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

Berlin, NYC Cultivate the Arts

Event: Berlin-New York Dialogues: Cultural Kapital/Capital Kultur: Exhibition Symposium
Location: Center for Architecture, 11.10.07
Speakers: Illya Azaroff, Assoc. AIA — Director of Design, the design collective studio (NY); Markus Bader — Principal, raumlabor_berlin (Berlin); Susan Chin, FAIA — Assistant Commissioner of Capital Projects, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (NY); Matthew Griffin, AA Dipl. Architekt — deadline > office for architectural services (Berlin); Regula Lüscher — State Department for Urban Development (Berlin); Kristien Ring — Director, German Center for Architecture (DAZ) (Berlin); Jochen Sandig — Producer & Cultural Administrator, Radialsystem V (Berlin); Ronald Shiffman, FAICP, Hon. AIA — Professor of Urban Planning, Graduate Center for Planning and Environment, Pratt Institute (NY); Claire Weisz, AIA — weisz + yoes architecture (NY); Lynnette Widder — Department of Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design; Peter Zlonicky — architect & planner (Munich)
Organizers: AIANY in collaboration with Deutsches Haus at New York University & Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment
Sponsors: Berlin-New York Dialogues presented in partnership with Carnegie Hall as part of Berlin in Lights festival; Underwriters: Digital Plus, RFR Holding; Patrons: Eurohypo, IULA-International Urban Landscape Award; Lead Sponsors: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Tishman Speyer Properties; Supporter: The German Consulate General New York; Friends: Aucapina Cabinetry, bartco Lighting, Getmapping, Osram Sylvania. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

At the Berlin-New York Dialogues Exhibition symposium, Consul General Dr. Hans-Jürgen Heimsoeth, with Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY Executive Director.

Photograph by Sam Lahoz

The Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, has said, “Berlin is a poor but sexy city.” It’s a city with a lot of space for people with little money. In fact, Berlin is as economically bankrupt as NYC was in the 1970s. This is the result of the building boom that the city experienced after reunification in 1990, as well as the unresolved issues arising from the shift of capital back to Berlin from Bonn in 1999.

NYC has recovered since the 1970s so much so that it supports 850 of the 1,400 public/private cultural institutions. Susan Chin, FAIA, assistant commissioner for capital projects at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (and former AIANY Chapter president) cited that city support has grown to $1.3 billion leveraging over $1 billion in private sector support to create arts and cultural facilities including the Bronx Museum of the Arts expansion by Arquitectonica, Metropolitan Museum of Art Leon Levy and Shelby White Court designed by Kevin Roche, FAIA, and the Queens Botanical Garden by BKSK Architects. The Department of City Planning is also rezoning 125th Street, river to river, for more cultural institutions to neighbor the Studio Museum of Harlem and Apollo Theater. In Long Island City, a cultural district is in formation with P.S. 1, the Noguchi Museum, and the Thalia Spanish Theatre.

The government in Berlin is not in a position to help private initiatives, but Berliners, with their “can-do” attitude have taken matters into their own hands. For example, a community turned the Post Bahnhof, a former postage distribution center, into a party and events space, transformed numerous abandoned storefronts into retail spaces, and courtyards into cafés and places to display art installations. Collective buildings are being developed that band together people with similar lifestyles. Inhabitants invest in and work with an architect to create a communal live/work space. Currently, there are more than 25 such projects in Berlin.

Berlin-based artists also are finding unlikely sites for temporary art. Jochen Sandig, co-founder of arts space Radialsystem V, created a place where contemporary and classical dance and music, and visual and electronic arts meet along the River Spree, taking advantage of the underutilized waterfront. During the demolition of the Palast der Republik, when the building was reduced to its core, architect Markus Bader of raumlabor_Berlin turned it into the Gasthof Bergkristall, a short-term hotel comprised of just four rooms.

Perhaps most comparable to new development in Berlin is the area of Red Hook, Brooklyn. Red Hook is a neighborhood with promise that could be on the road to gentrification, but still maintains a rich artistic culture. Both Berliners and New Yorkers express the need to put safeguards in place to keep rents down for the burgeoning artistic communities on both sides of the Atlantic in order to retain the cities’ vitality.

The Berlin-New York Dialogues is on view at the Center for Architecture through 01.26.07. See On View for more information.

Small Firms Take Expansive Measures

Event: SUPERMODELS: MINI: 1-20: SMALL FIRMS
Location: Center for Architecture, 11.06.07
Speakers: Oliver Freundlich & Brian Papa — Partners, MADE; Mark Tsurumaki, AIA — Principal, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects; Fernaz Mansuri, Assoc. AIA — Lead Designer, De-Spec
Moderator: Anne Guiney — New York Editor, The Architect’s Newspaper
Organizer: AIANY New Practice Committee
Sponsors: Exhibition Underwriters: Associated Fabrication, Häfele, SKYY90; Patrons: 3Form, ABC Imaging; Sponsors: Severud Associates, Thornton Tomasetti, OS Fabrication & Design, The Conran Shop, Perkins Eastman; Supporters: Arup, bartcoLighting, Fountainhead Construction, FXFowle Architects, MG & Company, Microsol Resources, Structural Enterprises; Friends: Barefoot Wines, Cosentini Associates, DEGW, Delta Faucet Company, Perkins Eastman

While principals of small architecture firms often maintain meticulous control of their projects from design through construction, many of the not-so-glamorous issues related to running small businesses weigh equally on their minds. Fernaz Mansuri, Assoc. AIA, lead designer at De-Spec, is as proud of the sophisticated accounting system she has refined over the past few years as she is of the firm’s design projects. For Oliver Freundlich and Brian Papa, partners at MADE, one of the biggest challenges has been reining in the paperwork associated with tracking a design studio, fabrication shop, and contracting team under one roof (not to mention the added caveat that design/build is illegal in NY).

Lacking the financial resources of larger firms, small firms have to be creative when it comes to revenue sources. For this reason, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis (LTL) Architects and MADE build many of the projects they design. In the case of LTL Architects, getting into fabrication in their early restaurant work was a necessity due to the complexity of their designs, inflated cost estimates from inexperienced contractors, and tight budgets. Offering more than one service is a key survival method for small practices, since it helps insulate them from market fluctuations. Another motivation for LTL Architects and MADE is the extra level of quality control that comes with building their own work.

While De-Spec does not offer general contracting or fabrication services, it, too, thinks outside the box regarding revenue. “If we spec it, we buy it,” says Mansuri. “This way we avoid the contractor’s mark-up and we avoid attempts to substitute inferior products.” This practice provides more wiggle room in the budget, usually paying for additional design work that often goes uncompensated.

The biggest challenge for small firms is making the jump in scale from furniture design and loft renovations to larger ground-up construction projects. All three firms agreed that seizing every opportunity to promote, publish, and even pursue more public work (installations, restaurants, and retail) is essential. It is also important to be strategic about amplifying a small opportunity. For LTL Architects, Bornhuetter Hall at the College of Wooster in Ohio represented this jump in scale, but the project was not simply handed to them by the college. It was the result of a relationship built from an initial contract to study an existing residence hall. As more single-task contracts proved successful, the commission for the residence hall’s design became inevitable. Based on the scale of recent projects on LTL Architects’ website, it seems this approach has paid off.

Max Driscoll is a junior architect at Croxton Collaborative Architects and a member of the U.S. Green Building Council.

One Megalopolis, with High-Speed Rail for All

Event: Thinking Bigger: New York and Transportation in the Northeast Megaregion
Location: NYU Kimmel Center, 11.13.07
Speakers: Allison C. de Cerreño, PhD — Director, NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management; Jerome Lewis, PhD — Director, Institute of Public Administration, University of Delaware; Robert D. Yaro — President, Regional Plan Association; Joel P. Ettinger — Executive Director, NY Metropolitan Transportation Council; Karen Ray — Deputy Commissioner, NY State Department of Transportation; Kris Kolluri — Commissioner, NJ Department of Transportation and Chairman, NJ Transit; Barry Seymour — Executive Director, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission; Rae Rosen — Senior Economist and Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of NY; George Schoener — Director, I-95 Coalition; Anne Stubbs — Executive Director, Coalition of Northeast Governors; Petra Todorovich — Director, America 2050, Regional Plan Association; Mark S. Schweiker — President and CEO, Greater Philadelphia Area Chamber of Commerce; Paul Bea — Government Relations Advisor, PHB Public Affairs; John Bennett — Chief, Business Strategy, Amtrak; Jean-Paul Rodrigue, PhD — Associate Professor, Hofstra University; Mark Strauss, AICP, FAIA — Principal, FXFowle Architects; Lou Venech — Senior Manager of Transportation Policy and Development, Port Authority of NY and NJ
Organizers: NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management; NY Metropolitan Transportation Council; Metropolitan Transportation Authority; Port Authority of NY and NJ; University Transportation Research Center, Region 2; AIANY; Regional Plan Association; University of Delaware Institute of Public Administration; Wagner Transportation Association

Amtrak’s Regional Line outperforms all others nationwide.

Courtesy amtrak.com

Our transportation system features complexity and interdependence but little coherent planning. The nation — especially in the densest Northeast region — allows intolerable road congestion, subsidizes motor vehicles so that large parts of the nation are essentially uni-modal, and leaves its infrastructure to decay (often fatally, as in the Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse). For a useful insight into U.S. transportation policy, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Area Chamber of Commerce Mark Schweiker borrowed a line from Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”

It’s been 46 years since geographer Jean Gottmann identified the region between Boston and Washington as a single “megalopolis,” noted Allison de Cerreño, PhD, director of NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportaion Policy and Mangement. The area has kept growing, but the infrastructure gap pales in comparison to its European and Asian equivalents. High-speed rail systems overseas are on their second or third generation, while the U.S. flagship system Acela has a maximum speed far below its foreign competitors’. Still, the Northeast region outperforms the rest of the U.S.; many of the transport specialists at the conference connected the area’s density to its economic vigor. NJ Department of Transportation commissioner Kris Kolluri calculated that the Northeast generates 10 times the gross domestic product per square mile than any other region.

Regional Plan Association representatives Robert Yaro and Petra Todorovich documented both the potential advantages of a Northeast-style system with a prominent rail component and a growth management skewed to sprawl zones. The Northeast has 49 million people (17% of the U.S. population on 2% of its land) and a $2.4 trillion economy that, as Yaro pointed out, would be the world’s fifth or sixth largest if analyzed independently.

Puzzlingly, though, the rest of the country isn’t following the Northeast’s lead. Multi-modal transportation (rail, air, bus rapid transit, and aquatic, as well as automotive and trucking) has economic and environmental advantages that planners find indispensable, but an upgraded rail system is so far off Washington’s radar that the White House has tried to zero out Amtrak and break off the Northeast Corridor. With little help from the federal government, several panelists emphasized, Northeastern states would do well to defend common interests: high environmental standards, smart growth, infrastructural repair, and balance among modes as well as adequate Amtrak funding.

Increasing regional integration means that benefits to one location often result from spending in another. Region-wide organizations like the I-95 Corridor and the new Business Alliance for Northeast Mobility are recognizing that critical policy priorities outweigh local struggles over size. A rough consensus appears to view high-speed intercity rail (in Yaro’s succinct description, “an Acela that works”) as the transformative technology of choice.

Mark Strauss, AICP, FAIA, principal at FXFowle Architects, emphasized the importance of reaching the general public with a critical message: that “density is not a four-letter word.” Transit-oriented development isn’t a new or foreign concept, he stressed; it’s how cities like New York and Philadelphia historically took shape and built economic strength. And it’s helping reanimate towns like Beacon, NY, where a recent transit-centered RFP attracted interest from 80 developers in five days. Transport geographer Jean-Paul Rodrigue, in contrast, offered an analysis based on long-brewing financial crises, commenting that “nobody has it right.” Whether the future resembles Strauss’s vision of revitalized rail-corridor cities or Rodrigue’s warning of a generally free-falling economy, with foreign investors scooping up undervalued American assets, may have a lot to do with how convincingly the progressive transportation community can make its case to the public and the pols.

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

Sustaining NYC with 20/30 Vision?

Event: NEW YORK 2030: New York’s Green Future: A Public Discussion among the Authors of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC and a Panel of Urban Design Experts
Location: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 11.17.07
Speakers: Olympia Kazi — Executive Director, Institute for Urban Design; Fredric Bell, FAIA — Executive Director, AIANY; Rohit T. Aggarwala, PhD — Director, Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability
Panel 1: Adrian Benepe — Commissioner, NYC Department of Parks & Recreation (introduction); Sandy Hornick — Deputy Executive Director for Strategic Planning, NYC Department of City Planning; Thomas Maguire — Director of Congestion Pricing, NYC Department of Transportation; Charles McKinney — Chief of Design, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation; James J. Roberts — Deputy Commissioner, NYC Department of Environmental Protection
Panel 2: Adolfo Carrión, Jr. — Bronx Borough President (introduction); Tom Angotti — Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, Hunter College; Miquela Craytor — Deputy Director, Sustainable South Bronx; Ernest Hutton, Assoc. AIA, AICP — Co-chair, New York New Visions; Richard Sennett — Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science & Bemis Adjunct Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, MIT School of Architecture + Planning; Ronald Shiffman, FAICP, Hon. AIA — Director Emeritus, Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development; Paul Steely White — Executive Director, Transportation Alternatives; Elizabeth Yeampierre — Executive Director, United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park
Moderators: Alexandros Washburn, AIA — Chief Urban Designer, NYC Department of City Planning (panel 1); Michael Sorkin — Director, Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York (panel 2)
Organizers: The Institute for Urban Design; support from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, City College of New York, AIANY, New York New Visions.

Courtesy nyc.gov

NYC has operated without a coordinated plan for long-range growth since the late 1960s. Though the afternoon respondents at this symposium provided a sharp analysis of PlaNYC — Mayor Bloomberg’s long-range sustainable growth plan for the city — all of the panelists agreed that, with the Bloomberg administration’s clock running down, successful implementation of PlaNYC will lie largely in the hands of the city’s future leaders.

Tom Angotti, professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College, reminded the audience that the 1969 plan was never formally approved, just like PlaNYC, whose creation was sponsored and launched as an independent initiative by the mayor. Angotti said that soliciting more buy-in from community groups is the first step needed to make the plan binding. Other panelists agreed, saying that community-based 197-a plans should be addressed in the document, and that economic factors like job creation should be considered as well.

It is accepted that in 20 years NYC will be more populous and diverse. While change is good, the standard of living in NYC could decline if natural resources and existing infrastructure are not properly managed. The director of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability and PlaNYC author Rohit T. Aggarwala, PhD, noted that while PlaNYC’s goals have the potential to transform the city into a more livable, sustainable place, it will only happen if the plan’s core ideas are adopted and promoted by other administrations. Said Aggarwala, PlaNYC can be the first step in “shifting the idea of how the citizenry thinks about NYC’s responsibility for promoting sustainability.”

Carolyn Sponza, AIA, is an architect with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners and is the AIANY Chapter Vice President of Professional Development.

Order of Merit Conferred Upon Daniel Libeskind, AIA

(l-r): Consul General Dr. Hans-Jürgen Heimsoeth, Daniel Libeskind, AIA, Nina Libeskind, and Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit.

Courtesy www.germany.info

At a ceremony on November 16, Daniel Libeskind, AIA, was presented with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, one of that country’s highest civilian honors. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Heimsoeth, the Consul General of Germany, spoke of the work of Libeskind, describing the role of the Jewish Museum of Berlin which “honors the past, celebrates the present, and looks to the future,” and of the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück, where the artist who died at Auschwitz is celebrated by a building that “is a monument to his life and death, but which transcends his biography.” An historian and political scientist, Heimsoeth, in conferring the Order of Merit, praised Libeskind, saying that his work in Germany “greatly benefits the country, which has a collective longing to understand the past and to move into the future.”

The Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, co-officiated at the ceremony, stating that “We, the people of Berlin, are proud to be able to call the global citizen and architect Daniel Libeskind one of our city’s master builders, and we are happy that Jewish life is blossoming again in today’s Berlin.” He said, “The Jewish Museum has become ours, an essential part of Berlin. The people of Berlin have taken it to their hearts and have found new access to Jewish history.” The mayor hoped that Libeskind “will have the opportunity to create many new projects in New York, in Berlin, and throughout the world.” Mayor Wowereit subsequently visited the Berlin-New York Dialogues exhibition, on view through January at the Center for Architecture. The exhibition will travel to Berlin, re-opening at the German Architecture Center (DAZ) in early March 2008.

Heimsoeth commended Libeskind, who, he said, has “the ability to reconcile Germany’s difficult and exacerbating history with its future by means of architecture,” adding that “it is reasonable to say that Mr. Libeskind’s experiences in Berlin served him well in New York. He also knows New York’s politics very well now, and it is to his great credit that he remains a guiding voice of optimism regarding the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site.” He concluded by noting “the common themes in this work on both sides of the Atlantic are urbanism and memorial, expressed through profound positive challenges to our understanding of architecture and its potential to change our lives.”

Nature in the City

Until a few months ago, I commuted every day from the Upper West Side to Midtown East — taking the 2/3 subway to Times Square and transferring to the Shuttle to Grand Central. It took me approximately 45 minutes to get to work. This past August, however, I traded in my morning commute and decided to walk the three miles instead. Now, even though my commute is an hour long, I walk through Central Park surrounded by chirping birds, dogs, joggers, bikers, and fresh air in place of the pale faces of the stale subway.

The best part about my walk to work is that I feel a connection to nature — albeit manmade — as I haven’t felt in years. Even if one takes trips outside of the city, there is a disconnect between the city and country, and it is easy to block out the natural aspects of urban environments. Every day the light is slightly different, the weather changes, and the wildlife and foliage shift with the seasons. In a city as dense and built-up as NYC, it is easy to ignore natural elements and this can be a detriment to design, especially sustainable design. My suggestion to all city-dwelling architects: try walking to work for a week and see how it affects your perspective.

In this issue:
·A Tour de Verre for Midtown
·New Alliance Invests in Brooklyn Playgrounds
·National Arts Club Gets a Face Lift
·Shaker Past Gets New Urbanist Makeover
·Beijing Building Acts as 3-D Billboard
·New Wing and Exhibition Space Conducts Musical Collection

A Tour de Verre for Midtown

Tour de Verre.

©Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Just west of the Museum of Modern Art, a 75-story Ateliers Jean Nouvel-designed building will soon be on the rise on a 17,000-square-foot parcel of land between West 53rd and 54th Streets. The glass and steel façade, with a diagrid structural design, will taper into a spire. A mix of uses is contemplated for the building, including: a 50,000-square-foot expansion of MoMA’s galleries, a 100-room, seven-star hotel, and 120 highest-end residential condominiums on the upper floors. Hines, the international real estate firm, collaborated with Ateliers Jean Nouvel on 40 Mercer Street in SoHo as well.

New Alliance Invests in Brooklyn Playgrounds
Barclays, Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), and the Nets basketball team have created the Barclays/Nets Community Alliance, a new organization committed to the physical and educational development of youth in Brooklyn and surrounding communities. The Alliance will invest $1 million annually in local non-profits to improve the lives of young people in the borough through sports and other activities, including education and health care. Out2Play, a non-profit dedicated to building and refurbishing playgrounds throughout the NYC public school system will receive the first grant: $150,000 for the rehabilitation and rebuilding of playgrounds in Brooklyn. The alliance has been in the works since the announcement that the Gehry Partners-designed arena at Atlantic Yards would be called the Barclays Center.

National Arts Club Gets a Face Lift
The National Arts Club has selected FZAD Architecture + Design to renovate its 1906 home in the Tilden Mansion at 15 Gramercy Park South. Built in 1884, it is a designated NYC Landmark and a National Historic Landmark. Originally, the house had a flat-front, iron-grilled appearance that matched its neighbors, but in the 1870s, Samuel Tilden hired Calvert Vaux to “Victorianize” the faççhe process of restoring the stoops and the steps to the pediment of the building, including the restoration of the Michelangelo bust in the pediment of the western stoop.

Shaker Past Gets New Urbanist Makeover

The Village of New Loudon.

Cooper Carry

After competing against four other firms, the NY office of Cooper Carry has been awarded the design contract for The Village of New Loudon, a 45-acre proposed mixed-use development located in Colonie, NY, one of the oldest suburban communities in the Albany region. The firm will provide master planning and architectural design services for the project. Plans call for integrating a mix of retail space and residential units, a hotel and spa, and offices sited around public space. Honoring previous community opposition to big-box retailers, the retail component will be a mix of boutique national chains and local retailers, entertainment, dining, and amenity spaces. Residential design will provide multi-family units in varied building types. The design vision draws on a combination of the area’s Shaker history and regional character, and key components of the New Urbanist movement, such as regional planning for open space and appropriate architecture and planning.

Beijing Building Acts as 3-D Billboard

SanLiTun.

LOT-EK

SanLiTun, a 105,000-square-foot commercial/retail building designed by LOT-EK in the Embassy District of central Beijing has been completed. The building is part of master plan, designed by Tokyo-based Kengo Kuma and Associates (KKAA), for a large commercial development with pedestrian piazza surrounded by four large buildings — SHoP Architects, Beijing Matsubara & Architect, and KKAA designed the other buildings. Abiding by the district’s four-story height restriction, the building is conceived as a three-dimensional billboard to be filled with the graphics and logos of the future retail tenants. The articulation of the façade relates to the trajectories of pedestrian movement and views through the landscape of the piazza and its surrounding buildings.

Referencing a building under construction, a layer of blue metal mesh, supported by a cantilevered scaffold-like structure, wraps the building. Offset three meters from the building, the mesh acts as a second skin buffering the city noise level and filtering direct sunlight for energy efficiency. Protruding out of the building mass are large stainless steel extrusions with glazed fronts piercing the mesh layer and bending in varying angles. At night, the extrusions become light boxes with white LED frames floating over the glowing blue mesh.

New Wing and Exhibition Space Conducts Musical Collection

Musical Machines & Living Dolls: Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata from the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection.

Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership

More than 150 artifacts comprise the permanent installation of the exhibition Musical Machines & Living Dolls: Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata from the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of historic musical instruments and mechanical figures, with over 5,000 examples of programmed media at the Morris Museum, one of NJ’s largest cultural institutions. The exhibition, designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership, begins with an abstracted Victorian drawing room, and guides visitors through rooms highlighting scientific and technological aspects, cultural and social historical context, and craftsmanship and movement.

The collection is housed in a 4,300-square-foot gallery in the new Guinness Wing, designed by RMJM Hillier. A new Grand Entrance Pavilion, with a slatted redwood screen wall outside and modern glass panels and steel accents inside, welcomes visitors to the museum while also serving as an open event space and museum shop.

In this issue:
·AIANY Policy Update: Zoning
·NYS Boards for Architecture & Landscape Architecture Seek Members
·New Practices New York Goes West and Beyond
·NCARB Releases Practice Analysis
·Municipal Art Society Supports New Moynihan Station
·Passing: Martin Raab, FAIA
·Passing: Richard Snibbe, FAIA

AIANY Policy Update: Zoning
By Laura Manville, AIANY Policy Coordinator

Since the city’s current zoning text was written in 1961, NYC has changed dramatically. Most of the prime parcels of land have been developed — particularly outside of Manhattan — leaving small, irregular infill sites within a largely built-up urban area. The AIA, after many hours of drafting and collaboration with the Architect’s Council, the American Planning Association, and others, recently spearheaded a formal proposal to the NYC Department of City Planning to make six changes to the Zoning Resolution. The proposal was certified, and is currently under review by the Borough Presidents and Community Boards. AIANY believes these changes would increase design flexibility in the much-in-demand housing sector.

To view the list of proposed changes and see images and examples, go to the AIANY Planning & Urban Design Committee website. If you can help spread the word to your local community board or city council representative, contact Laura Manville, AIANY policy coordinator.

NYS Boards for Architecture & Landscape Architecture Seek Members
The New York State Board for Architecture and the New York State Board for Landscape Architecture are inviting applications for board membership to fill three vacancies for professional members for architecture and one professional member for landscape architecture. Board members are responsible for community outreach, conducting disciplinary proceedings, and considering and advising the department and the regents on other matters of professional licensing, practice, and conduct. Members receive an honorarium of $100 per day for their service and are reimbursed for approved expenses incurred in the course of their public duties. Members are appointed by the Board of Regents. Nominations of and applications from individuals with diverse backgrounds and individuals with disabilities are encouraged. For an application, contact the board office at 518-474-3817, ext. 110 or e-mail archbd@mail.nysed.gov or larchbd@mail.nysed.org.

New Practices New York Goes West and Beyond
As a result of the success of New Practices New York, similar committees are sprouting up across the nation. Mark Strauss, FAIA, AICP, AIANY Immediate Past President and spearhead of the committee, was invited to present the AIANY New Practices Roundtable and Showcase, events that initiated the committee, to AIA Pasadena & Foothill (AIAPF). As the first recipient of the annual AIA NY State Fellowship Award for Mentorship in the Profession, Strauss helped establish the committee, featuring NYC-based firms within 10 years of being founded.

Having experienced starting and running an architectural firm, which later merged with FXFowle Architects, Strauss discussed the trials and tribulations of starting a practice in NYC and the efforts of the Chapter in association with The Architect’s Newspaper to launch a series of programs to nurture young practices. The program included a presentation on the New Practices program and how local chapters can do more to mentor young practices. A synopsis of the presentation can be found on the AIAPF website.

New Practices New York is also making an impact internationally. The Architecture Foundation, the UK’s independent architecture center, will feature New Practices New York winners as part of its annual lecture series. For more information, visit The Architecture Foundation website.

NCARB Releases Practice Analysis
The 2007 Practice Analysis of Architecture is now available to download from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards’ (NCARB) website. The 2007 survey and analysis represent the greatest outreach and response from architects ever received, with 9,835 architects from the U.S. and Canada participating. The purpose of the study was to identify the tasks and knowledge/skills that are important for recently licensed architects practicing independently, to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Results will be used to shape the foundation of an architect’s entry into the profession: the Architect Registration Examination (ARE), and, for the first time, the Intern Development Program (IDP). To read the 2007 Practice Analysis of Architecture, click the link.

Municipal Art Society Supports New Moynihan Station
The Municipal Art Society (MAS) called for greater public oversight and a transparent public review process for the development of the new Moynihan Station following the release of a “scoping document” on the project by the Empire State Development Corp. MAS strongly supports the concept of the project, including the relocation of Madison Square Garden into the rear of the Farley building under the condition that the character of the historic Farley Post Office is protected while ensuring that the new station is an efficient transportation portal.

MAS also released results from a recent poll that demonstrated mass transit riders favor a Penn Station redevelopment that enhances access to accommodate increased traffic, that the public wants a voice in the redevelopment, and that they feel they are not fully informed about current plans for the Farley Post Office building. Poll respondents felt that Penn Station should be expanded and that the current Penn Station must be improved aesthetically, architecturally, and functionally. More than 66% of all respondents would rather travel through a train station that looks like Grand Central Terminal than Penn Station. Click here for more information.

Passing: Martin Raab, FAIA
Martin D. Raab, FAIA, died Wednesday, November 14 at age 75. Mr. Raab received his architectural degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then joined what is now called HLW International, eventually becoming chief operating officer of HLW’s Services Corporation Design/Build Division. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appointed Raab to be president and CEO of the 800-person School Construction Authority, where he remodeled the agency for design/build. In 2003, he joined Richard Meier & Partners, Architects as its COO. Additionally, Raab was the volunteer village architect and chairman of the Planning Commission for Great Neck Estates, where his family resided for 26 years.

Extensively involved with the AIA, Raab served as president of the AIANY Chapter in 1989. Prior to that, he represented the AIA in discussions with NYC to write both Public Law No. 5 on fire protection and Public Law No. 10 on exterior wall safety inspections, limiting architects’ liability under both these laws. He also led the AIA’s 10-year-long struggle on fee schedules and contract standards for public work, which ultimately reversed unfavorable procedures. Raab was also one of the founding members of national AIA Large Firm Round Table (1984-89), chair of the AIA Benefit Insurance Trust responsible for the purchase and administration of health and life insurance for AIA’s then 55,000 members, and director of various activities at the New York Building Congress.

A memorial service is planned for January 4, 2008, at the Union League Club in NYC. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, flagging it for the “Raab Family Educational Fund,” which will benefit architectural students and NYC public schools. Donations should be mailed to Raab Associates, Ltd., 12 Farnsworth Street, Boston, MA 02210.

The New York Times obituary can be viewed here.

Passing: Richard Snibbe, FAIA
Richard Snibbe, FAIA, died on October 28 in San Francisco. Snibbe attended Saint John’s University as an undergraduate and went on to study architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design under the direction of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus. Early in his career, Richard worked at the architectural firm of Edward Stone. Later, he helped established Ballard, Todd and Snibbe, and produced numerous buildings in public housing, healthcare, and education, including Princeton University’s tennis pavilion and graduate dorms.

After the demise of his partnership, Snibbe became a champion of classic, socially oriented modern architecture and founded CIMA — the Congress of International Modern Architects with other notable modern international architects including John Johansen, Harry Seidler, and James Polshek. Additionally, he established a trust to restore lampposts and other parts of Gramercy Park where he lived for 40 years. He also established “Architects for Clinton” in 1991 to aid in Clinton’s successful Democratic campaign for president.

Snibbe was the author of three books, Small Commercial Buildings (1956), The New Modernist In World Architecture (1999), and an unpublished autobiography completed in 1987 which is available for download on a growing online memorial webpage.

A family memorial was held in San Francisco on November 3. A second public memorial will be held on January 5 at 2:00pm at Harvard University’s Memorial Church. Contributions in memory of Snibbe may be made to the Congress of International Modern Architects, 12 Gramercy Park, New York NY 10003.

Your Shopping List Can Go Green This Year

BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News announced the 2007 Top-10 Green Building Products. Included are: Collins Pine FreeForm from The Collins Companies; Alpen Fiberglass Windows from Alepn Energy Group; 180 Walls from Milliken & Company; Bosch Evolution 800 Series SHE98M Dishwasher; Greenplay Children’s Furniture from Skyline Design; Cube3 Ultra Urinal from Caroma; LifeGuard Low Smoke Zero Halogen Cable from Houston Wire & Cable Company; Wireless Controls from EnOcean; SunEye from Sometric Corporation; LED Downlight from LED Lighting Fixtures, Inc. For information about all the products, click the link.

And when you are doing your holiday shopping this year, why not go green? The Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment (BCUE) launched shopbcue. For environmentally-friendly shopping, you will support green businesses and manufacturers, let vendors know the environment is important to consumers, and raise money to help fund the center’s public environmental programs.

Polshek Partnership Architects was an AIA Connecticut Honor Award Winner in the category of Preservation for the Louis I. Kahn Art Gallery at Yale University, and CT-based Hoffmann Architects received honorable mention for Scholatic, Inc. in NYC… Russell Albanese, president of green real estate developer The Albanese Organization, was honored with the Green Building Design award at the annual Global Green Gala…

FXFowle Architects received a 2007 DesignShare Merit Award for The Calhoun School and a Recognized Value Award for the Whitman School of Management/Syracuse University… Perkins Eastman has been honored with two Intranet Innovation Awards for its ORCHARD system, an online resource that enables the firm’s approximately 750 employees to share knowledge…

The NY office of HOK announces the addition of Thomas Knittel, AIA, LEED AP, as Principal; he will be acting as a Senior Designer within the Architecture group… Magnusson Architecture and Planning has announced the promotion of Christine M. Hunter, AIA, to Principal…