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’ Events & Exhibits: October 1-15, 2011

Friday, September 30th, 2011

The AIACC’s Monterey Design Conference, scheduled for 10/7-9, will feature talks by Peter Walker and Board Member Thom Mayne; Matthew Berman will speak at Chicago Ideas Week on 10/10; Craig Dykers‘ firm Snøhetta will host the Architectural League of New York’s First Friday reception on 10/14; and Board Member Saskia Sassen will participate in the Columbia GSAPP-hosted Injured Cities Conference on 10/14-15.

Quoth the Fellows: Dykers, Greenberg, & Sassen

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

In describing plans for the expansion of SFMOMA’s Mario Botta-designed building (pictured at left), Craig Dykers explained that Snøhetta’s new wing is intended to help people “to experience the city in a completely new way.” Speaking to the Calgary Herald about the future of urban and suburban development, Ken Greenberg asserted that “The status quo is not an option.” And during her introductory speech at the Audi Urban Future Summit, Saskia Sassen argued that “We must think of mobility as a sort of black box that has many more facets than those defined by current technologies.”

Fellows in the News: Angotti, Balsley, Dart, Drucker, Dykers, Greenberg, Holl, Mayne, Sassen, Sauerbruch, Sollohub, & Weisz

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

The Vanishing City, a new film on the gentrification of Manhattan, featuring interviews with Tom Angotti and Board Member Saskia Sassen, opened the Staten Island Film Festival; Angotti also spoke to the NY Daily News about his new research project at Hunter College trying to repurpose vacant residential units to shrink rates of homelessness; Mimi Zeiger profiled Thomas Balsley in the latest Landscape Architecture Magazine [PDF]; Jim Dart wrote briefly about progress on the Great Falls Arts + Revitalization Initiative at the Great Falls National Park in Paterson, NJ, a project that also involves Darius Sollohub and Claire Weisz; in nearby Nutley, NJ, Ken Drucker is designing a new pedestrian bridge at the Hoffman La Roche corporate campus; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston announced a shortlist of three firms for its planned expansion: Craig Dykers’ Snøhetta, Patron Steven Holl’s eponymous firm, and Board Member Thom Mayne’s Morphosis; hot off an interview with the Montreal Gazette, Ken Greenberg penned a requiem for a pedestrian bridge proposed in Toronto; Matthias Sauerbruch’s design for an office building on London’s Old Bailey (pictured at left) has been approved; and the Drawing Center has just launched a capital plan for their Claire Weisz-designed expansion.

Fellows Kick Off Major Projects

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Fellows have launched a number of exciting new projects recently: Craig Dykers released the much-anticipated initial renderings of Snøhetta’s addition to SFMOMA’s iconic Mario Botta-designed building last week. Board Member Enrique Norten debuted his own set of renderings of the planned renovation of the Amparo Museum in Puebla, Mexico (pictured at left), and Robert A.M. Stern was announced as the architect of a new Chapel for the Ages at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Meanwhile, just down I-95 in Richmond, Patron Steven Holl was tapped to design a new home for the Institute for Contemporary Art within days of revealing the design for a new university building in Bogotá. 

Fellows In the News: Berke, Brown, Dubbeldam, Dykers, Fain, Holl, Katz, Pollak, Portman, Sennett, & Wong

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

The New York Times went shopping for coffee tables with Deborah Berke; AECOM Chief Innovation Officer Joseph Brown commented on his firm’s new partnership with IBM’s Smarter Planet Initiative; the Shanghai flagship of retailer Ports 1961, designed by Board Member Winka Dubbeldam, has just opened; Toronto’s Ryerson University revealed renderings of an eye-catching new building by Craig Dykers‘ Snøhetta (pictured at left); William Fain served on the jury of this year’s AIA Pennsylvania Design Excellence Awards, which were presented this past week; Patron Steven Holl’s athletic center for Columbia in Inwood was recently approved by the city; Apartment Therapy Boston featured Deborah Grossberg Katz’s “A Cabin in a Loft” project; the Lynn University Performing Arts Center, designed by Herbert Newman, is featured in the March 2011 issue of American School & University Magazine [PDF]; Linda Pollak reviewed NYC’s new High Performance Landscape Guidelines in Topos 74 [PDF]; construction has begun on John Portman’s newest hotel in Shenzhen; Richard Sennett was announced as one of the jurors for the Watermill Center’s International Residency Program; and John Wong’s SWA Group will be designing a new park around an historic schoolhouse in Milpitas, CA.

Fellows’ Events & Exhibitions: March 15-31, 2011

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

Claire Weisz will participate in a panel discussion, to be moderated by Wanda Bubriski, on Emily Roebling’s role in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge tonight (3/15) in New York; Weisz will also speak at the New Museum tomorrow (3/16) as part of the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices series; Gretchen Bank will lead a Marketing & PR seminar for the AIANY’s Architects’ Fast-Track Leadership Series on 3/23; a traveling exhibit of work by Craig Dykers’ Snøhetta has just landed at Lisbon’s Musea de Electricidade; and the exhibit “Alessi: Ethical and Radical,” featuring items designed by Patron Robert Venturi, opened recently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it will remain on view until 4/10.

Dykers’ Snøhetta a “Most Innovative” Company

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Fast Company ranked Craig Dykers’ Snøhetta at #35 on its list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies for 2011, commending the Norwegian firm for its attention to the “social experience” of architecture. Quoth Dykers in the business mag: “I hope that the fascination with a building’s sculptural form will make way for a greater emphasis on its socially conscious engagement with its surroundings.”

Fellows’ Events & Exhibitions: March 1-15, 2011

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

On 3/2, Patron Steven Holl will deliver the First Annual Raimund Abraham Memorial Lecture in Los Angeles; Board Member Winka Dubbeldam will celebrate the completion of her new book Archi-Tectonics (pictured at left) with a launch party in NYC on 3/4; that same day, Anthony Flint will speak at Connecticut College’s Smart Growth Conference; also on 3/4, Board Member Saskia Sassen will participate in Housing Conference 2011 in Istanbul; the exhibit Nordic Models + Common Ground, curated by Craig Dykers’ Snøhetta at New York’s Scandanavia House, will close on 3/9; Michael Manfredi will deliver the lecture Surface/Subsurface at URI Kingston on 3/10; Dykers will speak at San Francisco’s California College of the Arts on 3/14; Jack Nyman will host the conference Banking on the Future: A New Paradigm for Rebuilding Our Nation’s Infrastructure in New York on 3/14; and a new exhibit of work by Daniel Libeskind, Architecture as a Language, has just opened at the Wroclaw Museum of Architecture in Poland, and will be on view through 5/16.

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.