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Events: Rising Water and the City: A New Design Challenge; New York / Amsterdam 2040: Breathing, Eating, Making, Moving, Dwelling
Location: Center for Architecture, 06.10.11; 06.11.11
Speakers: Rising Water and the City: Paul Roncken — Bachelor Coördinator & Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Wageningen University; Chris van Langen — Head of School, Rotterdam Academy of Architecture; Brian McGrath — Professor & Research Chair in Urban Design, Parsons The New School; Kevin Joh Benham — Head of the School of Landscape Architecture, Boston Architectural College; Rogier van de Berg — Head of Urbanism, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture; Sandro Marpillero, FAIA — Associate Professor in Architecture and Urban Design, Columbia University; Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, ACSA — Distinguished Professor, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York (moderator); Aart Oxenaar — Director, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (moderator); New York/Amsterdam 2040: Abby Suckle, FAIA, LEED AP — VP for Public Outreach, AIANY & President, cultureNOW (welcome); David Bragdon — Director, NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability (introduction); Barbara Wilks, FAIA, ASLA — W Architecture; Steven Delva — DELVA Landscape Architects; Dingeman Deijs — Dingeman Deijs Architect; Bonnie A. Harken, AIA, APA — President, Nautilus International Development Consulting, Inc. & Co-chair, Waterfront Committee, APA New York Metro Chapter (respondent); Sam Dufaux — WORKac; Jago van Bergen — Van Bergen Kolpa; Howard Slatkin — Director of Sustainability, NYC Department of City Planning (respondent); Susannah Drake, ASLA, AIA — dlandstudio; Olv Klijn — .FABRIC; Margaret Newman, AIA — Chief of Staff, NYC Department of Transportation (respondent); Jing Liu & Florian Idenburg, Int’l Assoc. AIA — Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu (SO-IL); Caro van der Venne — Barcode Architects; Hillary Brown, FAIA — Professor of Architecture, CUNY & Principal, New Civic Works (respondent); Daniel D’Oca — Interboro; Sascha Glasl — Space & Matter; Chris Beardsley — Executive Director, Forum for Urban Design & Principal, RUX Design (respondent); Luc Vrolijks — Urban Progress (moderator, summary discussion)
Organizers: Rising Water and the City: Center for Architecture; ARCAM; Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Urban Progress; AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee; New York/Amsterdam 2040: Center for Architecture; ARCAM; in collaboration with Urban Progress
Sponsors: Underwriters: Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectuur; Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; Sponsors: Priva; Proper Stok

The Red Point Park: Aquapuncture on the Waterfront (Project team: Jacques Abelman, Txell Blanco Diaz, Marit Janse, Simone Serafino, Egle Suminskaite)

Courtesy Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

In these two panels related to the “Glimpses 2040” exhibition, the affinities between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam appeared stronger than differences in geography and national cultures. Some of the shared qualities noted by David Bragdon, director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability — a strong trading history, an openness to outsiders, and an innovative spirit (occasionally hazardous in the financial sphere, he noted, drawing parallels between 17th-century tulips and 21st-century mortgages) — make both cities suitable for creative leadership in an era that will challenge architects and planners’ improvisational skills.

The mission for the new AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee, announced by Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, at the “Rising Water” panel, applies logically to what the Dutch have been doing for centuries: designing public spaces and infrastructure to keep natural hazards at bay. “One of the problems of being Dutch,” quipped Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture Rogier van den Berg, “is everybody says you know a lot about water.” Dutch technical expertise, most visible in dikes and polders, extends to other realms such as wind power and housing; van den Berg’s catchphrase “fluid attitude” is more than a pun. Paul Roncken of Wageningen University and Rotterdam Academy of Architecture’s Chris van Langen’s accounts of evolving hydrologic strategies suggested historical movement from “technocratic” strategies (moving water out as fast as possible) to an acceptance of water as a functioning component of urban structures. Using “sand engines,” “aquapuncture,” and other soft-edge approaches helps infrastructure employ natural forces rather than resist them.

Local responses to climate change, Parsons The New School’s Brian McGrath suggested, will require understanding the ecologies of the whole New York Bight (Cape May to Montauk); similar broad views apply to New Orleans and other flood-prone areas. Much discussion at this event stressed the urgency of interdisciplinary work: research on, by, and for design, as Roncken proposed, driven not by clients’ commercial incentives, but by global collegiality, perhaps with institutional innovations such as a civic foundation holding patents on new technologies.

Saturday’s all-day event, an exercise in rethinking broad quality-of-life topics at sites in both cities, yielded ideas about how future Amsterdammers and New Yorkers might adapt to new flows of resources, people, and knowledge. As Margaret Newman, AIA, of the NYC Department of Transportation, observed, public health varies with means of movement; all schemes anticipated multimodal, resource-sharing, non-car-oriented cities, with waterfront reclamation and water transport as recurrent themes (dlandstudio’s Hybrid Urban Base, a Long Island City mode-switch nexus, being perhaps the most concrete of the proposals). WORKac’s “Infoodstructure” sketched the reconfiguration of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant from a food desert to a more self-sustaining nutritional environment, converting key streets to orchards, urban farms, and “aquaponic” underground fisheries. Jago van Bergen, of Van Bergen Kolpa, accordingly restructured Amsterdam’s outlying land wedges for discrete food sectors, restoring the balance of production and consumption. Space & Matter’s Sascha Glasl realigned Amsterdam’s neighborhoods to admit themed residential blocks, hinting at negotiations between choice and diversity while striving to avoid the sterility of gated districts. Interboro’s Daniel d’Oco offered sobering reminders of misbegotten past visions, turning Newark’s Broad Street into an archipelago of past urban-renewal projects as “weapons of inclusion or exclusion.”

Luc Vrolijks, of Urban Progress, observed a general tendency for the American projects to aim at restoring lost natural states, contrasting with Dutch approaches to managing the built/natural interface. Still, transatlantic commonalities were at least as strong, linked to the perception, as Director of Sustainability for the NYC Department of City Planning Howard Slatkin noted, that meaningful solutions to site problems begin with recognition of each site’s location within multiple social systems.

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

Event: Oculus Book Talk: Michael Crosbie, New York Dozen
Location: Center for Architecture, 06.22.11
Speaker: Michael J. Crosbie, AIA, Ph.D. — Author, New York Dozen: Gen X Architects (Images Publishing Group, 2011)
Moderator: Kristen Richards, Hon. AIA, Hon. ASLA — Editor-in-Chief, OCULUS and ArchNewsNow.com
Organizer: AIANY Oculus Committee
Sponsor: Bernsohn & Fetner, LLC

New York Dozen: Gen X Architects.

Courtesy AIANY

The foreshadowing of New York Dozen, by Michael J. Crosbie, AIA, Ph.D., began 40 years ago in another groundbreaking book, Five Architects. Focused on the New York Five (Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, FAIA, Charles Gwathmey, John Heiduk, and Richard Meier, FAIA, FRIBA), the book marked a lot of firsts; perhaps most importantly it provided a more expansive public platform for architectural discourse. Not long after the book’s publication, in an issue of Architectural Forum, architects Romaldo Giurgola, FAIA, Allan Greenberg, Charles Moore, Jaquelin T. Robertson, FAIA, and Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, wrote “Five on Five,” essays that pointedly indicted the pure Modernist aesthetic, resulting in unworkable buildings that were indifferent to site, indifferent to users, and divorced from daily life.

Crosbie’s introduction is not a history lesson. It is a beautifully crafted conversation about how our profession is best served when architects see themselves not just as designers but as artists, thinkers, and agents of change. Part of the gusto and soul of this architect’s journey, as Crosbie unfolds throughout this book, is that it does not end with a generation that has reached a level of prominence that others then try to emulate. Rather, ideas are passed on and with the creative mind can evolve into something that was unimaginable in previous decades. This book in the hands of a less scholarly, creative, and insightful editor, would have probably ended up being a marketing piece for a dozen up-and-coming firms. New York Dozen is a prism that looks carefully into an uncertain future through the lens of another time in our history that, while unpredictable, yielded surprisingly radical and transformative results.

In the energetic foreword to New York Dozen, Kristen Richards, Hon. AIA, Hon. ASLA, writes a balanced refection on the past that moves insightfully toward a future filled with some unprecedented challenges/opportunities facing Gen X. “The city is in a very particular place and time. Government agencies, developers, and the citizenry have never been more actively involved (most times collaboratively) in city building that is economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. I believe 9/11, and the growing awareness of what climate change could do to our streets and shorelines have had much to do with it.” The architecture of the New York Dozen — Andre Kikoski Architect, Architecture in Formation, Arts Corporation, Christoff/Finio Architecture, Della Valle Bernheimer, Leroy Street Studio, Levenbetts, MOS, nARCHITECTS, Studio Sumo, Work Architecture Company (WORKac), and WXY Architecture — is very diverse. Each practice is unique in their vision and in execution. Threads of commonality are found philosophically in a “we” not the “me” style of collaboration.

Five Architects sparked controversial debates. It is my hope that New York Dozen will inspire and provoke a level of discourse about architecture, inspiration, individuation, and collaboration in era of globalization that is truly unprecedented.

Maxinne Rhea Leighton, Assoc. AIA, is a member of the AIANY Oculus Committee. At Parsons Brinckerhoff she is in charge of managing the Northeast Region Business Development and Marketing. Maxinne is also working with the New York Transit Museum on a new book on Grand Central Terminal for the centennial in February 2013.

Note about Oculus Book Talks: Each month, the AIANY Oculus Committee hosts a Book Talk at the Center for Architecture. Each talk highlights a recent publication on architecture, design, or the built environment — presented by the author. The Book Talks are a forum for dialogue and discussion, and copies of the publications are available for purchase and signing. The next talk will take place on 07.11.11, featuring The Vertical Farm, by Dickson Despommier. Click here to RSVP.

Event: Dialogues for a New Japan — Japan: Brainstorming
Location: Center for Architecture, 05.24.11
Speakers: Yasuhisa Kawamura — Deputy Consul General of Japan in New York; Toru Hasegawa — Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP); Joji Kurumado, JIA — General Manager, Takenaka Corporation; Mutsuro Sasaki, JIA — Founder, Sasaki Structural Consultants; Motoko Shoboji, AIA, LEED AP BD+C — Member, Global Dialogues Committee.
Panelists: Joji Kurumado; Mutsuro Sasaki; Paul Katz, FAIA, HKIA — Managing Principal, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates; Clifford Pearson — Deputy Editor, Architectural Record; Leslie Robertson, Hon. AIANY — Leslie E. Robertson Associates; Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, JIA, SCA, Int. FRIBA — Principal/Lead Designer, Rafael Viñoly Architects
Moderator: Toru Hasegawa
Introduction: Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, AIA, LEED AP — 2011 AIANY President & Principal, Helpern Architects; Noushin Ehsan, AIA — Chair, Global Dialogues Committee
Organizers: AIANY Global Dialogues Committee; support by Consulate General of Japan in New York; JETRO; Japan Society; Japan Institute of Architects
Sponsors: Japan by Design; TOTO USA; Hilton, New York

Ocean energy distribution forecast map for the 2011 Sendai earthquake from the U.S. NOAA.

West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

In the wake of devastating natural disasters, what strategies can we employ to prepare ourselves for future incidents? Japanese and American architects and structural engineers posed variations on this query during a symposium focused on the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Paul Katz, FAIA, HKIA, managing principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, remarked that the Tohoku earthquake might be the most visually well-documented natural disaster in history. However, as Toru Hasegawa, adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University GSAPP, iterated that imagery does not tell the entire story. At a magnitude of 9.0, the earthquake is tied for the fourth largest documented seismic event since 1900. Surprisingly, the tremors themselves did very little damage. Indeed, Mutsuro Sasaki, JIA, founder of Sasaki Structural Consultants, mentioned that the Sendai Mediatheque, which he had engineered in collaboration with Toyo Ito, Hon. FAIA, suffered no structural damage following five minutes of shaking.

Instead, the earthquake triggered the tsunami that inundated Eastern Japan, reaching as far as 10 kilometers (six miles) inland, and flooding 470 square kilometers (more than 181 square miles) of terrain. Of the more than 15,000 dead, approximately 92% perished by drowning. Although Japan had dramatically upgraded its seismic design codes in response to the 1995 Kobe earthquake, it was unprepared for walls of water reaching from 3.2-38.9 meters (10-127 feet) in height. According to Takenaka Corporation General Manager Joji Kurumado, AIJ, most of the breached sea barriers were no more than 10 meters (33 feet) high.

Japanese planners are perplexed as to which policy to employ to prevent future harm. Most of the panelists agreed that isolated applications of solutions, including raising the height of tsunami walls or placing a moratorium on building within a defined distance from the coastline, would prove ineffective.

Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, JIA, SCA, Int. FRIBA, of Rafael Viñoly Architects, suggested that Japan consider implementing a comprehensive and holistic land-use plan along the coastline. Architectural, environmental, infrastructural, and recreational concerns could all be integrated into one scheme. In this case, disaster design could become a societal concern, and all of Japan could participate in the discussion to protect its future.

Matt Shoor, LEED AP, is a freelance designer, educator, and writer living in Manhattan. He is currently teaching sustainable design to Bronx high school students, and recently completed his architectural license exams.