Month: April 2011

Event: 2011 Design Awards Symposium: Architecture and interiors
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.16.10
Speakers: NYC Panel: Kevin Rice, AIA — Senior Associate, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), and Sylvia Smith, FAIA, LEED AP — Senior Partner, FXFOWLE (Hypar Pavilion Lawn and Restaurant); Todd Schliemann, FAIA — Partner, Ennead Architects (The Standard, New York); Richard Olcott, FAIA — Partner, Ennead Architects (Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant); Peter Han, AIA — Partner, Foster + Partners (Sperone Westwater); Felix Ade — Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center); Kathryn Dean, AIA — Dean/Wolf Architects (Inverted Warehouse/Townhouse and Implied Rotation Townhouse); Michael Wyetzner, AIA, and Frank Michielli, AIA, LEED AP — Michielli + Wyetzner Architects (EDAW Inc.); Andrew Mazor — Associate, Thomas Phifer and Partners (Fifth Avenue Apartment); Pablo Castro-Estevez, AIA — OBRA Architects (Urbia Furniture System for Small Apartments in Big Cities); Richard Cook, AIA — Principal, Cook+Fox Architects (641 Avenue of the Americas); Jeremy Edmiston, RA — SYSTEMarchitects (aA Shelter); Mark Yoes, AIA — Principal, WXY Architecture + Urban Design (NYC Information Center); U.S. Panel: Katie Bennett –Thomas Phifer and Partners (House in Midwest and North Carolina Museum of Art); Tod Williams, FAIA, & Billie Tsien, AIA — Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Berkeley, CA); Anthony Saby, Associate, DS+R (Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University, Providence, RI); Susan Rodriguez, FAIA — Partner, Ennead Architects (Gateway Center, Westchester Community College, Valhalla, NY); Chan-li Lin, AIA — Director, Rafael Viñoly Architects (UCSF Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building, San Francisco, CA); Myron Mirgorodsky — Roger Ferris + Partners (Country Estate, New Canaan, CT); International Panel: Ada Tolla, Int’l Assoc. AIA, & Giuseppe Lignano, Int’l Assoc. AIA — Principals, LOT-EK (APAP OpenSchool, Anyang, Seoul, South Korea); Garrick Ambrose — Steven Holl Architects (Horizontal Skyscraper, Vanke Center, Shenzhen, China); Stan Allen, FAIA — Principal, SAA / Stan Allen Architect (Taichung InfoBox, Taichung, Taiwan)
Moderator: NYC Panel: Sherida Paulsen, FAIA — Principal, PKSB Architects & 2009 AIANY President; U.S. Panel & International Panel: Kent Kleinman, AIA — Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, Cornell University
Introduction: Margaret Castillo, AIA, LEED AP — 2011 AIANY President
Organizers: AIANY
Sponsors: Benefactor: Vanguard Construction and Development; Patron: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, FXFOWLE, Trespa; Sponsors: Arup; Buro Happold; Ennead Architects; F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.; Gensler; Halcrow Yolles; Ibex Construction; Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti, LLP; Jaros, Baum & Bolles; Knoll/Lane Office; Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates; Mancini Duffy; MechoShade Systems, Inc.; New York University; Robert A.M. Stern Architects; Roger Ferris + Partners; Sage and Coombe Architects; Stalco Construction, Inc.; Structure Tone Inc.; Studio Daniel Libeskind; STUDIOS Architecture; Swanke Hayden Connell Architects; Syska Hennessy Group; Turner Construction Company; Weidlinger Associates, Inc.

Honor Award-winning “Best in Show” Hypar Pavilion Lawn and Restaurant, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with FXFOWLE Architects.

Iwan Baan.

With an unusually high number of Design Awards for Architecture and Interiors this year, suggested moderator and past AIANY President Sherida Paulsen, FAIA, the work is rising to new levels of expertise.

Some of the winning projects have been in the works for as much as two full decades, as in the case of Ennead Architects’ Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, continually being reinvented as it approaches its final phase (park construction). Some suggest general profession-wide patterns: integration with landscape, the mainstreaming of sustainability, and a preference for experimenting with light over striving for height. Billie Tsien, AIA, suggested in the U.S. Panel that current conditions favored buildings expressing the more democratic aspirations of nonprofit organizations over lucrative, self-branding “signature developer projects.” With the bling phase behind us, she noted, “all the work shares a desire to be locked into the thick of the surroundings, so there’s less desire to make an object on a plinth.” All 23 projects demonstrate a professional imagination resilient enough to overcome adversity; if there’s an emerging theme, it’s replacing the building-as-object with the object-as-component within legible systems.

Merit Award winners in Architecture include several site-specific variations on familiar themes: the New Canaan country estate by Roger Ferris + Partners, for example, a glass house in dialogue with nearby woods and an art barn, gives a nod to the ghost of Philip Johnson. The latest iteration of LOT-EK’s work modifying shipping containers, the sharply angled and colored APAP OpenSchool in Seoul, makes a case for modular objects’ capacity to engage a forested riverside area — a setting some would consider improbable. Rafael Viñoly Architects’ Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building at the University of San Francisco, as director Chan-Li Lin, AIA, recounted, negotiates the complications of a narrow roadside site that slopes in two directions on a sharp hill. The building divides a long, single-story volume into four segments that step down half a floor at each junction.

In a further exploration of horizontality, Steven Holl Architects’ Honor Award-winning, LEED Platinum-rated Horizontal Skyscraper at Shenzhen’s Vanke Center, Garrick Ambrose explained the dual structural system (concrete columns plus tension cables) allowing the unified building, as long as the Empire State Building is tall, to hover 15 meters above green space, supported by only eight cores without bulky trusses. Another exercise in single-story reticence, the North Carolina Museum of Art, one of two Honor entries by Thomas Phifer and Partners presented by project director Katie Bennett, controls and amplifies daylight to create a serene interior where colors pop and an impressive Rodin collection shines, while its exterior (anodized-aluminum panels, a hall-of-mirrors entryway, and multiple open courtyards) speaks a Miesian language of material honesty and democratic welcome.

Interiors winners included the repurposed, sustainable David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, a component of the Lincoln Center renovation’s Best in Show cluster of entries along with an Architecture Honor winner, the Hypar Pavilion Lawn and Restaurant (jointly represented by Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Kevin Rice, AIA, and FXFOWLE’s Sylvia Smith, FAIA, LEED AP). Kathryn Dean, AIA, of Dean/Wolf Architects, received two Interiors awards for different-scaled projects: and Honor for the Inverted Warehouse/Townhouse (adapting warehouse construction to a residence, unifying double-story spaces around a courtyard), and a Merit for the Implied Rotation Townhouse (inverting, softening. and feminizing the townhouse model by foregrounding its kitchen and letting daylight ripple through the curving, laser-cut side panels of a suspended staircase).

WXY Architecture + Urban Design’s Mark Yoes, AIA, described the rethinking of the tourist-center typology for the NYC Information Center: media technologies such as “smart tables” and a Google flythrough let visitors create and view their own self-orienting, thematically tailored itineraries, a considerable advance beyond typical brochure racks. Perhaps the most strikingly daylit interior among the winners is the EDAW office by Michielli + Wyetzner, making the most of a top-floor space on West 27th Street by combining operable interior glass panels with skylights.

Moderators Paulsen and Kent Kleinman, AIA, dean of Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, led the panelists in exploring an array of topics: the effects of firm size and the bifurcation into small boutiques and large corporate groups; greenwashing, complicity in systems, and social responsibility; the critical role of a single client representative who shares the architect’s passion for a project. Panelists explored how globalism affects material choices, uses of local principles, such as feng shui, and tensions between tectonic and decorative expressions of traditional elements. Accommodating a landscape, LOT-EK’s Giuseppe Lignano, Int.’l Assoc. AIA, suggested in exchanges with Stan Allen, FAIA, can take a mature form of dialogue with nature through Modernist abstraction. Organicism today means something different from what it meant to Frank Lloyd Wright, Lignano observed, not so much camouflaging forms amid nature as recognizing that “we have something to say with our hard edges, our colors, our materials… it’s not about skins, but reinventing the validity of everything,” discovering “the will that comes from the object itself.”

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OCULUS, Icon, Content, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.

Event: Between Architecture and Science: Material Analogs
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.12.11
Speaker: Jenny Sabin — Principal, Jenny Sabin Studio & Co-founder, Sabin + Jones LabStudio
Organizer: AIANY Technology Committee
Sponsor: ABC-Imaging

Fourier Tapestry (left); eSkin.

Jenny Sabin (left); Jenny E. Sabin, Sabin+Jones LabStudio (image); Shu Yang, Nader Engheta, Jan Van der Spiegel, Peter Lloyd Jones, Andrew Lucia, University of Pennsylvania; Supported by the NSF EFRI SEED (right)

Although the relationships made between science and architecture are not new, Jenny Sabin, principal of Jenny Sabin Studio and co-founder of Sabin + Jones LabStudio, is a pioneer, working with advanced technologies to develop what she calls, “hybrid research.” At her recent talk, Sabin explained her collaboration with cellular molecular biologist Peter Lloyd Jones and how, through linking scientific data processing based on cellular behavior, her work is aiming to advance the architectural profession. Reciprocally, she hopes that her work will help advance the field of science, as well.

Sabin believes that architects and designers can learn from the way scientists develop systems. Her process begins by establishing ground rules and goals for a project. She creates associative and hierarchical relationships, develops algorithms to reflect behavior, and ultimately uses visualization and simulation tools to understand complex, dynamic forms and functions. Whether she and her students are weaving, or developing advanced building façades, her process produces projects that transcend traditional constructs. For example, Sabin created “Fourier Carpets” that were designed through a set of algorithms and woven by a digitized Jacquard loom. The result is a line of rugs that were self-generated and unique. For eSkin, she collaborated with four scientists to develop an adaptive building skin. Through the study of cellular behavior — specifically how cells can modify their own micro environment using a minimal amount of energy — they developed a reactive façade that adjusts to everything from weather conditions to human interaction.

Sabin is excited about the potential for scientific partnerships to advance both fields at trans-scalar levels. By studying nature at a molecular level, the information she is gathering moves beyond simple biomimicry, and enters the realm of architecture that can literally shift and change according to its surroundings.

Event: New Practices 2010 Winner Presentations: Tacklebox
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.07.11
Speaker: Jeremy Barbour, AIA — Principal, Tacklebox
Sponsors: Lead Sponsors: Dornbracht; MG & Company Construction Managers/General Contractors; Valiant Technology; Sponsors: Espasso; Hafele; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Media Sponsor: The Architect’s Newspaper

Saipua, Soap and Flower Shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Tacklebox

Jeremy Barbour, AIA, has a talent for repurposing found objects and celebrating the ways that materials weather. As the principal and founder of Tacklebox, a recent AIANY New Practices New York award winner, he has completed designs ranging from boutique store interiors to print bandanas.

Tacklebox designed the flagship boutique for fashion label 3.1 phillip lim in SoHo with a five-month schedule and limited budget. Barbour discovered a pile of tongue-and-groove hardwood flooring in a construction bin and was inspired to stack the planks, exposing the edges, to create a textured entry wall surface. However, “it’s one thing to convince your client to put the flooring on the wall, but it’s another thing to convince a contractor,” explained Barbour. Fortunately, he found a contractor who appreciated the design concept, but later encountered another obstacle when an invitation for a Vogue-sponsored opening party was mailed with the incorrect date, pushing the already tight deadline back another month. The team managed to finish even earlier because, Barbour believes, “everyone had something at stake.”

The use of found objects also guided Tacklebox’s design for the storefront of Saipua, a shop in Red Hook that specializes in handmade soaps and floral arrangements. Barbour acquired some silvery, weathered wood that originally clad a Shaker barn. Guided by the dimensions of the boards, he designed a freestanding structure with niches carved out for displays. The result is a functional space that also serves as a “front porch” for the store.

Aside from his work with Tacklebox, Barbour also formed design collaborative Box & Flea with former classmate Andrew Woordrum, of Fleaheart. They handcraft bandanas, totes, and tool cases. An unexpected benefit of this side project has been the ability to meet potential boutique clients while coordinating to sell their wares.

Murrye Bernard, LEED AP, is an architectural journalist and contributing editor to e-Oculus.

Event: Towards an Age-Friendly New York City: An Overview
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.05.11
Speaker: Ruth Finkelstein, ScD — Director, The New York City Age-Friendly Initiative & Vice-President for Health Policy, The New York Academy of Medicine
Organizer: AIANY Design for Aging Committee

Toward an Age-friendly New York City A Findings Report.

Courtesy of The New York Academy of Medicine

The Age-Friendly NYC Commission is comprised of members of the NYC Council, representatives from the Mayor’s Office, and leaders of various NYC public- and private-sector organizations. It aims to bring together policy-makers, nonprofit partners, and the private sector to identify resources and create programs and policy change to help seniors live vibrant, fulfilling lives in the city. Ruth Finkelstein and The NY Academy of Medicine are charged with directing this NYC Age-Friendly Initiative.

The focus of the commission is on maintaining independence and preventing disability for older adults through urban planning and environmental means, as well as providing needed services. Qualities of the physical environment have a significant influence on enabling people to negotiate their surroundings. An environment with few architectural barriers, numerous places to sit, and conveniently located restrooms increases the range of functions for individuals and lowers the disability threshold. It enables people of all ages and abilities, not only the elderly, to function with greater ease.

The commission has, to date, established three Age-Friendly Districts in the city: East Harlem, the Upper West Side, and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Staff members work with local groups and commercial enterprises to raise awareness about seniors. The initiative encourages specific practices: local stores provide seating areas, allow use of their restrooms, and utilize large-font signage; local institutions such as libraries and museums develop programs for seniors; local pools establish special hours for seniors; gyms organize exercise classes; Apple offers technology classes; food markets sponsor cooking classes; hospitals hold lectures about healthful eating. Existing resources are used in new ways. School buses in their idle hours drive older adults to shopping areas. Vouchers are provided for taxis. Stoplights are rescheduled to increase crossing times at intersections. Capital investments made with aging in mind include the design of new taxis and bus shelters. In the restrained economy that we are currently experiencing, a multiplicity of “little” improvements that are low-cost or no cost, but that result in an “age-in-everything” planning approach, have a significant cumulative effect on the surrounding environment — and people of all ages benefit.

Additional Age-Friendly Districts are planned. To learn more details about the commission, and perhaps begin to organize a district in your community, visit the Age-Friendly NYC website, or e-mail info@nyam.org. At present, more than 900,000 people over the age of 65 live in the city. By 2030, that number is projected to exceed 1.35 million. Hopefully, the commission will help to make lives for seniors as pleasant, productive, and safe as possible.

Jerry Maltz, AIA, is the co-chair of the AIANY Design for Aging Committee.

In this issue:
· 2011 Convention — Make Your Plans Today!
· AIA Adds New On-Demand Documents
· NCARB Talks
· e-Calendar

2011 Convention — Make Your Plans Today!
The AIA 2011 National Convention and Design Exposition is just around the corner, 05.12-14.11 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. The theme of the conference is “Regional Design Revolution: Ecology Matters.” Advance registration is available here and housing can be reserved through the convention website. AIA’s new publishing partner Hanley Wood organized the conference. More than 800 exhibitors and 200 programs are planned for the three-day convention. Concurrently, AIANY and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, with AIA New Orleans, and Tulane University Prevention Research Center, will be hosting “Fit Nation NOLA — Healthy communities through design.” More information and registration can be found here.

AIA Adds New On-Demand Documents
With 13 new contract documents, AIA.org has expanded its suite of on-demand contract documents to 48. The additions are:
· B201–2007 (formerly B141–1997 Part 2), Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Design and Construction Contract Administration;
· B202–2009, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Programming;
· B203–2007, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Site Evaluation and Planning;
· B204–2007, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Value Analysis, for use where the Owner employs a Value Analysis Consultant;
· B205–2007, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Historic Preservation;
· B206–2007, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Security Evaluation and Planning;
· B207–2008 (formerly B352–2000), Standard Form of Architect’s Services: On-Site Project Representation;
· B209–2007, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Construction Contract Administration, for use where the Owner has retained another Architect for Design Services;
· B210–2007, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Facility Support;
· Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Commissioning;
· Standard Form of Architect’s Services: LEED Certification;
· Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Architectural Interior Design;
· Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Furniture, Furnishings and Equipment Design.

For more information, or to download, visit http://documentsondemand.aia.org/. As always, contract documents are on sale at the AIANY office Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. Contact info@aiany.org with any questions.

NCARB Talks
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has launched a new video series entitled “NCARB Talks,” featuring short, informal conversations with architects on staff. These videos give viewers a glimpse of individual triumphs and challenges on the path to licensure. They discuss their experiences with the Intern Development Program (IDP), the Architect Registration Examination (ARE), and the importance of getting licensed and ultimately NCARB certified. Videos are available at http://www.ncarb.org or http://www.youtube.com/user/NCARBorg.

eCALENDAR
eCalendar includes an interactive listing of architectural events around NYC. Click the link to go to to eCalendar on the Web.