Quoth the Fellows: Gans, Strauss, & Wakeman

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

In a fascinating reflection of the concept of hospitality inspired by a trip to Jerusalem’s In-House Festival last summer, Deborah Gans (pictured at left) posits that “Beyond the intractable divisions of Jerusalem, perhaps hospitality offers us language with which to describe our emerging geo-political spaces and the aspirations we have for them.” Speaking to the New York Times about the increasing focus on transit-oriented development in suburban areas, Mark Strauss explained that “In Westchester [New York] and other places, the mindset of many residents is that they moved to the suburbs to get away from an urban environment, and they want their towns to remain as much as possible like life was on the TV show Leave it to Beaver.” And Rosemary Wakeman was quoted in an article on neighborhood re-brandings in Philadelphia’s City Paper, noting the association of such efforts with gentrification and cautioning that “People coming in want to protect their investment…[Sometimes it works], but sometimes it’s quite a different thing for the people who live there, who understand their neighborhood in a certain way.”

Fellows in the News: Dubbeldam, Griffin, Jones, Kelley, Libeskind, Locke, Manfredi, Safdie, Sollohub, & Stern

Monday, December 19th, 2011

Curbed included Board Member Winka Dubbeldam’s 597 Greenwich Street on their list of Innovative Residences You Need to Know Right Now; Mayor Dave Bing announced the re-launch of the Detroit Works program, with Board Member Toni Griffin heading up the development of a long-range development plan for the troubled Rust Belt city; Mary Margaret Jones (whose Olympic Park in London, pictured at left, was just completed) has been selected to design a new public entertainment waterfront attraction in Corpus Christi, Texas; Bill Kelley is leading the charge to add more sidewalk cafe space to Greenwich Village’s West 8th Street; good news came for two skyscrapers designed by Daniel Libeskind: the developers of his Zlota 44 building in Warsaw secured financing to complete construction, while his Eden Center in Jerusalem received official approval to move forward; Anne Locke spoke to WestfairOnline about the recent boom in medical facilities construction; “The Mobius,” Michael Manfredi’s entry to the Portal to the Point ideas competition in Pittsburgh, was featured on ArchDaily; Moshe Safdie released renderings for a massive $3.1 billion, six-tower, 10 million-square-foot mixed-use complex planned for Chongqing, China; a course designed by NJIT’s Darius Sollohub in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity was featured in a round-up of innovative and unconventional college courses around New Jersey; and Robert A.M. Stern was interviewed about his skyscraping One Horizon Center project in Gurgaon, India.

Fellows in the News: Blaik, Gorlin, Libeskind, Palmieri, Safdie, Sennett, Sheffer, Stepner, Walker, & Wong

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Detroit is abuzz with talk about Omar Blaik’s revitalization plan for the historic Midtown neighborhood, which recently got extensive write-ups from the Detroit News and the Free-Press; the latest issue of Dwell features a two-page spread on Alexander Gorlin’s The Brook development in the Bronx; a torquing tower designed by Daniel Libeskind will soon join a new cluster of skyscrapers rising in Jerusalem; John Palmieri recently visited Belfast as a guest lecturer for the city’s State of the City Development Debate; the Architect’s Newspaper recently visited Moshe Safdie’s studio for a look at his current projects, while the Huffington Post featured a slideshow of the architect’s daring Golden Dream Bay Sky Garden Apartments in Qinhuangdao; Richard Sennett wrote an article in the Guardian on the recent funding scandal at the London School of Economics; New York magazine talked to Ethel Sheffer about the uniquely depressing quality of long-vacant storefronts in newer buildings; Michael Stepner spoke to the Voice of San Diego about the challenges presented by “invisible parks”; construction is just getting underway to transform a disused stretch of Sydney’s waterfront into the 15-acre Headlands Park, designed by Peter Walker; and HuffPo visited the serenely swooping gardens (pictured at left), designed by John Wong, at the base of the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.