Author: Lisa Delgado

Event: 2010 Design Awards Symposium: Architecture and Interiors
Location: Center for Architecture, 06.19.10
Speakers: Stacie Wong — Project Architect, Peter Gluck and Partners and ARCS Construction Services; Adam Marcus — Project Architect, Marble Fairbanks; David Burns — Principal, STUDIOS Architecture; Philip Wu, AIA — Partner, io Architects; Lyn Rice, AIA — Principal, Lyn Rice Architects; Astrid Lipka — Associate Principal, Lyn Rice Architects; Mark Maljanian, AIA — Design Director, Butler Rogers Baskett; Tom Krizmanic, AIA, LEED AP — Principal, STUDIOS Architecture; Andrew Mazor — Project Architect, Thomas Phifer and Partners; Sonya Lee, AIA — Project Architect, Toshiko Mori Architect; Stan Allen, AIA — Principal, Stan Allen Architect; James Garrison — Principal, Garrison Architects; David Rolland, AIA, JIA, LEED AP — Project Director, Rafael Viñoly Architects
Organizer: AIANY
Moderators: Kelsey Keith – Editor-in-Chief, Architizer.com; Cliff Pearson — Deputy Editor, Architectural Record
Sponsors: Chair’s Circle: Foster + Partners New York; Benefactor: STUDIOS Architecture; Patrons: Mancini Duffy; Peter Marino Architect, PLLC; Studio Daniel Libeskind; Trespa; Lead Sponsors: A. E. Greyson + Company; Dagher Engineering; F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.; Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson; FXFOWLE Architects; Gensler; Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti; Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates; MechoShade Systems, Inc.; New York University; Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; Rudin Management Company, Inc.; Structure Tone, Inc.; Syska Hennessy Group; Toshiko Mori Architect PLLC; VJ Associates

The 2010 AIANY Design Awards have provided plenty of proof that stellar architectural design is alive and well, despite the recession. At the Design Awards symposium for Architecture and Interiors, Stacie Wong of Peter Gluck and Partners and ARCS Construction Services discussed how her firm’s tightly integrated design-build process allowed it to keep costs down for a new building for the East Harlem School — built for $340 per square foot. The Architecture Honor Award-winning building features inviting, light-filled interiors and an eye-catching façade design. The school engages actively with the community, but shields its students from the distractions of the outside world, Wong explained. To express that duality, the Trespa-panel façade looks like a “screen or a fabric weave that both masks as well as reveals the activities that happen behind it,” she said.

For Garrison Architects, a project to create Koby Cottage in Albion, MI, offered the chance to explore an ongoing fascination with modular design. “The idea behind modular buildings is to prepare the site while the building’s being constructed in the factory, and that means the time taken to build it is basically cut in half,” Principal James Garrison said. “It also means there’s much less disruption of the environment, whether it’s urban or whether it’s rural.” The Architecture Merit Award-winning cottage has many finely handcrafted details, he added, contrary to what one might imagine of something produced in a factory. His firm also received an Interiors Merit award for the renovation of Slocum Hall, home of Syracuse University’s School of Architecture.

A couple of Interiors Merit Award winners in NYC showed a flair for integrating high-tech information displays: STUDIOS Architecture’s Dow Jones office space and Lyn Rice Architects’ The New School Welcome Center. The trick is to integrate such digital displays into the design from the beginning, said Tom Krizmanic, AIA, LEED AP, of STUDIOS Architecture. If they’re not “in the DNA” of the project, beware — the space might end up looking like a P.C. Richard showroom, he joked.

Many other award winners showed a fascination with the transparency of glass, balanced with the need for energy efficiency. Thomas Phifer and Partners’ Fishers Island House served as one of the most extreme examples, with an airy transparency that makes the house and surrounding gardens seem to meld into one. The glass is insulated and blocks UV rays to provide a climate-controlled, safe environment for the owner’s art collection, explained project architect Andrew Mazor.

Once, Modernists held a “fascination with pure transparency,” remarked Stan Allen, AIA, principal of Stan Allen Architect, which won an Architecture Merit Award for Salim Publishing House in Paju Book City, Korea. Nowadays, “I think we’ve returned to an interest in transparency, but it’s modified by that sense that the façade, the elevation, can do something more.”

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: Is it Architecture?: The Structure in Landscape
Location: Center for Architecture, 05.03.10
Speakers: Alice Aycock — Sculptor; Signe Nielsen, FASLA — Principal, Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects; Dennis Oppenheim — Sculptor & Installation Artist; Christopher Sharples, AIA — Principal, SHoP Architects
Moderator: Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA — Board Chair, Architecture Omi & Principal, Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership
Organizer: AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee, with Architecture OMI
Sponsors: IBEX Construction; Renfro Design Group

When the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and landscape begin to dissolve, the results can be intriguing (as anyone who walked through Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates” in Central Park might agree). Soon Ghent, a town in upstate NY, will be home to some daring hybrids of its own, thanks to a program called Architecture Omi , whose goal is to facilitate projects exploring the intersection of architecture, sculpture, and landscape architecture on a bucolic 75-acre site. As the program prepares for the debut of its first built project next month, a panel of prominent figures in all three disciplines shared their ideas about the ways their fields converge and diverge. They also brainstormed about how Architecture Omi could best fulfill its mission as a “laboratory-style setting for the production of innovative forms,” in the words of Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA, chair of the board of Architecture Omi.

In the past 20 years, “architecture has become more sculptural,” and simultaneously, “sculpture has become more architectural,” Skolnick remarked. That hasn’t always been the case, said sculptor and installation artist Dennis Oppenheim. Once, “sculptors were suspicious of architects,” he explained, because fine artists tended to reject the kinds of utilitarian and social missions that architecture needed to embrace. But gradually attitudes shifted, and some sculptors began to believe that if they could “touch delicately into functionality and delicately into the social realm they would actually be elevating the sculpture into a much more powerful idiom,” he said. One example is Oppenheim’s “Light Chamber,” a large-scale sculpture being built in front of the Denver federal courthouse. Made of steel and polycarbonate rods, its petal-like walls curve up through the air, tempting passersby to enter and explore the space, which is conceptualized as a poetic reinterpretation of a judge’s chamber.

When talk turned toward Architecture Omi’s plans for future projects, some panelists urged a cautious, reverential approach to the site. “Do something meaningful with that site and respect it and make it a special place,” said Signe Nielsen, FASLA, principal of Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects. “Don’t just place things on it.”

Meanwhile, Oppenheim wondered what it would mean to take architecture out of its usual realm. “Architecture is supposed to be in the real world,” but at Architecture Omi, it will be in an environment like a sculpture park, he said. “Can you really do that without making the work look artificial?” But for Christopher Sharples, AIA, of SHoP, the program sounded promising because of its potential for unconventional collaborations. “We all have sort of compartmentalized ourselves,” he said, ” so what’s really exciting here is the opportunity to work with different people from very different backgrounds.”

Skolnick pointed out that the program also offers a way for architects to flex their imaginations and try out adventurous ideas. “You don’t get to play out original ideas and abstract concepts for clients,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, much like in school, we had the chance to really explore ideas — and not just on paper and not just in small art form — but actually have them on the landscape?”

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: 2010 ConvergenceNYC — Panel Discussion
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.17.10
Speakers: Bradley Samuels — Partner, Situ Studios; Thomas Knittel, AIA, LEED AP — Principal, Senior Project Designer, and Sustainable Design Leader, HOK; Michael Westlake — Associate Designer, Populous; Debra Pothier — Senior Education Marketing Manager, Autodesk;
Moderator: Martin C. Pedersen — Executive Editor, Metropolis
Organizers: Convergence Group; AIAS; AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee; AIANY Professional Practice Committee
Sponsors: AIA New York State; AIA New York Chapter; Cornell University; HOK; KPF; Armstrong; The Mohawk Group

It’s a common complaint that academia doesn’t fully prepare students for the real world of architecture practice. In a lively and thought-provoking panel discussion, a group of practicing professionals recently shared their thoughts, experience, and advice with architecture students during a time of economic uncertainty and some profound paradigm shifts. The panel was presented as part of 2010 ConvergenceNYC, an annual networking event that also includes firm visits and mentoring sessions to help students learn more about what awaits them outside the ivory tower.

Many panelists remarked on how the young students’ technology skills will be much in demand — a notion sure to give hope to those nervous at the prospect of an imminent job search. At HOK, the design process is “pretty much 3-D all the time,” said Thomas Knittel, AIA, LEED AP, a principal at the firm. “You’re well positioned to be a new generation that’s going to be able to lead those efforts.” When he looks at job candidates, a good command of parametric modeling programs is a big plus, he added. Autodesk’s online student community offers free software and tutorials to help students boost their tech skills, noted Debra Pothier, senior education marketing manager at the technology company.

Bradley Samuels’ story might inspire some students to sidestep a job search by starting their own firm. Shortly after graduating from Cooper Union in 2005, he and four other former students banded together to form Situ Studio. The first couple of years were lean times, he recalled, but their talents in digital design and fabrication have recently led to projects such as “Solar Pavilions” (temporary structures created using a kit of parts that can produce many forms), and a commission as fabrication consultants for the curvaceous bamboo plywood walls of a lobby at One Jackson Square, a West Village condo designed by KPF.

For them, forming their own firm was “a natural progression” from their student work, Samuels recalled. “We didn’t have any investors or a business plan. That was all done after the fact,” he said. “I think we were just at the right moment emerging with an interest in the right sorts of technologies.”

Beyond brushing up on their tech skills, students would also be well advised to immerse themselves in sustainable design. “Sustainability is finally coming into its own,” Knittel said, though it is “still very much an emerging field.” At HOK, biomimicry has proven a fruitful source of inspiration for green architecture, he said, citing AskNature.org as a helpful resource.

These days, “Rather than form follows function, form follows performance,” he observed. “And I think that we’re finding — and we really want to try to pursue — the idea that there is a real beauty to performance.”

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: Media Architecture, Myths, Definitions, Challenges and the Future
Location: Center for Architecture, 02.09.10
Speakers: Eli Kuslansky — VP Business Development, Unified Field; Jeff Miller — Director of Programming, Unified Field
Organizer: AIANY Technology Committee
Sponsor: ABC Imaging

In one scene of the 2002 film Minority Report, Tom Cruise’s character stands before a giant video display, sorting through digital data with the wave of a hand. These days, real life is starting to catch up to sci-fi, remarked Eli Kuslansky, vice president of business development of Unified Field, a firm that specializes in interactive media environments in museums and other buildings. High-tech, responsive spaces are becoming more common, as the fields of architecture and digital media become ever more tightly intertwined. In their recent talk, Kuslansky and colleague Jeff Miller offered a rapid-fire overview of the myths and challenges concerning “media architecture,” as well as presenting some of their company’s own boundary-pushing projects, including digital installations in the Gehry Partners-designed IAC headquarters in Chelsea and the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in Midtown.

So what is media architecture? As a new and evolving field, it’s tricky to define, and it sometimes goes by other names, such as “dynamic environments,” Kuslansky said. It can be thought of as “the confluence of the built environment and digital media,” he explained, and it draws from a wide array of disciplines, including architecture, digital signage, interactive media, exhibition design, information visualization, and real-time building management systems. For architects, the field offers a new, expanded vocabulary and a fresh toolset that lets them create interactive spaces that engage the inhabitants as active participants.

One common misconception about media architecture is that it’s purely an advertising medium, Kuslansky said. Building owners are often inclined to use large-scale outdoor displays for ads, but it’s preferable to mix in other types of content, too. And not every project needs to have a measurable return on investment, he added. Sometimes a digital display or interactive installation can offer a subtle form of branding that’s not easily quantified.

Kuslansky stressed the importance of close interdisciplinary collaboration between architects and technology consultants, to ensure the success of media architecture projects. He also advised that the content should never be an afterthought, but instead should drive the design of the display system.

Some real-world examples of projects provided ample inspiration. At the IAC headquarters, lobby installations display data visualizations to help visitors learn more about the company’s web properties. On the east side on the lobby, an installation allows visitors to use a trackball to turn a virtual 3-D globe that shows the locations of web traffic for IAC websites in real time. On the other side of the building, a 118-foot-long video wall features another sort of data display, with Ask.com web searches symbolized by blades of grass in a field.

The youth-oriented Sony Wonder Technology Lab, a free technology-and-entertainment museum, was designed to offer an all-enveloping multimedia environment. “In some ways, it points to what the next generation of museum is,” Kuslansky said. “Since they’re a media company, Sony was very focused — the whole museum should feel like you’re immersed in the media,” Miller added. In a renovation completed last summer, Unified Field worked as executive producers and collaborated with Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership on the concept design for the exhibits.

When visitors arrive, they log into a computer and create a virtual profile that includes their photo, voice recording, and favorite color and type of music. They receive an RFID card so their profile can be used to customize their experience at exhibits throughout the museum. When they finish their profile, a trail of LED lights illuminates, shooting up from the computer station, along the ceiling, and down the wall of a ramp, leading visitors onward. The lights symbolize the digital profile flowing forward to join a virtual community, as the visitors move on to explore the physical space.

High-tech interactive exhibits invite hands-on participation. A dance booth with 10 cameras lets kids use a simple form of motion capture — without need for special markers or clothing — to create dancing animated 3-D characters that mimic their movements. In another exhibit, a haptic joystick lets users virtually wield medical instruments to perform simulated heart surgery. Not quite as futuristic as Minority Report, perhaps, but close.

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, I.D., Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: urbanSHED Presentation of Final Proposals
Location: Center for Architecture, 1.07.10
Speakers: Derrick Choi, AIA — Principal Architect, XChange Architects; Young Hwan Choi — Student, University of Pennsylvania; André s Corté s, AIA — Principal, Agencie Group; Sarrah Khan — Principal, Agencie Group; Kevin Erickson — Principal, KNEstudio
Organizers: AIANY; NYC Department of Buildings

What if instead of being drab, dark, and oppressive, NYC’s sidewalk sheds appeared as airy and soothing as a canopy of clouds, as vibrant and cheery as a colorful parasol, or as simple and spare as a camera tripod? Those were the three visions recently presented by the three finalists in urbanSHED, an international competition to find a better design for the city’s sidewalk sheds. The New York City Buildings Department, AIANY, the Alliance for Downtown New York, the New York Building Congress, the Illuminating Engineering Society New York Chapter, and the ABNY Foundation (Association for a Better New York) with additional support from the Structural Engineers Association of New York, the NYC Department of Planning, and the NYC Department of Transportation partnered to create this open competition. As part of the Re:Construction public art program, the Alliance for Downtown will build the winning design in Lower Manhattan once it’s selected, noted Fatma Amer, PE, the NYC Department of Buildings’ deputy commissioner for technical affairs and chief code engineer, as she introduced the program.

“In a dense urban environment like ours, we need these sheds to protect pedestrians, and there is no reason why our protection can not be pretty,” she declared. The competition entries also needed to be code-compliant, sustainable, energy efficient, and constructable, she added.

Young Hwan Choi’s Urban Umbrella draws upon the design principles of its namesake, aiding easy assembly. But despite the simplicity of each module, when you bring many “umbrellas” together, their multicolored panels create complex and lively patterns overhead. Installed inside the beams are LED lights, casting energy-efficient and structurally integrated illumination.

The “umbrellas” can be laid out in different configurations to accommodate the needs of each site. “As you have different conditions, because of doorways or obstacles, you end up with all of these different patterns, so… you actually end up having something that changes over the entire city,” said Sarrah Khan of Agencie Group, which helped with the design.

Adaptability also drove the design of Tripod MOD(ule), though with more of an eye to sustainability than aesthetics. The design consists of modular units that can be configured together in varying ways to adjust to sites of many different sizes and shapes. As revealed in his presentation, Derrick Choi, AIA, and his firm, XChange Architects, found inspiration in the writings of Norman Foster, Hon. FAIA, on sustainability and the ideal of buildings that can withstand the test of time by adapting to change. Tripod MOD(ule) is a design based, logically enough, on the structural stability of tripods. The design also features a fabric screen that lets in natural light and can be used to display building identity graphics.

The gentle, protective quality of bubblewrap helped fuel the inspiration of the designers of urbanCLOUD, an undulating scaffolding made from ETFE beams supported by a hexagonal framework. Light filters through the canopy to the sidewalk; “this subtle glow combined with the light materiality creates a soothing contrast to the chaos of the urban condition which we all face every day,” explained Kevin Erickson of KNEstudio. At first, the designers hoped the canopy would be suspended from the rooftops of the nearby buildings — so it would appear to actually float like a cloud — but for cases when that proved impractical, they also developed a system for supporting it from below.

Ideally, the competition will spur change for the future. “We hope that the new shed design will change the city’s legacy, beautify our streets, and improve our neighborhoods’ quality of life,” Amer explained.

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, I.D., Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.