Despina Stratigakos presented her provocatively titled volume Where are the Women Architects? on 04.19.16 at the Center for Architecture. Following her presentation, Lori Brown, AIA, associate professor of Architecture at Syracuse University and co-founder of Architexx, Joan Blumenfeld, FAIA, IIDA, LEED AP, principal at Perkins+Will and Chair of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation; and Stratigakos presided over a discussion about the book’s findings. The lecture hall at the Center for Architecture was packed with second-, third-, fifth-, and sixth-wave feminists. Continue reading “Oculus Book Review: Where are the Women Architects? by Despina Stratigakos”
Category: Chapter News
No Disasters According to Plan, but the Hot Ones are Inevitable
Last November’s the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee’s (DfRR) symposium Extreme Heat: Hot Cities assembled experts from multiple specialties to address the risks associated with increasingly frequent and severe heat waves as global temperatures continue to rise. Combining a health-oriented follow-up panel with the release of the symposium report in print, online, and video formats, “Heat Waves” adds momentum to the interdisciplinary activity that Brian Stone has dubbed “urban heat management,” drawing on the expertise of architects, landscape architects, public health experts, and others. “No disaster goes according to plan,” commented panelist Cynthia Barton of the NYC Office of Emergency Management (OEM), but as unprecedented global conditions continue to make thermal disasters ever likelier, these knowledgeable parties are doing what’s possible to plan for them. Continue reading “No Disasters According to Plan, but the Hot Ones are Inevitable”
Christopher Benninger: Designing India’s Universities
Christopher Benninger “develops wonderful places to learn,” stated Dean of NJIT School of Architecture and Design, and moderator of the night, Urs Gauchat, Hon. AIA.
During 04.25.16’s lecture at the Center for Architecture, featured speaker Christopher Benninger, Principal of CCBA Architects in Pune, India, walked through the designs and methodology of educational institutions his studio has designed in India over the past 40 years. Historically, higher education had been an elite activity in India, but 15 to 20 years ago, the country began to allow private enterprises to found educational institutes. There followed a boom of universities. Continue reading “Christopher Benninger: Designing India’s Universities”
Challenging the Entrenched Conventions of Architecture
On 04.06.16, the AIANY Emerging New York Architects and Global Dialogues Committees hosted a panel discussion about the ways in which new forms of media are forcing the architecture industry to re-envision the way it defines itself, and how it communicates the industry’s values to everyone else who holds a stake in the built environment. The conversation was kicked off by David Basulto, a formally-trained architect who co-founded the website ArchDaily, an immense virtual repository of architectural news, images, information, and interviews. Today, ArchDaily attracts 700,000 daily visits, making it one of the world’s most visited architecture websites. The success of ArchDaily, a startup that was incubated in Santiago, Chile, is a testament to the globalization of architectural thought and practice. The Internet has catalyzed this globalization, Basulto explained, by creating networks to connect people and issues, regardless of their location. With urban populations anticipated to grow exponentially across the globe, he sees the architect as playing a key role in helping to design and build a more just and sustainable future. Continue reading “Challenging the Entrenched Conventions of Architecture”
Oculus Book Review: Vertical Urban Factory Factory by Nina Rappaport
On 03.28.16, Nina Rappaport, publications director at Yale School of Architecture, introduced us to her book and life’s work, Vertical Urban Factory. After her presentation she chatted with Damon Rich, founder the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and former planning director and chief urban designer for the City of Newark, NJ, and now principal of Hector Design Service, an urban design, planning and civic arts studio. Both speakers brought the audience into the lush and complex world of the urban factory. Rappaport has worked with the idea of the vertical urban factory for a few decades, evolving from student work and academic research to an exhibition and this publication – and, ultimately, to Rapport’s perspective being acknowledged in policy decisions. This is more than a book; it’s an encyclopedia on the impact of production and the history of its spatial demands. Continue reading “Oculus Book Review: Vertical Urban Factory Factory by Nina Rappaport”
The Raucous Rows and Ecstatic Stacks of MVRDV
The Dutch, said Fernando Villa, AIA, of the AIANY Housing Committee in introducing MVRDV’s Jacob van Rijs, have been innovating in our city since the 17th century, when it was New Amsterdam. Housing, van Rijs noted, “was our first love when we started our office in 1991.” Yet residential design, he suggested provocatively, is a sector where innovation doesn’t always come automatically. “How much innovation do you need?” he asked: a serious question, not a rhetorical one, and one that can be answered in degrees, depending on a project’s scale and on who will live there. There are obvious practical reasons for conservatism in many housing forms, yet van Rijs and his colleagues Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries have repeatedly struck an eye-catching, often playful balance between standardization and idealism. Continue reading “The Raucous Rows and Ecstatic Stacks of MVRDV”
Hindsight Plus Foresight for a Future Requiring Insight
Klaus Jacob understands flooding on a personal level. He lives near the Hudson River in Piermont, NY, in what he calls “a nuisance flooding zone. I live it day by day…. I put boots in my car, because I don’t know that, when I come back from a movie, I can come back to my house. I’m the living example of living with risk.” Having studied the likely extent of sea-level rise (SLR) over the coming decades, he foresees increasingly drastic adaptations affecting not just structures, but daily life: “Do we drive amphibian cars, or what?… Maybe we want to know whether we all learn to swim 20, 40, 50 generations down the line.” Continue reading “Hindsight Plus Foresight for a Future Requiring Insight”
Editor’s Note
CORRECTIONS: In Oculus Spring 2016, “A Win-Win for Rockefeller University” (pg. 24), the names of George Candler, Rockefeller University associate vice president for planning and construction, and Timothy O’Conner, chief-of-staff and vice president for university strategy and research operations, were misspelled. We apologize for the errors.
Also, “In Print” (pg. 40), the review of Slow Manifesto referred to “the late Kevin Roche.” We are delighted to report that Mr. Roche is alive and well – and regret the error.
New Fellows Honored for Professional and Public Good
On 03.16.16, AIA New York recognized 18 new AIA Fellows who belong to the AIANY Chapter, and 3 from other chapters in AIA New York State. They are among the 149 fellows inducted into the AIA College of Fellows in 2016. The 2016 New York Fellows are:
Donald R. Blair, FAIA, Blair + Mui Dowd Architects, PC
Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, FAIA, LEED AP, NYC Department of Design and Construction
Charles Besjak, FAIA, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP
Gilbert Delgado, FAIA, Cornell University
Nicole M. Dosso, FAIA, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP
Martin J. Finio, FAIA, LEED, NCARB, Christoff Finio Architecture
Kelly M. Hayes-McAlonie, FAIA, University at Buffalo, Capital Planning Group
Alexander Lamis, FAIA, Robert A.M. Stern Architects
Victor A. Mirontschuk, FAIA, EDI International PC
Jeffrey A. Murphy, FAIA, Murphy Burnham & Buttrick, LLP
Stuart M. Narofsky, FAIA, Narofsky Architecture
Ann Rolland, FAIA, LEED, FXFOWLE Architects, LLP
William S. Ryall, Jr., FAIA, Ryall Porter Sheridan Architects, PC
Michael M. Samuelian, FAIA, Related Companies
Kimberly Sheppard, FAIA, Gabellini Sheppard Associates, LLP
James J. Slade, FAIA, LEED AP, Slade Architecture
Allen Swerdlowe, FAIA, d7architects
Douglas A. Tilden, FAIA, URS Corporation
Gregory T. Waugh, FAIA, Perkins+Will
Don Weinreich, FAIA, Ennead Architects LLP
Daniel E. Wood, FAIA, LEED, WORK Architecture Company Continue reading “New Fellows Honored for Professional and Public Good”
Oculus Quick Take: Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars
On 02.08.16, Miguel Angel Baltierra, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, interviewed Sam Schwartz, president and CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering and author of Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars, published by Public Affairs Books and reviewed by Annie Coggan in the 02.24.16 issue of e-Oculus. Listen to the interview here.