News – What’s New at AIANY and the Center for Architecture.

The American Institute of Architects College of Fellows has awarded its 2007 Latrobe Prize of $100,000 for the proposal, “On the Water, A Model for the Future: A Study of New York and New Jersey Upper Bay,” which was presented to principal investigator Guy Nordenson, professor, structural engineering, Princeton University School of Architecture and founder of Guy Nordenson and Associates, NY… Other recipients of the Latrobe Prize, and participants in the project, include Stan Allen, AIA, Catherine Seavitt, AIA, and James Smith, Princeton University; Michael Tantala, Tantala Associates; and Adam Yarinsky, FAIA, and Stephen Cassell, AIA, Architecture Research Office…

The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America announced the winners of the 2007 Arthur Ross Awards for Excellence in the Classical Tradition. NYC-area winners are: The Rambusch Company (Artisanship); Acanthus Press LLC (Publishing); and World Monuments Fund (Stewardship). In addition, Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, was given special recognition by the Board of Directors, prompted by the recent publication of New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium as the final volume in his five-part series…

James R. Martin, AIA, has joined the firm of daSILVA Architects, as a principal… Julia Nelson, AIA, and Todd Poisson, AIA, have been promoted to Associate Partners at BKSK Architects… Spacesmith named John Coburn, AIA, Director of Operations… Thomas J. Scialo has joined SBLM Architects as Director of Construction Administration… Stephen E. Gottlieb, AIA, has joined SUPERSTRUCTURES Engineers + Architects as Senior Preservation Architect…

Oculus 2007 Editorial Calendar
If you have ideas, projects, opinions — or perhaps a burning desire to write about a topic below — we’d like to hear from you! Deadlines for submitting suggestions are indicated; projects/topics may be anywhere, but architects must be New York-based. Send suggestions to Kristen Richards.
06.01.07 Fall 2007: Collaboration
09.07.07 Winter 2007-08: Power & Patronage

Submission: Open Architecture Prize
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) and Cameron Sinclair, winner of last year’s TED Prize and founder of Architecture for Humanity, announced the first ever Open Architecture Prize at the annual TED Conference. The $250,000 Open Architecture Prize is the largest prize in the field of architecture and is designed to be an international multi-year program. Each year, a winning design will be chosen from a field of low-cost, sustainable design projects to be built in a selected community. The first project for the Open Architecture Prize will be an “e-community center,” a centralized building equipped to enable an entire community to access the Internet. The winning designs will be built as part of the prize and in alignment with the 50×15 Initiative, a program founded by AMD to connect 50 percent of the world’s population to the Internet by 2015.

03.30.07 Submission: 2007 AIA NYS Convention: Call for Presentation Proposals
Inspired by the 150th Anniversary of the AIA, the theme of the 2007 AIA New York State Convention (10.04.07-10.06.07) will be “The Past as Prologue.” Proposals will be accepted for seminar topics that address this theme — or better yet, take it to the next level — to educate design professionals.

04.06.07 Call for Papers: Sixth International Conference on Courthouse Design
The AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice seeks contributions to a discussion among world leaders in the justice field regarding innovation in planning, design, technology, and research for courthouses. This year’s theme is Sustainable Excellence, and the conference, which will take place at the Marriot Brooklyn Bridge 09.26-09.28.07, will explore ideas surrounding sustainable communities, design excellence, green design, among others. For more information click the link; for inquiries, address all questions to Katherine Gupman, AIA project manager via e-mail or call 202-626-8051.

04.10.07 Request for Proposals: Futbol Club Barcelona Stadium Remodeling
FC Barcelona is calling for architects from around the world to remodel Camp Nou (FC Barcelona stadium) into a modern stadium. The stadium will celebrate its 50th anniversary on 09.24.07. The selection process is through an international tender that is supported by the Association of Architects of Catalunya, which will contribute the necessary expertise for selecting the architect, or team of architects, who will be commissioned for the project.

04.13.07 Call for Papers: Worship Facilities Conference
The Worship Facilities Conference & Expo (WFX) is seeking qualified presenters for the educational sessions to be offered at WFX 2007, October 24-26 in Atlanta, GA. This event, now in its third year, is designed to help decision makers in houses of worship pull together their strategies for facilities design, financing, building management, and audio-visual and IT technologies.

05.09.07 Submission: Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship
The annual New York Prize Fellowship brings emerging practitioners and scholars to the Van Alen Institute headquarters in NYC and supports early- to mid-career architects, designers, planners, and individuals from other disciplines across the arts, humanities, and sciences. Fellows pursue advanced independent study to generate projects — such as exhibitions, installations, and symposia — on the most significant issues shaping the design and use of public space. The Institute seeks projects that approach architecture as a cultural practice with public consequence and that engage public audiences. The Council will select up to five Fellows for periods of three months each in 2007- 2008. Fellowships include a stipend, project support, individual office/studio space at the Institute with publishing opportunities.

05.29.07 Submission: Columbus Re-wired: Visions for Intersections
AIA Columbus, in partnership with AIA National, is sponsoring three community charrettes which will culminate in an international competition focusing on the current and future state of public transportation in Columbus, OH. Generating dialogue about public transportation, special emphasis is on illustrating how multiple transportation modes can work together to provide a complete network connecting citizens with their community and sparking economic development.

06.01.07 Submission: World Habitat Awards 2007
The Building and Social Housing Foundation seeks entries for the World Habitat Awards 2007 competition, initiated in 1985 to identify practical, innovative, and sustainable solutions to current housing issues capable of being transferred or adapted for use elsewhere. The competition is open to all individuals and organizations, including central and local governments, NGOs, community-based groups, research organizations, and the private sector. Two winners will receive £10,000, presented at the annual United Nations global celebration of World Habitat Day.

Event: The Sustainable Works of Foster + Partners: A Mixed Greens Lecture
Location: New York Academy of Sciences, 7 WTC, 02.22.07
Speaker: Brandon Haw – senior partner, Foster + Partners; Carol Willis – director, Skyscraper Museum (introduction)
Organizers: Skyscraper Museum; New York Academy of Sciences

Will 200 Greenwich Street bring America to the forefront of green design?

Courtesy Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners’ designs emphasize a dialectic between the environment and technology, emphasized the firm’s senior partner, Brandon Haw. Recalling his own 1960s upbringing in an “art family” that treasured the off-the-grid principles of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, Haw was naturally drawn to the early work of Sir Norman Foster, Hon. FAIA, and Buckminster Fuller. “Bucky’s dome could have been used for the Willis Faber building,” he commented. Some features of that forward-looking Foster-designed 1975 building have become staples of sustainable design and corporate communitarianism: a green roof, open-plan workspaces, escalator-based vertical transportation, and raised floors. Then-and-now photos show how little modification this building needed as its occupants adapted to computerization and other changes over three decades.

As widely as Foster’s designs have varied, they have implemented recurrent principles: functional cladding, external positioning of cores, and attention to the details of airflow, heat exchange, and light. A point-by-point system of ecological analysis from site to materials guides all Foster projects, skyscraper-scale and otherwise. It’s become common to preface discussions of green design strategies with Al Gore-style data graphics on global temperature, carbon dioxide, demographics, and resource use. Haw’s presentation of this material was bracing without being alarmist; he recognizes the urgency of curbing greenhouse emissions has reached cultural and economic realms, and he applauds businesses that recognize common interests linking carbon footprints, quality-of-life improvements for workers, and financial performance. Foster + Partners is dedicated to building tall as much for the anti-sprawl effects of high urban density as for the customary financial motives.

The triangular Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt (1997), arguably the first green skyscraper, treats German unions’ requirement that all workers be within 7.5 meters of a window as a productive constraint. Considering its central atrium space, “gardens in the sky,” and ample natural ventilation (used 85% of the year, improving on the original target of 65%), its internal offices are in higher demand than those facing outward. A mixed-use “vertical city” currently on the boards, the Moscow City Towers, will resemble “Commerzbank blown apart, turned inside out,” incorporating negative-pressure ventilation and energy systems that employ river water. For Aldar Central Market, a tower/souk complex in Abu Dhabi, the firm studied indigenous architecture to combine traditional heat-management strategies (sloping roofs, wind-catching chimneys) with modern photovoltaics and thermal tubes.

Similar structural and solar-energy-capturing strategies in the ill-fated 980 Madison tower ran into local opposition, but Haw promises the firm will return to the Upper East Side with a new design. Europeans have outpaced their U.S. counterparts in building green; Germany’s tight regulatory environment, in particular, makes eco-technology a priority in projects like the Reichstag, New German Parliament restoration, and the Free University in Berlin (the biomorphic “Berlin Brain”). The American architectural community’s focus on stylistic debates strikes Haw as frivolous, but he notes and hails rapid change on this side of the pond. Some years ago he remarked to colleagues, “We can’t tell the Americans what to do, but when they get it, they’ll get it big-time.” The Hearst Headquarters and similar buildings have proven Haw prophetic in that regard. Since Fuller and other Americans established green-design in the first place, it’s refreshing that we’re beginning to catch up.

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in Oculus, Icon, Content, and other publications.