Category: At the Center for Architecture

Event: Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Design, the Arts and Everything Else
Location: Center for Architecture, 10.05.09
Speakers: Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, AIA — Partners, Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Organizers: Center for Architecture as part of Architecture Week
Sponsors: Kohler; Kramer Levin; Solco

The Standard Hotel straddling the High Line.

Jessica Sheridan

“Media is irrelevant as long as there is an experiment,” said Ricardo Scofidio, AIA, of his firm’s work. The trajectory of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s practice has been consistent from its founding. The firm has always explored space through the mundane yet visual culture, aiming to provide a perspective about the ordinary from a different and new vantage point. As recipients of this year’s President’s Award, DS+R partners Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller presented a survey of their work at the Center for Architecture. From their first project in 1981, an invited competition by the Institute for Urban Studies to create an installation in Columbus Circle, to their latest museum in Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, under construction, DS+R seeks to redefine the possibilities of architecture.

After long operating in a self-proclaimed exile from the architecture profession, with a series of gallery installations, small structures, and a viewing platform at Ground Zero, DS+R has recently come to accept their position in the profession with several high profile projects. “We could have never dreamed to have an effect on NY the way we did,” claimed Diller when presenting the Lincoln Center redevelopment plan and the High Line. With both projects, the firm exercised restraint with unexpected results. At Lincoln Center, by focusing on making small adjustments, DS+R’s goal was to break down the implicit elitism of the “acropolean” complex. By creating public gathering spaces, providing space for impromptu street performances, and employing a single-way cable net curtain wall for maximum transparency at the Julliard School, street life is drawn into the buildings while culture spills onto the street.

The design intent behind the High Line was to create a park where visitors can enjoy the city, rather than escape from it. Admittedly, the firm unexpectedly became part of reinvigorating the Meatpacking District, which is now a goldmine of development and starchitecture. Not only that, but Diller confessed that the public is exposing the nature of the High Line more than they could have imagined — literally. With the Standard Hotel straddling the park, exhibitionism is rampant to the extent that voyeurs are bringing binoculars to the High Line to watch the exploits behind the unshielded windows of the hotel. Further north, where a construction floodlight points at a fire escape like a spotlight, the resident within performs spontaneous “renegade cabarets” for anyone willing to watch.

While the firm has enjoyed many successes, it also has suffered painful losses, including the National Museum of African American Culture in Washington, D.C., and the Munch + Sternersen Museum in Olso. Ultimately, Diller describes the DS+R’s work as “all scales, all media, sometimes ironic, inverting expectations, and sometimes simply stating the facts.” Whatever the work is, it is always critical and generative.

To watch a short video about Diller Scofidio + Renfro, shown at the Heritage Ball, go to the Podcasts website.

Event: Robert A. Silman: Technology and Values in Architectural Form
Location: Center for Architecture, 10.05.09
Speakers: Robert Silman, PE, Hon. AIA — Principal, Robert Silman Associates; Kenneth Frampton — Ware Professor of Architecture, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Organizer: Center for Architecture as part of Architecture Week 2009
Sponsors: Kohler; Kramer Levin; Solco

An apt subtitle for this talk could be “Architecture from A to Z…and E is for Ethics.” When Robert Silman, PE, Hon. AIA, started his practice, clients would come to him with design challenges. His response, back then, was “let me think and get back to you.” Today, however, due to technology, engineers can do anything! But the question, according to Silman, is ethical, not scientific. The question is: “not can I, but ought I?”

Silman was a philosophy student at Cornell prior to attaining his undergraduate and masters degrees in civil engineering at NYU. He cites as his hero philosopher Han Jonas, who wrote about “The Imperative of Responsibility” which centers on social and ethical problems created by technology. As president of his structural engineering firm for the past 43 years, he has directed all phases of its operations and employs a set of ethical principles in his office. “It’s the grey areas that make for interesting discussion.”

Kenneth Frampton began what he called an “Alphabetic Aphoristic Reflection on the Relationship Between Technology and Value — at the interface Between Architecture and Engineering” that was derived from structural engineer Auguste Perrets aphoristic Contribution to a Theory of Architecture in 1952. Beginning with A is for architecture and ending with Z is for Zen, the entire alphabet follows for your consideration, contemplation, and conversation. Read it here.

To watch a short video about Silman, shown at the Heritage Ball, go to the Podcasts website.

Event: A Conversation with the Architects of the Barclays Center
Location: Brooklyn Borough Hall, 09.14.09
Speakers: William Crockett, AIA, LEED AP — Director of Sports Architecture, Ellerbe Becket; Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA — Founding Partner, SHoP Architects
Moderator: Rick Bell, FAIA — AIANY Executive Director
Organizer: Empire State Development Corporation; Center for Architecture

Barclays Center.

©SHoP; detail elevations by Seong Kwon Architects

“Where do the things in dreams go? Do they pass to the dreams of others?” asked Rick Bell, FAIA, quoting from Pablo Neruda during a recent talk on the new design of Barclays Center. A bit like dreams, memories of the sports-and-entertainment arena’s previous, rejected designs hovered over the proceedings: Gehry Partners’ glassy, circular design, which got scrapped for a more economical (and bland) version by Ellerbe Becket. SHoP recently joined up with Ellerbe Becket to create a sexier new design, the subject of the evening’s talk. If all goes according to plan, Barclays Center will one day be home to the Nets basketball team, and the building will be a prominent part of developer Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards, a controversial mixed-use complex in Brooklyn.

Judging by the presentation by SHoP’s Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA, and William Crockett, AIA, LEED AP, of Ellerbe Becket, the new design couples visual flair with an attention to scale and a transparency designed to make the structure seem welcoming, not overbearing. The architects described a prominent entrance plaza at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues leading to a glassy entryway that allows views straight into the arena, including glimpses of the scoreboard and a sports practice court. A canopy overhead is intended as a “grand civic gesture onto the plaza,” Pasquarelli said, adding, “It has a large oculus in the middle of it so that light can penetrate through. It’s more than 30 feet in the air, and it becomes this kind of way of seeing the building as you approach it from the west.”

To break down its mass, the building is composed of three horizontal bands. (See “SHoP Architects Joins the Nets Design Team,” In The News, e-Oculus, 09.15.09.) An intricate steel latticework helps, too: it casts shadows during the day, making the building seem less bulky. By night, the latticework will be softly lit from inside, creating a distinctive pattern of glowing lights. (Attendees were able to check out the effect in a model.)

Some questions about the project remained unanswered. Eliciting grumbles from community activists who oppose Atlantic Yards, Bell chose not to allow questions pertaining to the process surrounding the complex, explaining that the session’s purpose was to focus purely on the new design. And while the architects explained many specifics of that design, just how the arena will be integrated with the complex’s future towers remains shrouded in mystery. During the Q&A, one audience member asked what would happen to the oculus if another building slated for that spot were constructed in the future. Pasquarelli replied that the whole canopy might be removed or extended, or perhaps new escalators or elevators could even go through the oculus. As time goes by, it will be interesting to see just how this project — and the opposition surrounding it — plays out.

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

Event: Deans’ Roundtable and Exhibition Opening: “Arch Schools 2009: Visions of The Future”
Location: Center for Architecture, 09.17.09
Speakers: George Ranalli, AIA — Dean, City College of New York; Mark Wigley — Dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation; Anthony Vidler — Dean, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art; Urs Gauchat, Hon. AIA — Dean, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Judy DiMaio, AIA — Dean, New York Institute of Technology; William Morrish — Dean, Parsons, The New School for Design; Thomas Hanrahan, AIA — Dean, Pratt Institute; Stan Allen, AIA — Dean, Princeton University; Evan Douglis — Dean, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Marilyn Jordan Taylor, FAIA — Dean, University of Pennsylvania;
Moderator: Robert Campbell, FAIA — Architecture Critic, Boston Globe
Organizers: Center for Architecture

“There is a perception that the world of architectural teaching and the world of architectural practice are changing more rapidly now than they usually do,” said Robert Campbell, FAIA, architecture critic for the Boston Globe, in his introduction to the AIANY’s fifth annual Deans’ Roundtable. In recent years, he posited, students have become far more diverse in terms of nationality, ethnicity, and economic background, and have grown increasingly concerned with environmental and social responsibility. Rapid technological progress has led to significant changes in many curricula and created a widening gap in computational prowess between students and instructors. At the same time, lines have blurred between traditionally distinct disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, and landscape design. While the ten assembled deans accepted Campbell’s general assessment of the issues facing architecture schools, their interpretations of the specific nature of the changes taking place differed, as did their thoughts about how to respond.

One of the liveliest debates centered on technology. Several speakers claimed that hand drawing was a fundamental part of architectural education; but others, such as Princeton’s Stan Allen, AIA, said it was time to move on. “I think we can talk about certain fundamental ideas of spatial imagination — the ability to think three-dimensionally, an understanding of projection systems, and so on — that belong historically to the culture of drawing…. you can get at all of that in a much more sophisticated, and, I actually think, faster, way through computation.”

Columbia University GSAPP’s Mark Wigley agreed with Allen, calling the hand-vs.-computer debate “unbelievably reactionary and unnecessary.” However, he expressed confidence that the wide diversity of educational philosophies and approaches found in different schools augured well for the future of the profession. “One of the great things about schools of architecture in the U.S. is that they’re all so different, and that to some extent they’ve managed to resist the forces of standardization.”

Sarah Wesseler is a marketing coordinator at Gruzen Samton.

Event: Archiculture Trailer Premiere Benefit
Location: Center for Architecture, 09.02.09
Speakers: Ted Landsmark, Assoc. AIA, Ph.D. — President, Boston Architectural College; Bill Moorish — Dean, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons The New School for Design; Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA — Co-founder, SHoP Architects; Billie Tsien, AIA — Co-Founder, Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects; Giancarlo Tramontozzi — Architectural Professional, Profiled in Archiculture; Dionysios Neofitidis — Architectural Professional, Profiled in Archiculture
Moderator: Ian Harris, Co-Director, Archiculture
Organizers: Archiculture
Sponsors: HOK; Studios GO; Battle Tank Design Studio; MKI Realtors; Anyline; Brooklyn Brewery

Archiculture Drafter.

Courtesy www.archiculturefilm.com

As the design industry continues to be transformed by technology and a demographic of young professionals enter the work force, Archiculture — a documentary directed by David Krantz and Ian Harris — presents a provocative view of the architectural profession and its impact on the lives of practitioners and the general public. Exposing the intense reality of matriculating through an architecture program, the film, currently in post-production, follows five students through the trajectory of their senior thesis projects.

During the trailer premiere at the Center for Architecture, Krantz and Harris fueled a conversation among academics and seasoned and young professionals to explore a growing disconnect between architectural education and professional practice. “Architecture schools are failing to prepare our graduates to be architects,” claimed Ted Landsmark, Assoc. AIA, Ph.D., president of Boston Architectural College. With a growing sense that architecture is a concept hinged on the virtual world of design, Landsmark inquired, “Can one be an architect without making anything?” The theoretical practice of design led many graduates of prior generations to pursue academia over the studio. With a majority of now tenured faculty espousing a limited view of a multi-faceted field, concern is rising about the ability of architecture curriculums to equip students with professional practice skills. Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA, principal of SHoP Architects, believes in engaging technology, production, and culture, and encouraging students to possess a greater understanding of finance and development to broaden their design freedom.

Krantz and Harris have tapped into a rising coup among architecture students, as the consensus calls for a syllabus emphasizing greater accountability to the general public and the environment. Architectural training needs to stress scale, according to Billie Tsein, AIA, of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects; understanding the relationship between the built environment and human beings is crucial to creating space. Landsmark encouraged architects to be more political and avoid working in isolation, stating, “Every time we design a public space we are engaging in a political act that affects people we don’t know — we can’t divorce ourselves from that.” Scheduled to premiere in 2010, Archiculture is a call for change, intrepidly exposing the shortcomings of architectural education today, and motivating design’s leaders to make their language more accessible to the public.

Jacqueline Pezzillo, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, is the communications manager at Davis Brody Bond Aedas and a regular contributor to e-Oculus.

Event: The Global Polis, Workshop 3: Education Infrastructures
Location: Center for Architecture, 07.22.09
Speakers: Urshula Barbour — Co-principal, Pure + Applied; Gavin Browning — Programming Coordinator, Studio X Design Group; Pablo Helguera — Director of Adult and Academic Programs, Education Department, Museum of Modern Art; Prem Krishnamurthy — Project Projects; Damon Rich — Urban Designer, City of Newark, & Founder, Center for Urban Pedagogy; Catherine Teegarden — Director of Programs@theCenter, Center for Architecture Foundation; Rosten Woo — Executive Director, Center for Urban Pedagogy
Respondent: Adam Kleinman — Curator, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Sponsors: Center for Architecture Foundation (Underwriter); The Austrian Cultural Forum (Lead Sponsor); Consulate General of The Netherlands (Supporter); Times Square Alliance (Friend)

“The Global Polis: Interactive Infrastructures.”

Bjorn Wallander

“People learn in different ways,” said Pablo Helguera, director of adult and academic programs in the Museum of Modern Art’s education department. He believes that educational spaces should be both physical and social. In the final of three workshops, two groups of architects, graphic designers, planners, and community leaders debated and sketched their thoughts on how cities can engage their citizens by building publicly accessible educational institutions. The drawings will become part of an evolving exhibition, “The Global Polis: Interactive Infrastructures,” on view at the Center for Architecture through 08.29.09.

Education is not something of worth but something of value, asserted Adam Kleinman of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Rosten Woo, executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), noted that government plays a large role in learning, and the educational system is an “incredibly hierarchical one.” Urshula Barbour, co-principal of Pure + Applied added, “People expect to be lectured to. They aren’t as flexible as one would expect.” Helguera suggests a combination of open-ended and regimented structures as a way to build community and identity among students.

Damon Rich, founder of CUP and an urban designer for the City of Newark, shared his experience observing a class at Harvard Business School. It was, essentially, a class on how to take classes at the university. Surprisingly, this structured environment in which students learned what to expect from their courses and how best to manage their time resulted in a lot of interaction, both socially and academically. To foster a better learning and social experience for students, he proposes that designers should hold such “institutional critiques” of educational spaces and how they are programmmed.

“Scaffolding,” a metaphor for supporting students as they learn, is a technique used in education, Rich explained. The design of educational spaces should accomplish the same in more literal terms; the workshop participants agreed.

Murrye Bernard, LEED AP, is freelance architectural writer and is a contributing editor to eOculus.

Event: Strategic Cities: Why some cities can build their visions, why most don’t
Location: Center for Architecture, 06.01.09
Speakers: Jeb Brugmann — Author, Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World (Bloomsbury Press, 2009)
Organizer: Center for Architecture

Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World (Bloomsbury Press, 2009), the latest book by urbanist Jeb Brugmann, explores the development of global urban strategies from local patterns of development. Brugmann counters traditional theories of globalization by arguing that the key to provoking change is linked to the growth of cities and their revolutionary processes. Globalization, as defined by the author, is the process by which people take economics of one city and implement similar strategies in cities around the world. The entrepreneurial premise of this idea is supported by the empowerment of the urban migrant and the anticipated two million people expected to move to urban areas over the next 25 years. As the phenomenon of urban migration progresses and the world’s population propagates, Welcome to the Urban Revolution challenges: how does that affect the way we plan and manage urban centers?

Touching upon key concepts of his book, Brugmann discussed the success of “strategic” global cities such as Barcelona, Curitiba, and Chicago in terms of their development and subsequent management. These cities represent unique and specific responses to the urban climate in which they were planned with the ultimate evaluation residing in the user communities. Curitiba, Brazil, has created an “ecology of solutions,” according to Brugmann, through density strategies and a diversification of bus transport availability in response to the city’s growth crisis.

These systematically generated responses to globalization — Brugmann’s “urban strategy”– are dependent upon strategic institutions, political patronage, and an agenda-driven user community. By transforming our cities into effective solutions, the array of global crises, including poverty, epidemic, recession, and global warming, are addressed by stable political, economical, and ecological mechanisms.

Jacqueline Pezzillo, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, is the communications manager at Davis Brody Bond Aedas and a regular contributor to e-Oculus.

Event: Public Art + Architecture New York
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.20.09
Speakers: Todd Schliemann, FAIA — Partner, Polshek Partnership; James Carpenter — Principal, James Carpenter Design Associates; David Thurm, Hon. AIANYS — Vice President for Operations, New York Times
Moderator: Jean Parker Phifer, FAIA — Author, Public Art New York (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009)
Organizers: Center for Architecture
Sponsor: Margaret Helfand Fund

Dichroic Light Field by James Carpenter.

Photography by Francis Dzikowski/Esto

“Public art can enhance one’s experience of a building or a space by heightening visual perceptions and by focusing the senses on elements such as light, texture, color, or sound,” says Jean Parker Phifer, FAIA, author of Public Art New York. The book captures many of New York’s recently completed buildings that integrate art installations with the aesthetic and function of the spaces they inhabit. These buildings broaden the dialogue on how art enhances and complements architecture and public space.

Todd Schliemann, FAIA, James Carpenter, and David Thurm, Hon. AIANYS — representing architect (Principal, Polshek Partnership), artist (James Carpenter Design Associates), and owner (Vice President for Operations, New York Times) respectively — echoed the sentiment that an early collaboration among all parties along with a shared approach to the building yields a successful union between art and architecture. Referring to the public art installation in Polshek’s New York Hall of Science, Schliemann said, “the closer architecture and art evolve hand-in-hand, the more they are in harmony.” Exemplary of such a marriage is “Moveable Type,” by artist Ben Rubin and statistician Mark Hansen — an installation in the Renzo Piano Building Workshop/FXFOWLE Architects’ New York Times Building lobby. Designed for the vista through The Times building, 560 small screens are suspended in a grid and display choreographed content from The Times database, pulling from both the paper’s memory and real time web commentary. It is an organic, evolving artwork with a specificity to place and program that is undeniable.

Similarly deliberate, Carpenter’s “Ice Falls” in the lobby of Foster + Partners’ Hearst Building creates an experiential reorganization of light. No stranger to atmosphere and perception, Carpenter devised a system of cast-glass prisms to illuminate the lobby and create a glittering reflection of the three-story fountain.

Jacqueline Pezzillo, LEED AP is the communications manager at Davis Brody Bond Aedas and a regular contributor to e-Oculus.

Event: Composite Crossover: Technology Transfer from Aircraft to Architecture
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.14.09
Speakers: Charles Blomberg, AIA — Technical Director, Rafael Viñoly Architects; Michael Silver — Principal, Mike Silver Architects & 2007 RVA Research Fellow; Rob Langone — Vice President, Automated Dynamics
Introduction: Ned Kaufman — Director of Research and Training, Rafael Viñoly Architects
Moderator: Susan Szenasy — Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis
Organizer: Center for Architecture
Sponsors: Underwriters: The Center for Architecture Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Patron: Con Edison; Lead Sponsors: Arup; Buro Happold; Material ConneXion; Thornton Tomasetti; Supporters: The American Council of Engineering Companies; Josef Gartner USA/Permasteelisa Group; Weidlinger Associates; Friend: Grimshaw

Cleveland Museum of Art atrium proposal incorporating composite structures.

Courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects Training and Research Program

“Building is always a one-off experiment,” said Charles Blomberg, AIA, technical director at Rafael Viñoly Architects. He meant that technologies employed in architecture are usually developed by other industries, such as the automobile industry’s advancements with glass. This is often due to the fact that clients do not want to pay for extensive research. In response, Rafael Viñoly Architects created a Training and Research Program, and its 2007 grant recipient, Michael Silver, has been exploring the architectural potential for composite fibers long used in aerospace fabrication. Working with a team of professionals, he explored this material within the conceptual context of an actual project: a 114-foot-long, clear-span skylight atrium for the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Composite fibers are comprised of two materials: carbon or glass fibers, and a matrix of resin or high-strength epoxy. Constructed in numerous layers with unidirectional plies, composite fibers are anisotropic — they only work in tension. Silver explored many different forms with varied fiber placements, resulting in a triangular truss with a spiraling fiber structure. Within the design of the proposed museum atrium, the trusses are oriented tip-down and taper together at the joints. As described by Susan Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis, the result is “a woven building.”

As with any complex project, this one required close collaboration: Silver worked with programmers, architects, engineers, manufacturing experts, and students at Pratt. Chipp Jansen, a painter and computer scientist, wrote a code from scratch in Java to generate paths for the three-dimensional surfaces. These paths were then transferred to the coordinates of a CNC-milling machine at the facilities of Automated Dynamics, a manufacturer specializing in composite structure engineering. With the company’s assistance, Silver tested his design with real material, a process that he maintains allowed him to “discover problems you’d never figure out just in drawings.”

Composite fibers have distinct advantages and disadvantages. Their lightness makes them a sustainable option — one can literally lift an eight-foot-long mockup with one hand. However, at $200-$250-per-ound for finished material, they are prohibitively expensive for most building projects. While the composite structure “behaves like a normal beam,” according to Blomberg, due to its complex structure, orientation is crucial. Therefore, it must be installed by highly skilled laborers.

Silver’s exploration held such promise that the Viñoly Training and Research Program extended his fellowship a second year. He continues to explore its possibilities and hopes that someday composite fibers will become a viable building material.

Murrye Bernard, LEED AP, is a freelance writer and has written for Architectural Record, Architecture Boston, and Architectural Lighting.