Month: July 2013

Observers looking into the Center for Architecture from the sidewalk on 06.24.13 may have inferred either that every talk given at Fit City 8 was deeply inspiring or that the audience was unusually excitable. From Mayor Bloomberg’s video introduction, to remarks by Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and the first keynote speaker – the World Health Organization’s Alex Ross – through the final summation by NYC Department of Design + Construction Commissioner David Burney, FAIA, each presentation ended in a standing ovation.

This wasn’t quite the case: the attendees were following Dr. Karen K. Lee’s recommendation of “active applause,” standing up for each applaudable moment: along with exercises led by the Department of Health’s Sarah Wolf, MPH, RD, and group yoga maneuvers led by Robyne Kassen, Assoc. AIA, and Sarah Gluck of Urban Movement Design, one of several strategies for keeping the blood circulating and staving off the languor that all-day meetings often produce. But Fit City is that kind of event: it translates ideas directly into practice. Continue reading “Fit City 8: Purposeful Ovations, Urgency, and Poetry”

Standing on a hot, crowded subway platform during the New York City summer can make the notion of increasing the city’s density a scary prospect in the minds of its inhabitants and architects. In fact, Mimi Hoang, AIA, co-founder and principal of nARCHITECTS, the firm responsible for the winning design for New York City’s adAPT NYC micro-unit competition, admitted to being “terrified” at the concept of designing microhousing when it was first proposed to her.

Density is sometimes a contentious term – easily conflated with congestion and discomfort. However, to Vishaan Charkararti, AIA, a principal at SHoP Architects and director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University, a smart approach to increased urban density is the only solution to the issues faced by our growing cities. This made Chakrabarti the ideal moderator for “Densify,” which was organized by the AIANY Global Dialogues Committee. Speakers discussed global trends in high-density development and how these can be applied to New York City. Continue reading “Hyping Up Density”

On 06.06.14, the AIANY Professional Practice Committee convened the penultimate session of the “Leading Architecture in a Changing World” series. A nascent theme of this session was that although architects focus on the sustainability – primarily energy consumption – of the buildings we design, we may not be as attentive to sustainable business practices for ourselves and our clients. To focus our attention on this matter, each panelist brought a fresh perspective to the topics at the intersection of sustainable buildings and sustainable business practice. An expert from the building industry was joined by an expert from the emerging “digital” building world and a leader in sustainable business evaluation. Continue reading “Triple Bottom Line Design”