Category: AIANY – Message From the Executive Director

In a speech at Google’s space on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea on 12.16.10, Robert K. Steel, the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, outlined four themes for NYC’s future, concentrating on what the Bloomberg Administration could do during its remaining 1,111 days. The broad concepts were cost savings, business assistance, physical infrastructure, and new industry.

Steel was introduced by documentary filmmaker Ric Burns, known particularly for his New York: A Documentary Film. Burns noted that these were “not the easiest of times in our city, in our country, or in our world,” but praised Mayor Bloomberg for bringing together “the greatest body of talent ever assembled to run a city — anywhere, anytime.” He stated that New York’s entrepreneurial spirit is “inscribed in, and emerges from, its very geography” and the “soaring wonder of the buildings.” Harking back to our city’s founding as a commercial outpost he spoke of NYC’s “unique culture of transformation — always open to the future”; a place that was adept at “pioneering the problems, pioneering the possibilities, pioneering the solutions — pioneering the future itself.” With a comparison to the unparalleled foresight of the 1780s economic planning — “a blueprint for America’s future” — done in NYC by Alexander Hamilton, he brought Deputy Mayor Steel to the lectern.

Of the four interconnected ideas for the future that were at the heart of Steel’s remarks, the architects in the audience, including 2010 Chapter President Tony Schirripa, FAIA, IIDA, and 2011 AIANY President Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, AIA, LEED AP, were particularly enthusiastic about the description of the impact of public investment on the city’s infrastructure. Municipal stimulation of private investment included projects from Hunters Point South and its 5,000 housing units in Queens, to Hudson Yards in Manhattan, and Staten Island’s Stapleton. Steel noted that the New Housing Marketplace Plan’s goal of 165,000 units, announced in 2003, is two-thirds of the way to completion and vowed that the goal would be achieved.

Equally important was his mention of upcoming publicly-supported projects, including new work at the Hub in the Bronx, and the expansion of the New York Container Terminal. “From the harbor to the Hudson to the Erie Canal,” Steel noted, “the history of our city is inextricably linked to the water — with over 500 miles of shoreline, we have more waterfront than any other American city.” He said that the administration would soon announce a series of initiatives to further revitalize the waterfront, augment waterborne transportation, and reinforce waterfront parks.

Steel stated that “we are at an important juncture in the city’s history,” and he referred to Mayor Bloomberg’s recent speech in which he said that the issues impacting New York are almost always national issues. “At a time of fiscal challenges,” Steel noted, “we will not lose track of the investments that position us for the future.”

The AIA New York State/ American Society of Landscape Architects Convention took place, this year, in Buffalo, the Queen City, as it is called by Lauren Belfer in City of Light. In her novel, published in 1999 by the Dial Press, issues of infrastructure, energy, urban dynamism, and passion come together in a metropolis defined by its architecture, urbanity, and extraordinary civic intelligence. That was the impression that visitors from downstate, and elsewhere, came away with after the most successful state convention in history.

Thanks are due to AIA New York State President-Elect David Businelli, AIA, and AIA New York State Past-President, Burt Roslyn, AIA, as well as AIANYS staff led by Executive Director Ed Farrell, along with Georgi Ann Bailly and Marthanne Gershman, for keeping the convention animated and exciting. Many service and design awards were conferred, as can be seen from the AIA Buffalo/ Western New York website. These included, among many others, the Educator’s Award to Kenneth Frampton, Assoc. AIA, of Columbia University, the Kideney Medal to Leevi Kiil, FAIA, and Honorary AIANYS status to Suzanne Howell Mecs, the Membership Director of AIA New York. Burt Roslyn, FAIA, received the Matthew W. DelGaudio Award; Stanley Stark, FAIA, received the President’s Award; and Mark Behm, Assoc. AIA, received the Associates Award. Firm of the Year honors went to FXFOWLE Architects.

Apart from these awards, and those received for superlative designs from firms statewide, the convention was given character and substance by the presence of the city of Buffalo itself. Many got to see the Richardson Asylum, Burnham’s Ellicott Square Building — site of the host chapter party, Wright’s Martin House, and the new Eleanor and Wilson Greathatch Pavilion, adjacent to it, by Toshiko Mori, FAIA. Others appreciated the enduring charms of the nightlife of Chippewa Street (“Been There” t-shirts abounded), and the home-style culinary delights of the Century Grill, Taste of Soul, Washington Square Bar, and Central Park Grille. Buffalo architects Ron Battaglia FAIA, Dennis Andrejko FAIA, Kelly Hayes McAlonie, AIA, and Robert Traynham Coles, FAIA, also made all convention-goers feel right at home. The City of Light was lit up for the AIA.

In Moscow, at the Manejh conference center in the former Tsarist cavalry training pavilion, 30 architectural projects from NYC (See Names in the News) were displayed during the Zodchestvo 2010 Architectural Festival of the Union of Architects of Russia (UAR). The exhibition, organized by AIANY, was a result of an invitation from UAR President Andrey Bokov to the AIA to be part of the annual design gathering, the Russian equivalent of the annual AIA Convention. Many recall that Bokov was a speaker at the AIA Convention in Miami this past June, and an exhibition of recent Russian design work, organized by Brian Spencer, FAIA, hung in the convention center’s halls. Here, then, was a chance to reciprocate, and the exhibition, called “NEW YORK NOW: The Architecture of Social Responsibility,” was culled from the 200 projects currently on display in the south passageways at the West 4th Street Subway Station a kilometer from the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place.

Projects in the show included a recycling barge transfer station by Annabelle Selldorf, FAIA, and the NYPL library renovation at St. Agnes Branch Library by Helpern Architects. A recreation center by Belmont Freeman, FAIA, accompanied the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts by Ennead Architects, and a courthouse in Allentown, PA, by Ricci Greene Architects.

The exhibition was facilitated by overall festival director Yuri Avvakumov and festival designer Egor Sopolov, and benefited from the strategic advice of Moscow-based architect Anya Bokov, who has worked in New York and Boston. Curators-of-record were Vladimir Belogolovsky and this writer, with major assistance from AIANY staff members Rosamond Fletcher, Suchi Paul, Jeremy Chance, and Cynthia Kracauer, AIA. Concurrent with the AIANY “MADE IN NEW YORK” subway show, the Zodchestvo installation shows that the Chapter promotes the value of architecture and of the work of AIANY members worldwide. As they say in Moscow, Architecture Matters!

Christopher O. Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of NY and NJ, spoke about New York, Lower Manhattan, and the World Trade Center site at a breakfast of the Association for a Better New York (ABNY) on 09.08.10. After an introduction by ABNY Chairman Bill Rudin, who noted that, “Lower Manhattan’s commercial base has been expanding outside of its traditional financial service focus,” Ward complimented ABNY saying that “a better New York is a clarion call, simple and elegant.”

With the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the minds of the more than 500 people attending at Cipriani Wall Street, Ward spoke of the importance of infrastructure, prior politicization of the design process, and current progress at the site. Anecdotes about stumbling blocks and the “fantastic” collaboration between the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties enlivened Ward’s presentation. He described the memorial by Michael Arad, AIA, (“a memorial of incredible emotional and engineering complexity”) to be open by the 10th anniversary next year, and equally detailed the Memorial Pavilion by Snøhetta, the Memorial Museum by Davis Brody Bond Aedas, the transit hub by Santiago Calatrava, FAIA, and the rising office towers by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Fumihiko Maki, Hon. FAIA. “We have turned those renderings into a construction site,” Ward declared, “defined by 2,000 workers, memorial waterfalls clad in black granite, the first of the trees being planted, by underground infrastructure, and the arches of the transit hub.”

BIM modeling allowed for both the integration of concurrent project components and anticipated potential coordination problems. “At the end of the day,” Ward stated, “this is a construction project, and has to be thought of this way.” The effort to depoliticize the discourse was aided by changing the name of the site’s tallest building from Freedom Tower to One World Trade Center, attempting to lose “the monumentalism and rancor that marked the early days after 9/11 — New Yorkers needed a new downtown, not a political message.”

Concluding his remarks, Ward stated, “Our work is far from over. But our vision for downtown is finally about something else, about renewing our conversation with downtown. It will be what we make of it, not a political agenda about a new structure a few blocks away. It will be quite simply about all of us being New Yorkers — that will be downtown.”

The Alliance to Save Energy and ASE President Kateri Callahan hosted a lunch with Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY 2nd Congressional District) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY 21st Congressional District) at which the lawmakers offered policy perspectives on comprehensive energy legislation. Introductory remarks by Francis J. Murray, Jr., President and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), lauded the two Congressmen for “seeing beyond their own districts” to formulate a national approach that would augment “the many wonderful things we are trying to do in New York in regards to energy policy.” Those at the AIA New York table knew, for example, that NYSERDA provided significant funding for our Center for Architecture geothermal system and has selected AIANY and Urban Green to conduct energy code training statewide.

Rep. Israel noted that he didn’t need his allotted eight minutes to describe the failures of the last 30 years of national energy policy: “missteps, back-steps, and half-steps.” He criticized the doubling of Persian Gulf oil imports over that time period and the slashing of research on energy conservation by 87%. He described three ways to change our goals. First is top-down investment, such as the $16 billion stimulus funding for energy in the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act. Second is a bottom-up return on investments, including energy bonds for energy retrofits of existing buildings. Third is the initiative to use new technology to find clean energy in trash recycling. He called this a “Sputnik moment” when Americans should “not take no for an answer.”

On the same theme, Rep. Tonko spoke of the need for investment in what he called STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to “embrace the American intellect.” He suggested that we encourage the “garage mentality” through support of a Sustainable Business Innovative Research Program (SBIRP) to more aggressively make “whiz kid ideas shelf ready.” He saw the big picture issues as being a new era of energy generation and distribution, a clean energy economy, and new concepts such as distributed technology wherein “energy efficiency is our fuel of choice.”

The interchange between the two distinguished members of Congress during the Q&A led Rep. Israel to conclude with a call for the political will to create $400 billion in new jobs, saying “the next generation of job growth is in energy efficiency — that’s the big issue.”

Note: For more information about The Alliance to Save Energy policy see comprehensive energy.

Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg on 04.30.10 to serve as Deputy Mayor for Operations, overseeing, among other municipal agencies, the NYC Department of Buildings, the NYC Department of Transportation, and the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning & Sustainability — where PlaNYC is authored. Yesterday he gave the first major speech of his tenure at a breakfast hosted by Crain’s New York Business. After a glowing introduction by Kathyrn Wilde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, who highlighted his prior career as Mayor of Indianapolis, Deputy Mayor Goldsmith started by saying, “I had been writing a book and the research for it always led me back to NYC and the things that are happening here: innovation combined with a set of methods to make things better.”

Goldsmith spoke about how leaders can cut through bureaucracy to serve constituents: “If you want to do transformational change, you have to elbow your way through to it — it’s not a question of doing more efficiently the things that we shouldn’t be doing at all.” In talking about unused desk space, redundant city garages, and the 80 municipal data centers, he said that “modernization is not just about cost savings, but improving the conditions of work. We need to transform how we do our work.” Responding to questions from Erik Enquist of Crain’s and Michael Scotto from NY1, the Deputy Mayor addressed how he had tried to reform the building permit process in Indianapolis, criticizing sequential review by multiple entities. “Near the end of the process someone can say, ‘change something,’ that requires you to start over.” After praising DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and talking about how congestion pricing would have raised money while changing behavior, he concluded with: “change is what makes NYC a great place.”

Architectural boat tours help make sense of Chicago’s Loop, providing insight into design, development, and decision-making. Such tours are now here in New York with AIANY out on the water, working with Classic Harbor Lines on a trip that circumnavigates Manhattan, departing from Chelsea Piers. More information and tickets here.

A team of AIANY volunteer docents, led by Board Vice President Abby Suckle, FAIA, has developed a narrative and map that makes the tour both entertaining and educational. The map, Around Manhattan Now, lists 144 projects from Chelsea Piers (Butler Rogers Baskett) and 100 Eleventh Avenue (Atelier Jean Nouvel & Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners) up to the Peter J. Sharpe Boat House (Robert A.M. Stern Architects). Proposed waterfront plans, including The New Domino (Rafael Viñoly Architects) and Governors Island proposals (West 8, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, and Rogers Marvel Architects) are highlighted in the context of New York’s rich architectural, mercantile, and maritime history.

Volunteers, including Michael Bischoff, AIA, Kyle Johnson, AIA, and Deborah Young, AIA, have led those aboard down the Hudson and up the East, Harlem, and Bronx Rivers. Knowledgeable New Yorkers, including land use lawyer Michael Sillerman of Kramer Levin, have added their commentary. Sillerman’s two cents on the view of Lower Manhattan: “This is a good place to talk about transfer of development rights and the setback requirements that determined skyscraper form.”

Apart from the scheduled Saturday sailings, the AIANY and Classic Harbor Lines have also been able to accommodate special requests. Walter B. Melvin Architects, a Manhattan-based architectural firm, decided to bring the whole office for a firm outing, which, according to Melvin’s business manager, Jennifer Murray, provided “a good way of seeing lots of our work at the same time.”

Whether to cool off on a hot summer day or listen to the architectural commentary, come aboard for the tour and stay to take in the pleasures of the harbor.

First Deputy Mayor Patti Harris welcomed mayors from several U.S. cities to New York last Wednesday, April 13th, by offering to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge, a municipal asset whose value, she said, has been increased by adjacent design enhancements such as the Brooklyn Bridge Park. After brief introductions, including eloquent remarks by Ron Bogle, Hon. AIA, president and CEO of the American Architectural Foundation and Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the First Deputy Mayor told those assembled for the meeting of the Mayor’s Institute on City Design (MICD) that “the choice of where to live has never been more critical.”

The MICD is a partnership of the NEA, the American Architectural Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. At each of its meetings, mayors present to each other the major design challenges confronting their cities. Architects and designers join in to identify possible solutions and ways of proceeding, heightening the design consciousness of the elected officials in so doing. To this audience, Harris spoke of the success of the Bloomberg Administration in creating public spaces and physical amenities that are not just cosmetic improvements. Participants in the New York City session included Mayor Carl Brewer of Wichita, KS; Mayor George K. Heartwell of Grand Rapids, MI; Mayor Lori C. Moseley of Miramar, FL; Mayor Joseph C. O’Brien of Worcester, MA; Mayor Dayne Walling of Flint, MI; Mayor A C Wharton, Jr of Memphis, TN; and Mayor Jay Williams of Youngstown, OH.

Structural changes in New York, according to its First Deputy Mayor, include the reinvigoration and empowerment of the Art Commission as the Public Design Commission, and the creation of the Design and Construction Excellence Program led by the NYC Department of Design + Construction. Such initiatives show that New York City has “embraced good design, going beyond just new construction.” Governors Island, in particular, was singled out as the “jewel of the harbor” in the same week that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Patterson announced the City’s new leadership in determining and managing its future.

Other achievements described included the creation of 693 acres of new parkland and the designation of more historic districts than in any prior administration. More than 100 rezoning actions have helped preserve neighborhoods and the 44 million square feet of commercial space in New York. The work of individual city agencies was spelled out in her remarks, intended largely for those coming from out of town who might not have noticed the DOT-created public spaces for pedestrians at Times Square and Herald Square. She spoke of the importance of culture to New York, saying that “cultural organizations contribute mightily to the quality of life in every neighborhood and are also large employers throughout the city.” Speaking more generally, she said that “our commitment is to go beyond business as usual and bring quality and commitment to the work of every city agency.”

Deputy Mayor Harris said that attention to design detail is important, that “sweating the small stuff matters not only in urban design, but even in the detailing of the full-length mirrors in the new Marriage Bureau.” Recalling her own marriage in the former facility in the Municipal Building, she said, “The Marriage Bureau used to be an experience brought to you by Franz Kafka, but now there are full-length mirrors.” She concluded by saying that there has been much discussion about the question: “What is the fate of commitment to good design during an economic downturn?” Responding to her own query she said: “The only answer it can be is that good design doesn’t have to be more expensive, it just has to be more good. In New York we’re investing for the long haul. The city will shine.”

On Friday, 03.26.10, New York State Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch addressed a well-attended breakfast meeting of the New York Building Congress (NYBC) at the Hilton on Sixth Avenue. After introductions by NYBC President Richard Anderson and Chairman Peter A. Marchetto, Ravitch started by saying that he “once thought that the politics of getting something built in NY was difficult, but now I know that it’s a piece of cake” compared with getting the state budget approved. He explained that “for many years NY has balanced its budget with one-shots — that’s to say with asset sales or bonds.” Ravitch, a former builder (at HRH) and MTA chair, continued: “We’re running out of assets to sell. This is not a sustainable course of action.” He explained that Medicaid costs are going up in double digits and revenues are down despite the recovery of Wall Street: “We’re still way off from where we were in 2007.”

Stimulus funding was described as “two years of one-shots.” Ravitch pointed out that the state surcharge on income tax expires next year. The metaphor used by the lieutenant governor was that of a looming precipice: “We’ve built the cliff higher and higher off of which we will fall when there are no more one-shots.” He warned that the growth of our revenues is significantly behind the growth of our expenditures, and that gap is growing every year. “It is a dilemma for those elected to public office who are used to optimism and growth. Reality is beginning to sink in — it ain’t gonna happen,” he said, “and therefore we have to rethink what goes into a state budget and impose discipline on the Governor and the Legislature.”

Ravitch went into detail describing the Executive Budget, which includes revenues from taxes on income, cigarettes, and the sale of wine in grocery stores. But, he noted, the state Legislature is not disposed to adding any taxes, which will mean that more cuts are needed. Therefore, Ravitch proposed several new ideas as part of a five-year financial plan, including the creation of a Financial Review Board, with the goal of getting to a real balanced budget and going to a modified gap accounting system. With verbal flair disguising hard-nosed fiscal acumen he explained the difference between budgeting on an accrual rather than a cash basis of accounting, declaring a need to avoid moving money from one year to another without any budgetary constraints.

The idea of borrowing money, one of the proposals from the Lieutenant Governor, was not without controversy. He stated, “the imagination of the financial services industry is limitless. It’s all about taking from the future to pay for today’s problems.” Ravitch recalled the days when he didn’t pay a lot of attention to Albany, explaining that “there is an opaqueness about what happens in Albany,” and that “it is hard to get the information out” despite that fact the “what the state does and doesn’t do will have a very dramatic impact on our lives…. The preservation of public infrastructure is at stake, and that education is similarly state-supported, with the state paying the lion’s share of a viable public education program.” He added, “Health is the same, with funds for public health clinics coming through the Health and Hospitals Corporation.” He also noted that this is the second year in a row that the state has had to eliminate its road and bridge program.

The speech was a literal call for “public involvement and public awareness, needed at a level that we’ve never had before.” He pleaded for more involvement in Albany, saying, “There is a human cost to cutting services, particularly in health and education.” He concluded by saying that during the next few weeks the Executive Branch of the state government will be working very intensely: “I can candidly say that the state runs out of cash on June 1st, so there must be a budget by then.”

During the subsequent question and answer period, Anderson replied that everybody “can do something on this subject, starting with talking with public officials. We cannot let this subject go un-discussed.” For more detail on Anderson’s response, see the NYBC website, http://www.buildingcongress.com/. Luckily, the AIA New York State Lobby Day takes place on Tuesday, 04.20.10, and the budgetary priorities of necessary spending for educational facilities, infrastructure, and public transit are very much on the table. Our delegation will be lead by AIANY President Tony Schirripa, FAIA, IIDA, and President-elect Margaret Castillo, AIA, LEED AP. For more information about local advocacy on State policy issues, contact AIANY Policy Director Jay Bond at jbond@aiany.org. “It’s important that, as a profession, we follow developments the state budget–and that, as architects, we let our concerns be known to the lawmakers of New York,” reminded Tony Schirripa, FAIA. “Architects don’t practice in a bubble. We work in New York.”

“I want to bring you greetings on behalf of the President,” were the first words of Adolfo Carrión, former Bronx Borough President and now head of the White House Office of Urban Affairs. He described President Barack Obama as “someone who understands urban, someone who understand smart growth.” Carrión noted that when Candidate Obama came to the U.S. Council of Mayors, he said he understood that the relation of our urban areas to Washington is broken. Shortly after the inauguration the Administration created the White House Office of Urban Affairs to enable intergovernmental collaboration, “a heavy lift” according to Carrión, designed to “wrap its arms around this challenge.”

Referencing the stimulus funding website, http://www.budget.gov/, a half-dozen times for emphasis, Carrión elaborated upon three primary and felicitous goals of the Obama Administration:
· Create smarter and more competitive regional economies
· Enhance environmental sustainability and responsible growth
· Design opportunities that speak to the places where people live, noting that this placed-based concept is at the heart of your work as architects.

The former New Yorker called for a national conversation on the future of cities and metropolitan areas, dubbed “metros” for short. His office helped create an inter-agency group on urban policy involving 17 disparate agencies. This has led to a co-joined and coherent strategy of smart growth and smart investment. He noted that “regional innovation clusters strengthen regional economies and make them more competitive,” and that smart growth “aligns land use with transportation investment.” Continuing on the theme of transportation-oriented development, he stated, “We have an imbalanced transportation spending framework and are starting a working group on transportation to manage the conversation on funding.” He criticized the antecedent formula as unsustainable, with 85 cents on each U.S. transportation dollar going for highways and only 15 cents devoted to mass transit.

“We need to change, but we need help getting there,” Carrión declared, noting that there is much opposition to public-transit reprioritization: “those [highway] interests are very strong, and they’re not kidding. There are people who have created industries around this funding imbalance.” The Administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative combines initiatives at DOT, HUD, and DEP to facilitate transit-oriented development. “Investments in the basket of opportunity come from the notion that we are a country of neighborhoods. Not all places around the country nurture opportunity — they’re not walkable,” he noted, adding, “We need to invest in infrastructure to build a foundation for smart growth.”

The penultimate portion of Carrión’s remarks was direct, eloquent, and straightforward: “We are urban. We are more concentrated in large urban areas. The trajectory is global. More than half the world’s population lives in cities now. We need to build place, and the place needs to work. Our partners in that exercise are in this room and are [also] the people you represent around this country. How we improve the human condition in the place where people live their lives is what architects struggle with, what architects have fun with. We ought to do this in partnership.”

Carrión exhorted the 300 or more architects in the room to ask members of Congress to champion urbanism and smart growth, creating neighborhoods of opportunity. Quoting Frank Lloyd Wright, he recalled the adage that “physicians can bury their mistakes, but architects can only advise their clients to plant vines.” He concluded by saying: “We share the burden that you carry. If we didn’t do so in the past, we are doing so now under this President. We are building the platform for the future of the American Republic.”