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: Dubbeldam, Griffin, Jones, Kelley, Libeskind, Locke, Manfredi, Safdie, Sollohub, & Stern
Monday, December 19th, 2011Fellows’ Awards & Competitions: Arad, Balsley, Haley, Safdie, Stastny, & Whalley
Friday, December 9th, 2011
Deadlines are fast approaching for two competitions involving Fellows: there are still two and a half weeks to enter the Waller Creek design competition in Austin, managed by Donald Stastny (Deadline: 12/16/11), and Michael Arad will head up the jury for a competition to design an AIDS Memorial Park in Manhattan (Deadline: 1/21/12). Gregory J. Haley and Andrew Whalley are on one of the six teams selected as finalists in the competition to revamp Los Angeles’ Union Station, while Thomas Balsley’s Hixon Waterfront Park in Tampa (pictured at left) was named one of the best new urban parks in America by The Atlantic CITIES. Meanwhile, Moshe Safdie is in a competition of a different sort: his iconic Habitat 67 is currently in the lead in a public online poll to see which building will be the next reproduced in Lego’s architecture series. There’s still time to cast votes for your favorites…
Quoth the Fellows: Interview Edition
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
We’ve seen so many wonderful interviews with Fellows in the past couple of weeks; in lieu of pulling just a couple of quotes this time around, we recommend that you take a look at these recent interviews with Susan Chin (pictured at left) in Metropolis and the New York Observer, Board Member Winka Dubbeldam in Lookbooks, Daniel Libeskind in Time Out Hong Kong, John Portman in the New York Times, and Moshe Safdie on PBS’s Newshour. And to catch a Fellow on the other side of the table, don’t miss Ken Fisher interviewing political consultant Joseph Mercurio on the latest episode of his Citywide program on CUNY-TV.
Fellows 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 in the News: Bernheimer, Cathcart, di Domenico, Dykers, Holl, Jones, Leventis, Manfredi, Orff, Safdie, & Scheerlinck
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
Architecture for Humanity named Andy Bernheimer as a finalist in their competition to design a skate park under the Manhattan Bridge; Solar One was announced as the recipient of a $1.25MM city grant to build NYC’s first energy-positive building, designed by Colin Cathcart’s firm Kiss + Cathcart; John di Domenico’s Atlantic Terminal Pavilion was profiled in the Spring 2011 edition of Metals in Construction magazine; Craig Dykers’ Snøhetta was named as a finalist in a competition to re-design Aberdeen’s Union Terrace Gardens; Patron Steven Holl spoke with Carla Leitao about his Cite de l’Ocean et du Surf in France, and was profiled in the latest issue of ICON; Mary Margaret Jones served on the jury for the 2011 SOM Prize; a team of Langan International engineers led by George Leventis is working on the design for the recently-proposed Kingdom Tower in Jeddah (pictured at left), which will be the world’s tallest building when completed; David Manfredi’s firm will serve as the architect for the expansion of the Green Bay Packers’ storied home at Lambeau Field; Michael Manfredi’s and Kate Orff’s respective firms have been selected to participate in an ideas generation project to re-think Pittsburgh’s Portal Bridge; ArtDaily reports that no fewer than four major buildings by Moshe Safdie will open this fall; and Kris Scheerlinck has written an essay on Barcelona’s Plaza de las Glories Catalanes in the latest issue of Quaderns.
Fellows in the News: Angotti, Bell, Berman, Blaik, Ferebee, Flint, Hartmann, Holl, Pasquarelli, Rogers, & Safdie
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
Tom Angotti criticized Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC for not focusing enough on providing affordable housing in the Gotham Gazette; The Epoch Times interviewed Rick Bell about how the economic recovery will affect the architectural profession; Inhabitat interviewed Matt Berman about workshop/apd’s GreeNOLA project; land-use advocacy organization The Fayette Alliance has launched a campaign to bring Omar Blaik to Lexington to help develop a plan for enhancing the relationship between that city and its anchor institutions; the New York Times plugged IfUD Founder Ann Ferebee’s new book, A History of Design form the Victorian Era to the Present; Anthony Flint wrote for The Angle about how bike-sharing could improve traffic in Boston; John Hartmann spoke to Brian Lehrer about his map for WNYC’s “New Littles” feature (pictured at left), popped up in an Architect profile of the non-profit SUPERFRONT, and launched a new Kickstarter fundraising initiative for his +FARM project; a+t released a new book on mixed use hybrid buildings with a preface written by Patron Steven Holl; Gregg Pasquarelli talked to Architect about the launch of SHoP Construction, while Paul Goldberger reviewed the firm’s newly-opened East River Esplanade in the New Yorker; Christopher Hawthorne reviewed Rob Rogers’ firm Rogers Marvel’s winning proposal for the redesign of Washington DC’s Ellipse; and Moshe Safdie was announced as the architect for Bishan Central, a planned 540-unit residential skyscraper in Singapore.
Fellows in the News: Alschuler, Enquist, Gans, Greenberg, Holl, Libeskind, Norten, Nyman, Rogers, Safdie, Sassen, Sennett, Stastny, & Wilks
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
Over at Fast Co.Design, Karen Alschuler wrote an article comparing buildings to sandwiches, asking: “What makes them tasty?”; Design Intelligence featured the full text of Phil Enquist’s PennDesign commencement address; Deborah Gans reports on her work in New Orleans’ Plum Orchard neighborhood in Places: Design Observer; Ken Greenberg (whom Dow Marmur recently called a Canadian national treasure) is leading the planning process for the redevelopment of Boston’s waterfront; Patron Steven Holl’s Vanke Center in Shenzhen received high praise from Nicolai Ouroussoff, who calls the building “a triumph of sustainable design” in a new piece out this week; Daniel Libeskind released renderings of the design for a new synagogue in Munich; Villahermosa, Mexico, recently celebrated the opening of a new public building by Board Member Enrique Norten set in a new public park by Barbara Wilks; Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute Director Jack S. Nyman commented on his organization’s collaboration with CUNY’s Building Performance Lab in creating the just-launched Building Performance Toolkit; the National Capital Planning Commission released design renderings for DC’s Ellipse by the five firms competing for the job, including Rob Rogers’ firm Rogers Marvel (whose SandRidge Energy complex in Oklahoma City was also recently approved by the city); the New Yorker wrote about Moshe Safdie’s soon-to-open Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas; Rowan Moore reviewed Living in the Endless City, a new book featuring essays by Richard Sennett and Board Member Saskia Sassen; and Don Stastny is leading the visioning process for the redevelopment of Saint Louis’ historic Grand Center entertainment district (pictured at left).
Quoth the Fellows: Kazi, Sassen, & Safdie
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
In a chat with the Wall Street Journal about the Van Alen Institute’s new bookstore on 22nd Street, Olympia Kazi said of architects: “They’re books junkies, no matter how many Nooks and iPads. They still love their print, the hard copy.” In an article in the latest Americas Quarterly, Board Member Saskia Sassen detailed the ways that networked cities and citizens are changing the way business is done, stating in no uncertain terms that “There is no such entity as the global economy.” Moshe Safdie, meanwhile, reflected on the international atmosphere at the construction site for his Marina Bay Sands project in Singapore (pictured at left) at a press conference, noting that “One tower was built by Chinese workers, and another tower was built by a Bangladeshi team. It looked like the Tower of Babel.”
Quoth the Fellows: Brown, Dixon, & Safdie
Monday, May 30th, 2011
In a post on bird-safe windows, Inhabitat dug up a great quote from Hillary Brown in a 2008 issue of Audubon magazine. Said Brown: “That’s really what good, sustainable, integrated design is–solving multiple problems with a single solution.” Contrasting showpiece City Beautiful-era public spaces like Indianapolis’ Monument Circle (pictured at left) with more dynamic contemporary spaces, David Dixon argued that “Public spaces have a new purpose, to bring a sense of shared community and destiny. The space needs to engage people rather than just offering somewhere to go.” And Moshe Safdie, speaking about his involvement in an ongoing design competition for a new terminal in Incheon, South Korean, said of airport design: “There is something beyond functionality and convenience. [An airport terminal] needs to give a sense that you are entering the great gate of the country.”
Quoth the Fellows: Safdie, Stein, & Weisz
Thursday, April 14th, 2011 
In a recent profile, Moshe Safdie (whose design for a waterfront tower in Toronto made a big splash last week) explained the genesis of his career thusly: “I proposed a habitat – a sort of a fairy tale – and it got approved and built. That was the beginning of my professional practice”; in a Times article on the Met’s new Moroccan coutryard, architect Achva Benzinberg Stein explained that “This is like the culmination of a life’s work for me. To me it means the possibility of so many things, of peace”; and in the Architect’s Newspaper’s profile of WXY Architecture, Claire Weisz described the firm’s dynamic style in no uncertain terms: “We do believe in a certain amount of excess…Sometimes ‘too much’ is good.”
