Launching in fall 2012, Parsons The New School of Design is offering a new graduate program in urbanism in New York City, the MA Theories of Urban Practice. The 2-year, 36-credit research-oriented program is designed for those who want to transform cities through actionable research, strategic knowledge, and critical theories. In other words, knowledge can transform cities! The program will redefine urbanism and urban design as a field of transformative practice.
The Van Alen Institute, a non-profit architectural organization in New York City, is hosting a Q&A between Aaron Levy of Slought Foundation and William Menking of the The Architects’ Newspaper, with editor Thomas Weaver on February 3rd at 7:oo pm. Located at Van Alen Books, 30 W. 22nd Street, on the ground floor between 5th and 6th Avenues in Manhattan, you can “grab a seat on their yellow steps and join the conversation”.
Read on for more information on this event!
The Excavating Wilderness: A Orienting Trajectory Across Central Park proposal by Syracuse University graduate Jeff Kamuda investigates the tensioning between natural wilderness and the built environment. With the rise of modern civilization, a fluctuating tenet between humans and nature can be observed in its reincarnation of the urban park. Situated in New York City’s Central Park, the project introduces a set of natural phenomena through a unique and atypical approach, which in turn serves to stimulate a dialogue between the individual, the park, the city, and the cosmos. Stretching a mile across Central Park from Grand Army Plaza at 59th street to the American Museum of Natural History at 77th Street, the triparted project achieves a dramatic juxtaposition of subterranean experience combined with elevated architecture. Read more after the break.
Tomorrow, the New York Public Library will be hosting a talk between architect Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects and Town & Country Executive Editor Mark Rozzo that will discuss “the role of place, nature, materials and craft in creating Kundig’s bold and sensitive designs”. The talk is free for the public to attend and will feature Kundig’s most recent collection of houses: Tom Kundig: Houses 2. Continue reading for more details.
The origin of Songlines can be traced to Australian indigenous systems for navigation and caretaking of land achieved by mapping space through the creation of music based on the topography of land. For 007_Urban_Songline, the artist, Allard van Hoorn, creates a series of Dreaming Tracks utilizing the changing morphology of Storefront’s façade and the sounds that emerge from the urban sonic context of the gallery. The exhibition is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York taking place at Storefront for Art and Architecture from January 18-February 18. More information on the exhibition after the break.
Los Angeles-based CO Architects and New York City-based FXFOWLE have announced the formation of a joint venture firm known as CO/FXFOWLE. Formed in late December, the two firms will embark in a “genuine collaboration” with all their project services. While each firm will still maintain their individual identity and operations, they will pursue new projects together, allowing them to expand their geographic and expertise reach.
On December 17, 2011, the New York Chapter of the AIA held a panel discussion about the Occupy Wall Street events that have spurred people from all over the country into political involvement. The discussion featured nine panelists with introductory remarks from Lance Jay Brown and Michael Kimmelman and closing remarks by Ron Shiffman (all listed below). It focused on aspects of the built environment, public spaces and how they reflect the way in which people assemble.
Follow us after the break for more about this discussion, including video.
Through April 15th, the Museum of the City of New York is exhibiting The Greatest Grid: The Masterplan of Manhattan and The Unifinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan. The two exihibits are in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 that transformed New York City into the city of endless streets and avenues we know it today, and speculations as to what the next 200 years will mean for the city.
More on the exhibits after the break.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is set to announce Cornell University and its partner, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, winner of the intense, yearlong competition to build a New York City Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island. The announcement follows Stanford University’s unexpected withdraw from the competition after tense negotiations with the Bloomberg administration. Meanwhile, last Friday Cornell received a $350 million donation in support of their proposal, being the largest gift the University has ever received.
Ryan&Heidi captures the flow of New York City life in one day, from one location and with one camera. The video was filmed from the 51st floor of The Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, currently New York City’s second highest location.
A new not-for-profit art and architecture organization called ASAP (Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis), founded by former MoMA Curator Tina di Carlo, launches Monday, December 12 at the top of The Standard, New York with Bjarke Ingels, Alex Schweder La and Jerszy Seymour. More information on the event after the break.
As the Highline has everyone looking up, James Ramsey and Dan Barasch are asking people to start looking down. James Ramsey’s vision to transform the abandoned Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal into a subterranean park filled with sunlight and lush vegetation is gaining international attention and support. The satellite engineer turned architect has developed a skylight using fiber-optic technology that will naturally light and bring life to this forgotten, graffiti-covered cavity below the streets of New York City.
Continue reading for more information, video and exclusive statements from Ramsey and Barasch.
SHoP Architects has shared with us the B2 Bklyn building which will be the first of the residential developments for Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, New York to break ground, scheduled for 2012. Standing at 32 storeys, it will be the world’s tallest pre-fab building, saving both on cost and waste.
More after the break.
On November 9th at the World Financial Center, all are invited to watch twenty-six of New York City’s top architecture, engineering and design firms will spend one adrenaline-filled evening configuring over 100,000 cans of food into gravity-defying sculptures for Canstruction, an exhibition, design competition and canned food drive to help feed hungry New Yorkers in need during the Thanksgiving season. While admission is free, visitors to the exhibit are encouraged to support the cause by contributing high-quality non-perishable foods, such as tuna, beans, and canned vegetables.
An annual art show, design competition, and food drive all rolled into one, Canstruction® raises hunger awareness by challenging teams of architects and engineers to create larger-than-life pop art masterpieces made entirely out of unopened cans of food. The eye-popping results will be displayed from November 10 through 21 before being donated to City Harvest for delivery to local community food programs. More information on the exhibit and images of last year’s winners after the break.
To honor the 50th anniversary of Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Municipal Art Society of New York is hosting the Jane Jacobs Forum focusing on Women as Public Intellectuals. The forum will discuss three prominent female writers: Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) and Betty Friedan (The Female Mystique) all of whom challenged the status quo. Their voices contributed to discussions about urban planning, environmental responsibility and the role of women in society. The forum will be moderated by Robin Pogrebin with five other panelists who will address the circumstances of these women’s successes and the role of women engaged in public critique today.
The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art announces a two-day conference on November 11-12 dedicated to a rigorous examination of Postmodernism both as expressed in theory and as put into practice in the fourth quarter of the 20th century in America and abroad. The conference’s goal is to bring together top architects, scholars, and critics to discuss why and how Postmodernism occurred, why and how it was soon largely eclipsed, and why and how it has nonetheless continued to influence the field and broader culture – including its lasting impact on the theory and application of urban planning and design. More information on the conference after the break.
Parsons The New School for Design has announced new graduate programs including a Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies and a Master of Arts in Theories of Urban Practice. What makes these programs unique is their focus on urban designers and planners as agents of social change: What kind of deep knowledge do urbanists need to be able to design cities in a much more effectively manner? And how do urbanists use their creative training and visionary skills to engage with the deeper structures of society?The programs represent a wider initiative at Parsons, one of the world’s leading schools of art and design, to offer graduate programs that define the next phase of global design. The programs will launch in Fall 2012. More information on the programs after the break.
The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life — from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age — has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work opening November 18th at the IFC Center in New York City.
