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.
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.
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.
Forget stairs, elevators and escalators, Carsten Höller is bringing a new method of circulation through the New Museum in New York City. It will take visitors down a three-storey, 102-foot tunnel, and may require helmets and elbow pads. What is this innovative invention? None other than the age-old, kid-friendly slide. This insallation is part of a survey exhibition of Höller ‘s work over the past twenty years in which he has explored “such themes as childhood, safety, love, the future, and doubt” in with an attitude towards his work that is “equal parts laboratory and test site.” [New Museum.org] Höller’s pieces explore human sensory experience and perception by creating environments and experiences that over-stimulate or deprive us of our senses. Read on for a preview of what to expect at the New Museum.
Storefront for Art and Architecture will host a “closing ceremony” for the exhibition, Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings, an exhibition by Matilde Cassani that explores secret, sacred territory throughout New York, on November 5, 2011 at 5pm. The ceremony will include discussion with local clergy on the condition of religion in the city of New York, focusing on the religious spaces that are built in non-traditional places to worship. The reception is free and open to the public. For more information, visit here.
Production and design firm, The Department of the 4th Dimension (The D4D), created the world’s first pop-up scent museum for Sephora & Firmenich. The Sensorium: Lucid Dreams from the Sensory World is an interactive exhibition exploring the emotions and instincts behind scent.
For more information, continue reading after the break.
The space of sound created by Carlito Carvalhosa’s Sum of Days on exhibit at MoMA until November 14, 2011 is a sublime environment of billowing white fabric and the white noise of the atrium reflected upon itself. The psuedo-boundaries established by the translucent material that hang from the ceiling create a confined space of light and ambient sound – fleeting and ephemeral. Upon entering the exhibit, you pass an array of speakers affixed to the wall. They are emitting a low hum – the sound of voices and echoes that are distant, yet recognizable. It is unclear at first from where these sounds are originating, but behind the fabric bodies are drifting in and out of view. The curtains, which are constantly swaying, direct you in an ellipse to the center of the space where a single microphone hangs, picking up the noise within the exhibit and sending them to the dozens of speakers that hang at intervals inside the curtains, along the walls of the exhibit, and up through the galleries at the mezzanine levels that overlook the atrium.
The MAS Summit for New York City, which occurs at 9:15am on October 14th, will bring together four icons of urban planning, design and architecture to explore today’s challenges and opportunities in creating a well-planned and well-designed city.
Delivering keynote speeches will be Amanda M. Burden, FAICP, an urban planner and civic activist, who serves as the New York City Planning Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Planning Commission, and Witold Rybczynski best-selling author, Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and architecture critic at Slate. More information on the event after the break.
