Fellows in the News

Friday, August 10th, 2012

Matt Blesso discussed Bushwick’s burgeoning real estate future in Metro New York; an Architectural Record article about Via Verde (pictured left) included comments by Lance Jay Brown, a founding member of the development’s steering committee; Brown, and the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee he co-chairs, was also featured in an Architect article about rising sea levels; Anthony Flint wrote about digital public art in Atlantic Cities; the Washington Post reviewed Daniel Libeskind’s exhibit at the Goethe Institut in Washington, DC; Engineering News-Record gave an in depth account of the structural engineering of the forthcoming Barclays Center designed by Gregg Pasquarelli’s SHoP Architects; Linda Pollak’s transformation of Queens Plaza was featured in the Wall Street Journal; Metropolis profiled Robert Rogers’ firm; Michael Stepner spoke to the U-T San Diego about planning lessons learned from teaching in Madrid.

Quoth the Fellows

Friday, 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.’”

Fellows in the News: Blesso, David, di Domenico, Dubbeldam, Flint, Gans, Ginsberg, Hoal, Lancaster, McKinney, Sorkin, Stepner, Strauss, Walker, & White

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

The New York Times and WNYC both featured write-ups of last week’s Making Room symposium, which featured panelists Matt Blesso, Mark Ginsberg, and Mark Strauss, as well as the presentation of new work by Deborah Gans; Theo. David’s proposal for the redesign of the Old GSP Area in Nicosia (pictured at left) was featured on ArchDaily; John di Domenico’s firm has just opened a new DC office; work on Board Member Winka Dubbeldam’s Ports1961 flagship in Paris is just wrapping up; as the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities approaches, Anthony Flint reflects on the book’s legacy; John Hoal presented a draft plan for the reinvention of University City’s Parkview Gardens neighborhood, while construction on Chouteau Park, also designed by Hoal, got underway in nearby St. Louis; Patricia Lancaster joined NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate as a clinical professor; Charles McKinney spoke with DNAinfo.com about the NYC Parks Department’s selection of lanscape architect David Kamp for the design of a new city park, Sutton Place South; Norman Weinstein called Board President Michael Sorkin’s All Over the Map “a triumph of enlightened nay-saying and affirmation” in a review at ArchNewsNow; Michael Stepner published a letter in support of the San Diego Symphony’s plan to revamp their entrance and re-engage the street; KERA interviewed Peter Walker about “what makes a landscape a beautiful, pleasing, and functional space”; and work by Hank White is featured in the new book Shore Décor: Design at the Water’s Edge.

Fellows’ Awards & Honors: Balsley, Durst, Portman, & Stepner

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

At the Waterfront Center Awards, Thomas Balsley was presented with an Honor Award for Manhattan’s Riverside Park South Waterfront (pictured at left), and his Gantry State Plaza State Park project in Queens was given a tribute for its 1999 Top Honor Award; Douglas Durst was presented with the “Green God” award at the New York Restoration Project’s Hulaween gala last week; John Portman was named an Industry Fellow at this year’s American Furniture Hall of Fame banquet; and Michael Stepner was presented with the Society of American Registered Architects’ Synergy Award.

Fellows in the News: Angotti, Baldwin, Berman, Fisher, Flint, Greenberg, Jahn, Kelley, Libeskind, & Stepner

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Civic watchdog Tom Angotti reviews the latest changes to the Bloomberg administration’s PlaNYC 2030 in the Gotham Gazette; Greg Baldwin sat on the jury for the Urban Land Institute’s 2011 Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award; DesignShuffle visited a “whimsical” Nantucket home designed by Matt Berman; you can watch Ken Fisher interview Junior Achievement of New York director Joseph Peri on the latest episode of CUNY-TV’s Citywide; Anthony Flint argued for a re-write of Massachusetts’ state zoning law on Boston.com; the initial reviews of Ken Greenberg’s book Walking Home could generally be described as “glowing,” with the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and Treehugger all sounding off; the Tribune’s Blair Kamin reviews Helmut Jahn’s just-opened Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago (pictured at left); NYC’s Village Alliance, led by Fellow William Kelley, is undertaking a detailed survey of local residents and merchants to revive West 8th Street; Daniel Libeskind just finished an addition to  his first completed project, the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, Austria; and Michael Stepner spoke to the Voice of San Diego about the streamlining of that city’s charter.

Fellows in the News: Balsley, Berman, Cathcart, Dubbeldam, Harwick, Holl, Kelley, Norten, Stastny, & Stepner

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Thomas Balsley will design the landscapes for the new Gotham West development in Hell’s Kitchen; Houzz visited a stunning Nantucket cottage designed by Matthew Berman; The Lee, a green supportive housing center designed by Colin Cathcart, opened on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; Elle Decor chatted with Board Member Winka Dubbeldam about her 12 “must-haves”; Ron Harwick’s JHP participated in the Edgewood/Candler Park MARTA charrette in Atlanta, re-imagining the area around a subway station in the southern metropolis as a Transit Oriented Development; Green Source featured a case study of Patron Steven Holl’s Vanke Center (aka the Horizontal Skyscraper) in Shenzhen; William Kelley introduced his agenda as the new Director of the Village Alliance BID in New York with an article in The Villager; Board Member Enrique Norten (whose Guggenheim Guadalajara—pictured at left—was recently called one of the best museums never built) unveiled designs for not one, but two sleek new buildings in DC’s West End; Donald Stastny was selected to lead a design competition re-imagining Waller Creek area in Austin; and Michael Stepner cheered the development of a long-term regional plan for San Diego in the Union-Tribune.

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.

Fellows in the News: Alschuler, Angotti, Balsley, Dykers, Fain, Fisher, Orff, Pasquarelli, Stepner, & Williamson

Friday, February 4th, 2011

San Mateo’s Station Park Green development (pictured at left), designed by Karen Alschuler, received an enthusiastic thumbs-up from that city’s Council; Tom Angotti’s column in the Gotham Gazette looks at NYC’s new comprehensive waterfront plan, Vision 2020; the Epoch Times profiled a Thomas Balsley-designed rooftop forest in Lower Manhattan; Metropolis visited the Manhattan office of Craig Dykers’ firm Snøhetta; San Antonio’s KSAT-12 spoke with William Fain about the redesign of HemisFair Park; Kenneth K. Fisher interviewed Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer for CUNY-TV; Kate Orff’s work on “oyster-tecture” was featured in Harvard Design Magazine; in the lead-up to Gregg Pasquarelli’s Architectural League-organized lecture last Wednesday, the League published an extensive interview with the architect; Michael Stepner co-authored a call for planners to articulate a long-term vision for downtown San Diego; and NorthJersey.com talked to June Williamson about how suburbs can be retrofitted to create walkable, urban communities.