Month: October 2013

Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.
Langston Hughes, “Freedom’s Plow” (1943)

An excerpt from “Freedom’s Plow” is inscribed on the Langston Hughes Community Library in Flushing. On 10.04.13, AIANY Executive Director Rick Bell, FAIA, opened the J. Max Bond Lecture by reading from the poem, saying that it exemplified Bond’s belief in the need for social justice in the building, design, and workings of the city – and the Hughes Library was one of the last projects Bond worked on. Bell named Bond not only as a former teacher, but a mentor and major influence on Bell’s career. The lecture was a collaboration between the newly reinstated AIANY Diversity & Inclusion Committee, the New York Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NYCBOA/NOMA), and the J. Max Bond Center for the Just City (JMBC), carrying on Bond’s commitment to inclusion and justice in the built environment. Continue reading “Building a Just City”

In Donald Judd’s 1994 New York Times obituary, Roberta Smith wrote: “By the late ‘60s, his sleek cubic and rectilinear works had helped redefine the direction of postwar sculpture…” It was also during this era that Judd had achieved enough success – including a major exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum – to purchase 101 Spring Street, a five-story 1870 cast-iron building in SoHo, in 1968 for $68,000. The sum was a “real pinch” recalls his daughter, Ranier, one of several speakers gathered at the Center for Architecture on 9.26.13 to discuss the restoration of her father’s New York City home and studio. Continue reading “Donald Judd’s Time Capsule”

For the 13th annual Oberfield Memorial Lecture, Marion Weiss, FAIA, of Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, spoke before an overflowing, rapt audience at the Center for Architecture on Monday, 09.23.13. Weiss eloquently laid out a series of projects rooted in the experience and memory of her native Northern California. Drawing on topography, these projects create a series of interior and exterior landscapes which have managed, through the evolution of their practice, to effortlessly bridge natural and urban settings. Continue reading “2013 Oberfield Memorial Lecture: Marion Weiss – Inside Nature”