Category: Chapter News

The AIANY Annual Meeting is a chance for members to come together and take care of business, voting on proposed bylaw amendments and confirming the following year’s leadership. The meeting also celebrates the progress and direction of the Chapter. AIANY 2016 President Carol Loewenson, FAIA, LEED AP, took the audience through the highlights of the year, and explained the initiatives behind her presidential theme “Authenticity & Innovation.” Continue reading “The Chapter’s Annual Meeting 2016”

Although the new book chronicling the deep and important friendship between Alfred Barr and Philip Johnson is entitled Partners in Design: Alfred Barr and Philipp Johnson, a more apt title would be The Biography of an Aesthetic. This text expertly walks the reader through the genesis of the Modernist movement in America, from Johnson and Barr’s self-education in the movement, to how they educated the American public on the new style. Edited by David Hanks, this volume of eight essays is insightful in scholarship – a potent combination of clear visual research, endlessly beautiful photographs of Modernist interiors and artifacts, and just enough “Johnsonesque” gossip to keep many a reader intrigued. Continue reading “Oculus Book Review: Partners in Design: Alfred Barr and Philip Johnson”

Miguel Angel Baltierra, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, interviewed Kenneth Frampton, Assoc. AIA, Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia GSAPP and author of A Genealogy of Modern Architecture, reviewed by Annie Coggan in the 01.27.16 of e-Oculus. Listen to the interview here.

Want more? The full collection of Oculus podcasts is also available on iTunes.

The AIANY Social Science & Architecture Committee was formed in January 2016 with the goal of bringing professionals and students of architecture and social science together to discuss, collaborate, and facilitate programs for the community. The committee recently hosted “The Education of the Architect: Incorporating Social Science,” the second of a three-part series focused on the ability of social science research to shape the building of livable, equitable, and resilient cities.

The program on 06.08.16 was introduced by Melissa Marsh, co-chair of the committee and Founder and CEO of PLASTARC. It was moderated by Fauzia Khanani, Assoc. AIA, founder and principal of Foz Design. Continue reading “The Ways and Whys of Incorporating Social Science Methodologies into Architecture Curricula”

In Geoff Manaugh’s A Burglar’s Guide to the City, we are introduced to a cavalcade of nefarious characters. Manaugh interviews burglars, ex-burglars, cops, ex-cops/burglars, and others to map a built environment that the average person never sees and, he contends, the average architect never considers. In his Oculus Book Talk at the Center for Architecture on 05.09.16, he maintained that the reason he wrote the book was to illuminate (but not celebrate, we find, at the end of the text) a spatial imagination and sensitivity to the built environment in a population other than the trained architect. This intent leads the reader through a dizzying number of anecdotes to support this notion. We fly through L.A. with an Air Support Division officer who debunks the 1990s paranoia of author Mike Davis by showing that there are no numbers on rooftops that tag every quadrant of the city. While the LAPD has “suggested” that this would help with security, the “space police” have yet to execute this strategy. Manaugh takes the readers to Locksport events, the lock-picking Olympics, and, most interestingly, interviews a Roman historian who specializes in early Roman home invasion. Continue reading “Oculus Book Review: A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh”

The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up was a key figure at the Center for Architecture on 05.31.16. Throughout “Connecting Research and Age-Friendly Design,” panelists and audience members referenced Peter Pan as a figure who is often present in how we design buildings and communities, as well as in how we think about ourselves. Though we would all like to believe we will never grow old, we cannot continue to design and build spaces that do not support an aging population. AARP New York Associate State Director Bill Armbruster led off his presentation by saying that he lives in a “Peter Pan house” – one that was not built with aging occupants in mind. The evening’s panelists offered their thoughts on how architects, planners, and designers can push for more inclusive physical and social environments that will accommodate our aging population. Continue reading “Connecting Research and Age-Friendly Design”

On 4.20.16, the AIANY Social Science & Architecture Committee hosted a multidisciplinary event entitled “Exploring the Past, Defining the Future: The History of Social Science and Architecture.” The program kicked off with opening remarks by the moderator and co-founder of the committee, Evie Klein, Assoc. AIA, followed by presentations by each of the four speakers that collectively aimed to narrate the intersection of social science and architecture and design in very broad strokes. The sentiment that resonated throughout the presentations and the discussion that followed is that there is a profound need for social scientists to participate in a more dynamic design process. This is the first event in a three-part series that emphasizes the capacity for social science research to shape the way that we build livable, equitable, and resilient cities for rapidly growing urban populations globally. Continue reading “Social Science Challenging and Reinforcing Spatial Design: From Çatalhöyük to Networked Innovation Communities”

The AIA Convention is almost upon us! We look forward to seeing you all in Philadelphia from 05.19-21.16. The convention is one of the largest and most exciting annual gatherings of architects and design professionals in the U.S. This year’s keynote speakers include Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Day 1), Neri Oxman, head of MIT’s Mediated Matter research group (Day 2), and Rem Koolhaas of OMA joined by Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In case you’re feeling overwhelmed by the jam-packed schedule, we’ve put together a detailed list of AIANY-member and NYC-based non-member speakers.