Architects presented Deborah Berke with one of their 2011 Honor Awards for the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville; “Mega + Micro: Canada, Invention at the Extremes,” by Trevor Boddy, has been shortlisted for the best architectural criticism published worldwide in the past three years for the 2011 CICA Awards; Theo. David’s Gladstonos 22 housing development (pictured at left) has been shortlisted in the housing category of the 2011 World Architecture Festival; Board Member Saskia Sassen was named as the first Visiting Fellow of Indiana University’s Framing the Global project; and John Wong’s SWA Group was announced as the winner of a competition to re-design the downtown lakefront in the rapidly-developing city of Suzhou, China.

Today is Archtober 1st!

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Archtober kicks off today with the opening of three new exhibitions at the Center for Architecture in New York, including Buildings = Energy, for which Colin Cathcart, Bruce Fowle, and Laurie Kerr all served on the Advisory Committee. The IfUD is hosting a book talk on the High Line with Founder Ann Ferebee and Jeff Byles next Friday (10/7) from 12:00-1:00 PM, and we hope to see you there! Many Fellows will be participating in other events during the month-long festival: Kerr and Richard Dattner will both speak at the symposium When Green is not an Option but the Law! on 10/3; Deborah Gans will speak on, and Lance Jay Brown will moderate, the panel VisioNYC 2080: Towards a Risk-Resilient City on 10/6; and Cathcart will give a presentation on “Furry Buildings” at the conference High-Performance Landscapes: People, Places, Plants on 10/21. For more, check out the full schedule of events. Congratulations to Rick Bell and everyone at AIANY for putting together such an impressive month!

Quoth the Fellows: Jahn & Mayne

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

In a discussing his office space (pictured at left) with Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin, Helmut Jahn contrasted it with other firms: “You don’t see drawings anymore. You don’t see any models. That’s the problem. Sometimes I go to other people’s offices, I think I would die.” Board Member Thom Mayne expressed his own concerns about the effects of technology on the profession during a keynote address at last month’s International Architectural Education Summit in Spain, noting that “in the age of globalization, student portfolios are becoming more and more similar.”

On Ground Zero

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Our Fellows have been heavily involved in the reconstruction of Ground Zero–Michael Arad and Peter Walker designed the memorial, while Craig Dykers designed the adjacent museum pavilion, and Daniel Libeskind the master plan for the site. Reviews by Justin Davidson, Inga Saffron, and Christopher Hawthorne have appeared in advance of the memorial’s opening this September 11th. Libeskind’s role has also been the subject of some great coverage. Ethel Sheffer contributed an article, “Ground Zero a Decade Later,” to the most recent issue of Planning, Bloomberg Businessweek featured a cover story entitled “The Saving of Ground Zero,” and Architectural Record includes an extensive write-up on the site in their special feature “The Death and Life of a Great American City: New York 2001-2011.” Tomorrow, the Center for Architecture will host the conference Lower Manhattan Rising: Looking Toward 9/11/2021, which features an excellent line-up including Arad, Dykers, Libeskind, and several other Fellows: Rick Bell, Bruce Fowle, Ernest Hutton, Jack Nyman, and Donna Walcavage.