Director Ben Loeterman’s feature-length film about the life and work of John Portman, A Life of Building, will have its film festival premiere at the Architecture Film Festival in Rotterdam next week before making its way to New York for the Architecture and Design Film Festival later this month. PBS will broadcast Chicago affiliate WTTW’s documentary on Robert AM Stern (pictured at left) nationally on October 9th and 10th. Online, you can catch Board President Michael Sorkin discussing the World Trade Center rebuilding process in a Telegraph video feature, and a TalkingScience clip featuring Ernie Hutton on sustainability in New York City.
IfUD On Screen: Hutton, Portman, Sorkin, & Stern
Friday, October 7th, 2011Fellows in the News: Blesso, Chin, Enquist, Fowle, Gorlin, Hoffman Brandt, Jahn, Libeskind, Norten, Safdie, Schrag, Sorkin, & Wilks
Monday, September 26th, 2011
PMc Mag called Matt Blesso “New York’s Host with the Most”; Susan Chin was announced [PDF] as the new Executive Director of the Design Trust for Public Space; the launch of an effort to find an architect for the re-vamp of Chicago’s iconic Navy Pier (pictured at left) led to rumblings that both Phil Enquist and Helmut Jahn are considering throwing their respective hats in the ring; Bruce Fowle served on the jury for the AIA’s National Healthcare Design Awards; Architectural Record profiled Alex Gorlin’s contemporary take on the rowhouse in East Brooklyn; CCGSAPP’s new blog features an interview with Alfredo Brillembourg and Denise Hoffman Brandt on their new co-edited issue of SLUM Lab, which debuted during Urban Design Week; Daniel Libeskind was announced as the architect for a new wing at his iconic Jewish Museum in Berlin; FastCo Design has a great story on the collaboration, in Villahermosa, Mexico, between Board Member Enrique Norten and Barbara Wilks on a new museum and park; Moshe Safdie’s Kauffman Center just opened in Kansas City; Jonathan Schrag was appointed to serve as Deputy Commissioner for Energy in the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection; and Board President Michael Sorkin’s new book, All Over the Map, has been receiving rave reviews from the likes of the Guardian and the Telegraph.
Fellows’ Awards & Honors: Jahn, Sauerbruch, & Sorkin.
Monday, July 11th, 2011
The colorful KfW Westarkade tower in Frankfurt (pictured at left), designed by Matthias Sauerbruch, was named the Best Tall Building in Europe for 2011 by the CTBUH (Sauerbruch’s Oval Offices in Cologne were also featured in Architectural Record & Surface); the World Architecture Festival announced that they have named IfUD Board Chair Michael Sorkin the head of its ‘Super-Jury’ for 2011; the opening of Helmut Jahn’s Mansuetto Library was cited as one of the most important design events during the first half of 2011 by Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin.
Quoth the Fellows: Pasquarelli, Sorkin, & Stastny
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
In a recent piece about the Barclays Center arena (pictured at left) in the NY Daily News, Gregg Pasquarelli explained that “We wanted it to be something very different from [Madison Square] Garden…[which is] a giant, impenetrable box.” Speaking of the Cooper Union, Board Chair Michael Sorkin enthused: “These are students who unreservedly pursue what I call the ‘Poetics of Architecture,’ which is a rare thing nowadays. The combination of beauty and weirdness that’s produced at Cooper is like no place else on earth.” And at a community meeting about the Waller Creek design competition in Austin, competition manager Don Stastny noted that “It’s rare that you have an opportunity to basically change the face of the city through one of these processes.”
Fellows’ Events & Exhibits: June 1-15, 2011
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
Gretchen Bank will join the Architects’ Fast-Track Leadership Series wrap-up panel on 6/6; the exhibit Glimpses of New York & Amsterdam in 2040, featuring work by Barbara Wilks’ W Landscape Architecture, opens at New York’s Center for Architecture on 6/8; Board Chair Michael Sorkin will speak at the New York New Belfast summit at Fordham University on 6/8-9; two Fellows will lead discussions at the CfA on 6/10—Lance Jay Brown will guide the discussion Rising Water & the City: A New Design Challenge? from 12-3 PM, with Olympia Kazi moderating a panel on the 2011 Archiprix International from 4-8 PM; Wilks & Hillary Brown will both speak at the CfA’s symposium on the Glimpses show on 6/11; and Deborah Berke will speak at Ghost Lab 13 on 6/13.
Spring is Book Launch Season!
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
Looking ahead and preparing your summer reading list? Ken Greenberg’s new book Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder was just released last week, and you can visit the Random House website to purchase a copy; Board Member Thom Mayne has just self-published the book Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form; meanwhile, the latest issue of Texas Monthly features an excerpt from the introduction to Fred Steiner’s Design for a Vulnerable Planet, which was published last month. If that’s not enough to keep you busy, check out Designers and Books, a website that features the reading lists of many great architects, planners, and urbanists—including Patrons Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Holl, Fellow Daniel Libeskind, and Board President Michael Sorkin.
Fellows Events & Exhibitions: May 15-31, 2011
Monday, May 16th, 2011
SOM Chicago principal Philip Enquist will speak about ‘The Endless City’ at Penn Design’s 2011 commencement ceremony on 5/16; Rick Bell and Laurie Kerr will both participate in Fit City 6 at the Center for Architecture on 5/17; Lance Jay Brown will participate in the Better City/Better Life: North-South Initiative symposium at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan on 5/18; a reception for the exhibit Downtown Brooklyn Commons [PDF], featuring design proposals from the Rus en Urbe studio led by CCNY’s Denise Hoffman Brandt, Elisabetta Terragni, and Barbara Wilks, with a model created in charette with Michael Sorkin’s graduate urban design studio, will take place at Brooklyn Borough Hall on 5/19; Deborah Berke will speak at the Miller House Symposium in Columbus, Indiana on 5/20 (the titular modernist residence is pictured at left); Peter D. Cavaluzzi will join a panel on Firm Identity in an Age of Mergers & Acquisitions at the CfA on 5/23; Enquist will join David Dixon and other noted urbanists for a series of discussions at the Detroit Public Library’s Detroit By Design event on 5/24; and Toronto’s Urbanspace Gallery will host a book launch party for Ken Greenberg’s aforementioned Walking Home on 5/25.
Sorkin to Serve on “Super-Jury”
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Michael Sorkin, President of the IfUD’s Board of Directors, was recently selected to serve on the “super-jury” for the 2011 World Architecture Festival, which will take place in Barcelona this November 2-4. Michael will join UNStudio’s Ben van Berkel, Jo Noero of Noero Wolff Architects, Odile Decq of ODBC, and Kongjian Yu from Turenscape in presiding over this international gathering of more than 5,000 architects and urbanists.
More on Drawing…
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
Hopefully, you were able to make it out to the Center for Architecture last week for the panel discussion Architecture and the Dea[r]th of Drawing, which featured Board Chair Michael Sorkin; kudos to Fellow Rick Bell for hosting such an envigorating discussion of the current state of drawing in architecture! Recently, we learned that Fellow Theo. David is this Spring’s visiting professor at the Pratt in Rome architecture program, where the students are required to develop and present their design studio projects through drawing. We’re considering organizing a Breakfast Club to further the discussion, so if you are interested, please get in touch.
To Sketch, or Not to Sketch?
Monday, February 21st, 2011
We’ve been hearing quite a bit about the humble art of pencil sketching lately. After sharing a fascinating Huffington Post article on the subject (which included a quip from Fellow Ken Drucker) on the Institute’s Twitter page, a lively debate took place amongst our followers that pitted pencils against pixels. And tomorrow, Board Chair Michael Sorkin will join a panel, Architecture and the Dea[r]th of Drawing, at the Center for Architecture on February 22, at which he will discuss the place of drawing in contemporary architectural practice with Peter Macalpa, Lebbeus Woods, Nina Rappaport, and artist Steven Talasnik.
