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

12.07.07 Registration Deadline Extended: OEM Post Disaster Housing Design Competition
What if a Category 3 Hurricane were to hit NYC? The NYC Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is sponsoring a design competition to enhance the city’s ability to provisionally house residents after a major coastal storm. The winners of the open competition will be awarded $10,000 to further develop their submissions in the second phase of the competition. The competition jury will also award 10 honorable mentions $500 each. Submissions are due 01.04.08.

12.14.07 Call for Submissions: CAE Educational Facility Design Awards
The CAE Educational Facility Design Awards program is open to projects for pre-K, K-12, higher education, alternative, and unique learning environments. The program recognizes outstanding learning environment planning and design internationally. The awards recognize critical evaluation, thoughtful planning and design, and appropriate experimentation, not as an end in itself but in the context of clients’ needs.

12.21.07 Call for Papers: DMI International Education Conference
The Design Management Institute (DMI) will host the conference, “Design Thinking: New Challenges for Designers, Managers and Organizations,” which will take place 04.14-15.08 in Paris, France. DMI invites researchers and practitioners to submit paper proposals that contribute to theory building, provide examples of empirical research, or use case studies to illustrate how, when, and why designing turns into an organizational asset and a tool for managers. The program will comprise keynote presentations, panel discussions, full paper presentations, and poster sessions. For consideration, interested individuals may e-mail 1000-word abstract proposals.

12.27.07 Competition: Rotch Traveling Scholarships
The Boston Society of Architects announces a two-stage design competition where one young designer will receive a stipend of $35,000 to spend eight months traveling the world. Established in 1883 for the “advancement of education in architecture,” the Rotch Traveling Scholarship is the oldest program of its kind in the U.S. To be eligible for the scholarship, designers must be U.S. citizens under 35-years-old on January 1. They also must have either a degree from an accredited U.S. school of architecture and one year of full-time professional experience in a MA-based architecture firm or a degree from an accredited MA-based architecture school.

1.11.08 Call for Proposals: 2008 National Preservation Conference
The 2008 National Preservation Conference seeks proposals for education sessions or poster presentations. Areas of interest include green building, recent past and modernism, teardowns and McMansions in older and historic neighborhoods, urban revitalization and adaptive use, rural revitalization, historic house museums, and historic roads and scenic by-ways.

2.11.08 Call for Submissions: Young Architects Forum 2008: Resonance
Young architects and designers are invited to submit work under this year’s theme, Resonance, which posits that architecture is an ideas profession. Projects of all types, either theoretical or real and executed in any medium, are welcome. The jury will select work for presentation in public forums, an online installation, and an exhibition at the Architectural League of New York beginning in May 2008. Winners will receive a cash prize of $1,000. A poster of the winning entries will be published and distributed nationally, as will a catalogue of winning work published by the Architectural League and Princeton Architectural Press.

Event: 35th International Conference & Exposition: Embrace Commitment. Community. Change
Location: Orlando, FL, 10.25-27.07
Organizer: National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA)
Host: NOMA Orlando

(left) Southwest Public Safety Center in Detroit, designed by Hamilton Anderson Associates, won the First Place NOMA Design Honor Award; (right) Cornell University’s project, “Soft Boundaries,” won the 2007 NOMA Student Design Competition.

Clayton Studio; Cornell University

The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) conference theme, “Embrace Commitment. Community. Change,” resonated throughout this event, from seminars and keynote addresses to the design awards competition. Seminars focused on sustainability, building information modeling, real estate development, and the correlation between design and culture. The many seminars on architects and public policy reflect the growing interest in this important topic.

Introducing the NOMA 35th International Conference and Exposition, 2008 NOMA president, Carlton T. Smith, NOMA, AIA, invited members to “make a commitment to one another in order to effect change collectively for the betterment of our communities.”

Luncheon speaker Chauncey Mayfield of Mayfield Gentry, a real estate holding company in Detroit, MI, said clearly to all: successful professionals should always reach back and assist those who are starting out. “Don’t pull up the ladder,” he said. “Leave it in place to assist others on their way up.” And he speaks from experience. After winning its first large-scale project, Mayfield Gentry continued to grow. After forming a relationship with a German company, the firm transformed itself into a major property management company with developments in several states. He noted that the lack of diversity in real estate was even greater than in architecture. In fact, you could count the number of minority-owned property management companies in the U.S. on the fingers of one hand. The number of major African-American developers, he added, is similarly low, and he saw no real efforts as yet to increase diversity in the industry.

Design Awards keynote speaker Dr. E. Lance McCarthy, president and CEO, Metropolitan Orlando Urban League, spoke of his admiration for Ayn Rand’s fictional character Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, stressing that architects should stay true to their ideals no matter the opposition. The first place Design Honor award went, for the third consecutive year, to Hamilton Anderson Associates of Detroit. This year’s honored project, Detroit’s Southwest Public Safety Center, houses a police precinct and a fire station, providing one-stop service for the public. The open plan and glass façade offers a spacious setting for community meetings.

The student design competition centered on a “New Urban K-12 School” sited in the predominantly African-American community of Parramore in downtown Orlando, identified as a community in transition. Open to National Organization of Minority Architecture Student (NOMAS) chapters nationwide, the program encouraged students to complement Orlando’s overall master plan for the area, “Pathways for Parramore,” by designing a school that would improve the depressed aspects of the neighborhood. First prize went to the Cornell University team (for the second consecutive year), with a scheme that invites the community to take part. Exterior courtyards intertwined with transparent interior spaces reinforce the team’s concept, “Soft Boundaries.”

AIA National President RK Stewart, FAIA, and President-elect Marshall Purnell, NOMA, FAIA, were active in the conference, highlighting the AIA’s commitment to closer ties with NOMA. Both Stewart and Purnell offered support and stressed the common interests of each organization. Next year’s convention will be held October 2-4, 2008, in Washington, DC, with the theme “Evolve: Expanding our Horizons.”

Terrence E. O’Neal, AIA, principal of Terrence O’Neal Architect, was 2006 President of AIA New York State, and will serve as New York Regional Director on the AIA National Board 2008-2010.

Event: Livable Streets: A New Vision for the Upper West Side
Location: Jewish Community Center, 11.06.07
Speakers: Jan Gehl, Dr. Litt., Architect MAA, FRIBA — Professor Emeritus of Urban Design, School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, & Founding Partner, Gehl Architects; Janette Sadik-Khan — Commissioner, NYC Department of Transportation; Mark Gorton — Executive Director, The Open Planning Project (TOPP); Paul Steely White — Executive Director, Transportation Alternatives
Organizers: NYC Streets Renaissance; Transportation Alternatives; TOPP; Project for Public Spaces

Courtesy Upper West Side Streets Renaissance

The challenge of reshaping city streets, and New York City government’s newfound willingness to rise to that challenge, can be explained by two photos shown by Jan Gehl, Dr. Litt., Architect MAA, FRIBA. One, distilling the bodily effects of neglected public space, showed a staircase leading to a San Diego building labeled “FITNESS,” with escalators on the sides; the only human figures were riding the up escalator. The other, taken during city officials’ recent fact-finding trip to Gehl’s hometown of Copenhagen, shows NYC Department of City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, Hon, AIANY, and NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan on bikes, beaming. For an audience packed with Upper West Siders and Transportation Alternativists, the commissioners’ smiles carried news that they get it, and now they’re the ones calling the shots.

The “tsunami of cars” in recent decades, Gehl points out, has fostered large-scale collective amnesia about the historic purposes and joys of cities: as meeting places, marketplaces, sites of cultural mixing, and all-around enjoyment. Every city has a traffic department, he notes, but none has a Department of Pedestrians and Public Life. For cars to figure so prominently in planning processes, everything moving at a slower pace steps aside. The result is abandoned public space, mechanized human movement, and other ills compounding the consequences, environmental and otherwise.

Gehl’s studies of “the re-conquered city,” particularly those featured in his 2001 book New City Spaces (Barcelona, Lyon, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Portland, Curitiba, Cordoba, Melbourne, and Copenhagen), focuses on how these communities have won back public space through a combination of defensive and constructive measures. To slow down the onslaught, he advocates a range of traffic-calming strategies, including limits on free parking, congestion pricing where applicable, and incremental narrowing of high-speed streets; the corresponding positive steps include expansion of pedestrian plazas, upgrading of street furniture, support for art and other amenities in public space, and promotion of bicycling, which statistics suggest becomes dramatically safer as numbers of cyclists rise.

The success of Gehl’s approach is evident in soaring rates of bike commuting even in snow-prone Copenhagen, repeated high rankings for Melbourne (“one of the most dull and lifeless city centers in the world” just 10 years earlier) in global livability polls, and the sharp reduction of auto traffic in London’s congestion-pricing zone. Now, as consultant to PlaNYC 2030, he aims to bring similar results to NYC.

Each of the combined efforts can make headway, and NYC has taken one significant step in this direction with the new Ninth Avenue bike lane. But the most critical change, Gehl insists, is in the public mindset: to build a more livable and sustainable city, people need to overcome fatalism about the inevitability of auto traffic. The crowd’s uproarious support indicates that at least parts of NYC are more than ready for change. The UWS community has historically been progressive enough to serve as a testbed for Gehl’s strategies. The real challenge, of course, will come when he brings his message to audiences whose ideologies and interests still favor King Car’s single melody over the rich harmonies of human-scale city life.

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

Event: Women in Modernism: Making Places in Architecture
Location: Museum of Modern Art, 10.25.07
Speakers: Gwendolyn Wright — Author & Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Sarah Herda — Executive Director, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Toshiko Mori, FAIA — Principal, Toshiko Mori Architect, Department Chair & Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Karen Stein — Writer, Editor, Architectural Consultant; Beverly Willis — President, Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (Introduction)
Moderator: Barry Bergdoll — Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art & Professor of Architectural History, Columbia University
Organizer: Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation with Museum of Modern Art

Courtesy www.bwaf.org

“If ‘Modernism’ is a term that, in its definition, questions the status quo, then why aren’t more women architects known in Modern Architecture?” asked Gwendolyn Wright, author and professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The argument is not whether women architects existed from 1950-1980, but that women practitioners of the era were “erased” from history. “Evidence does not triumph over cultural bias.”

Four institutions — schools, museums, publications, and organizations — are responsible for excluding Modern women architects, stated Wright. Those who have hindered gender equality — and those with the power to make a change — are professors, curators, editors and writers, and executives. One example of gender erasure occurred in 1944. Elizabeth Mock, head of the Museum of Modern Art Department of Architecture and Design, organized Built in USA: 1932-1944, a follow-up to Philip Johnson’s 1932 Modern Architecture: International Exhibition. The exhibition featured colloquial architecture by architects of both genders and suggested a different definition of Modernism from that established by Johnson. He subsequently fired Mock and developed the similarly-entitled Built in America: Post-War Architecture exhibition in 1952, featuring work by male architects more suited to his personal definition of Modern Architecture. Wright alleges that he thus erased both Mock and the diverse history she aimed to create.

Despite the past, times are changing and women are beginning to re-establish themselves. Toshiko Mori, FAIA, chair of the architecture department at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, disputes that a glass ceiling prevents women from succeeding; instead, there is just a “thick layer of men.” Running through a list of women principals, she is not alone holding a position of power. And if the number of women architecture students is any indication of the future, soon women will surpass men in the field.

History is both predictable and uncertain. One conversation has the potential to impact history significantly. Writer, editor, and architectural consultant Karen Stein suggested that perhaps this symposium was all that was needed to begin a chain of events that will permanently institute women practitioners, both past and present, in Modernism.

Event: Can One Woman (Still) Make a Difference? Jane Jacobs and New York
Location: St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, 10.31.07
Speakers: Christopher Klemek — Co-Curator, Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York; Roberta Brandes Gratz — Urban Critic; Samuel Zipp — Assistant Professor of American Civilization and Urban Studies, Brown University; Julia Vitullo-Martin — Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute’s Center for Civic Innovation; Laurie Beckelman — President, Beckelman & Capalino (Introduction)
Moderator: Joseph Giovannini — Architectural Critic & Author
Organizers: Municipal Art Society

Courtesy Municipal Art Society

As one who rose from ordinary citizen to celebrity, Jane Jacobs continues to fascinate readers and rouse conversation about what makes cities work. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she encouraged fellow citizens and readers to “look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.” At this event panelists of urban experts who have written about Jacobs’s work and/or knew her personally provided vignettes into her persona and work.

Urban critic Roberta Brandes Gratz, who knew Jacobs, described her as someone who was both interested in and cared about real people, how they lived, and what their lives were like — important things to know to resolve urban issues. Christopher Klemek, co-curator of Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York now on view at the Urban Center, called Jacobs a “Madisonian” who sought ways to prevent any one faction from obtaining tyrannical control. He noted that Mayor John Lindsay had made overtures to Jacobs to work in government. Klemek reported that later in life she had some regrets about not taking Lindsay up on the offer, but she cared more about creating coalitions and organizations. Besides, both sides of the 1960s political spectrum embraced her ideas, stated Samuel Zipp, assistant professor of American civilization and urban studies at Brown University.

Questions remain about whether current city planning actually incorporates Jacobs’s thinking. Gratz lamented that lessons of the West Village have never been fully realized. While community-oriented structures have been put in place since the 1960s, “private market imperatives dominated by corporate developers, including nonprofits, have gone largely unquestioned,” added Zipp. In some instances, nonprofits are competing for what Jacobs would have regarded as self-isolating land, argued Julia Vitullo-Martin, senior fellow at Manhattan Institute’s Center for Civic Innovation.

Still, times have changed for the better because of Jacobs, believes Vitullo-Martin, citing successful developments citywide from Brooklyn waterfronts to Frederick Douglas Boulevard between 116th and 125th Streets. Jacobs’s influence spreads beyond NYC as well. The local fishing community is taking civic planning action in New Jersey to preserve Liberty State Park. So there is still hope for a Jacobs-inspired future. Jacobs has set a precedent for citizens to get involved, coalesce, and shape development of their communities.

The Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York exhibition aims to “energize a new generation of New Yorkers to observe and recognize the best of our city and become citizen activists for possible change,” according to Laurie Beckelman, president of Beckelman & Capalino, who introduced the event. For more information about the exhibition and related events, and to read blogs and see video podcasts, click the link above.

Marianne R. Lau, AIA, is a Manhattan-based architect.