Author: Meghan Edwards

To hear architectural photographer Elizabeth Felicella talk about the eight-year project that culminated in the Center for Architecture’s current exhibition “Reading Room: A Catalog of New York City’s Branch Libraries” is almost like traversing a portal to another universe – it’s time travel, mixed with hope, insight, and nostalgia. New York-based Felicella, whose commissioned work appears regularly in design press around the world, truly lived and breathed the often overlooked trope of public branch library architecture for nearly a decade, visiting each one in the early morning hours before it opened to the public. The result is more than 2,000 photographs documenting all 210 public library branches. They are astounding, especially when compiled into a single gallery. Here, she tells us how the project got its wings, and why “Reading Room” is ultimately about much more than the libraries themselves. Continue reading “5 Questions for Photographer Elizabeth Felicella”

Opening this week at the Center for Architecture as the kickoff to our month-long Archtober festival, the exhibition “Authenticity and Innovation” taps into celebrated curator Donald Albrecht’s vast knowledge of cultural and architectural history. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Albrecht has curated exhibitions that range from the “National Design Triennial” for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to “The Work of Charles and Ray Eames” for the Library of Congress and Vitra Design Museum.

For “Authenticity and Innovation” – a topic selected as the presidential theme of 2016 AIANY President Carol Loewenson, FAIA, – Albrecht zooms in on 28 pivotal adaptive reuse and preservation projects in New York City that are outside the scope of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Here, he tells us what’s surprising about the featured structures and hints at what’s next on his curatorial horizon. (Several are profiled in the Fall issue of Oculus magazine, online here). Continue reading “5 Questions with Donald Albrecht”