Scheduled to be on view from July 10th to December 1st at MoMA New York, Tomas Ghisellini Architects will be presenting the international exhibition 'Cut'n'Paste'. With a recent project exposed, their exhibition is dedicated to design, composition and communication languages of contemporary architecture. For more information, please visit here.
![FAR ROC [For a Resilient Rockaway] Competition - Featured Image](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5178/33cf/b3fc/4b36/6900/008e/medium_jpg/farroc_pre-sandy-boardwalk.jpg?1366832076)
The extensive damage to low-lying waterfront zones caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 reinforced the need for resilient infrastructure and redevelopment strategies for existing coastal communities throughout the greater New York area. Costly damage to buildings, roads, and utility systems by the storm raises the controversial question of whether areas of particular geographic vulnerability should be rebuilt, maintained and defended, or simply abandoned. In an effort to solicit creative ideas, the FAR ROC [For a Resilient Rockaway] competition seeks innovative proposals for the design and development of a comprehensive new master plan for Arverne East, a vacant 80+ acre Urban Renewal site on the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City. Submissions are due no later than June 14. For more information, please visit here.
Above all, another pamphlet is a conversation, a loose exchange of forms and ideas, an excuse to play, a frame through which to look, a shared excitement. It is an open dialogue with our friends, our histories, and our surroundings. Meaning both “more of the same” and “something different”, “another” contains the seeds of both continuity and change. Another pamphlet mines this contradiction - this tension between past and future - opportunistically interrogating, critiquing, and celebrating the discipline of architecture. Their latest issue, Symmetry no.05, was just released and they are having a launch event this Thursday, May 2, from 6:00pm-8:00pm at Printed Matter, Inc. in New York City. For more information, and to order a pamphlet, please visit here.
Last year, we spoke at a packed lecture at the Center for Architecture, along with Bjarke Ingels, the Morpholio team and moderator Ned Cramer; we were discussing the impact social media and technology have on our profession and the way in which we design.
And now, thanks to the AIANY Global Dialogues Committee, we are happy to invite you to a new event taking place at the Center for Architecture on May 2nd, 2013 at 6:30PM, where together with Mark Wigley (Dean Columbia GSAPP) we will address the present and future of architecture education. The lecture will be followed by a panel with our friends Carlo Aiello (eVolo), David Fano (CASE), Jill Fehrenbacher (Inhabitat), Toru Hasegawa (Morpholio), Tim Maly (Wired Magazine ) and Cliff Kuang (Fast Company / Co.Design).
More details and RSVP form here, more information after the break. See you on Thursday!
Taking place at Trespa Design Centre in New York, the 'Visionaries: The New York Wheel' event welcomes Richard Marin, President +CEO, New York Wheel LLC; Navid Maqami, Perkins Eastman; Rick Parisi, M. Paul Friedberg + Partners; Penny Knops, Design + Sustainability Management, for one of the first-ever presentations on the proposed New York Wheel project. Located on the north shore of Staten Island (St. George), the 630-foot, or roughly 60-story attraction, promises to become one of the City’s great landmark attractions. The event takes place 6:30-8:00pm EST. For more information, please visit here.
Opening today at the Center for Architecture in New York, the 'Low Rise High Density' exhibition examines a housing type celebrated in the 1960s and ‘70s, and what it means in the United States today. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Public Architecture with AIA New York, architectural drawings, photographs, and oral histories will be presented with project architects, tracing the typology over the last 50 years. The exhibition will be on view until June 29. More information after the break.
As we reported yesterday, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has announced their plans to demolish the 12-year old American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams & Bille Tsien. The MoMA, which has planned a new expansion on either side of Williams & Tsien’s building, claims that the building will prevent the floors from lining up and thus must be demolished. Moreover, officials claim that the building's opaque facade isn’t in keeping with the MOMA’s glass aesthetic.
Designers and architects, outraged by the MoMA's decision to destroy such a young and architecturally important part of New York's urban fabric, are now challenging the validity of the MoMA's claim. Not only has a petition been started to prevent the demolition, but many are pleading with MoMa to consider how the Folk Art Museum could be integrated into the new expansion. In fact, a Tumblr - crowdsourcing ideas for potential re-designs - has even been set-up.
See more designers' reactions & suggestions on how to save the American Folk Art Museum, after the break...
Now in it's 4th year, the New York Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NYCOBA) announced their Crafting the Interview event for graduating college students and young professionals seeking feedback on their portfolio. A panel presentation will provide information about the job searching process and current market trends. The event will offer constructive one-on-one feedback to participants and a panel discussion comprised of HR professionals representing different sectors of the architectural + design community. The event is intended to prepare attendees to be practiced for potential interviews and to gain an understanding of current job trends. The event will take place May 18th from 11:00am-4:30pm. For more information, please visit here.
Columbia University's GSAPP Applied Architecture Research program will be holding their Conflict of Interests event on Friday, April 16th from 2:00pm-6:00pm, which will be organized as a series of conversations—five distinctive panels—discussing the limits of applied research in contemporary practices and academia. This event will be the first in a series of symposia investigating the role of applied research in architecture. Nestled in an intersection between practice and theory, applied architectural research can potentially work as a space for overlap and negotiation. This event will formally make explicit the opportunities for architectural research to bridge the gap between the archive and the laboratory. For more information, please visit here.
Just as designers have reacted to the death sentence of Ted Williams and Billie Tsien's American Folk Art Museum building, forming petitions and a tumblr (crowdsourcing designs that integrate the building with the MoMA's existing facilities), architecture critics have also been wielding their weapon - words - and entering the fray.
Most critics have responded with outrage (it's "nothing less than cultural vandalism" says Martin Filler), denouncing MoMA's prioritization of corporate needs over cultural value. However, a few are actually defending MoMA's decision, saying the building was never ideal for displaying art anyway. See a round-up of all the opinions - from Davidson to Goldberger - after the break...
Among the many ironies of the MoMA's decision to demolish Ted Williams and Billie Tsien's 12-year old building for the American Folk Art Museum, is the most obvious: as a cultural institution, the MoMA is meant to value and protect, not demolish, architecture.
Critics such as Justin Davidson and Martin Filler have pointed out that the irony is particularly acute considering the MoMA's "distinguished" and "revivified" department of architecture and design, curated by Barry Bergdoll. They note that Bergdoll, who they both praise highly as "visionary", has remained conspicuously silent on the decision. Davidson even claims that the MoMA can only appreciate such innovative "individuality [such as Bergdoll's] under glass."
However, a week after the decision first went public, Bergdoll has finally broken his silence to Architect's Newspaper. See what he has to say about the MoMA's decision, after the break...
LEESER Architecture’s design for the Museum of Moving Image has recently been announced as the winner of the 2013 Red Dot Design Award in its highly competitive Architecture and Urban Design category. Completed in 2011, the Museum of the Moving Image houses a comprehensive collection dedicated to educating the public about the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media.The existing structure is seamlessly integrated with the substantial new addition through a grand lobby which connects the two. More information on their award after the break.
A 1970 graduate of Cooper Union's architecture program, world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be delivering 'The Art of Memory' lecture, a free event, on Tuesday, April 30th, at 6:00pm. The master planner for Ground Zero and the architect of one of Europe’s most visited museums, the Jewish Museum Berlin, will discuss the role that memory played in his work on those projects and others, such as the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark; the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England; the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany; and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. He will also talk about the acute sense of responsibility he feels, when accepting commissions for projects addressing Jewish history, to create work that honors not only the harsh realities, but also the resilience of the Jewish spirit. For more information, please visit here.
ALL THE BUILDINGS IN NEW YORK is a blog, a book, and, above all, illustrator James Gulliver Hancock's love letter to New York City.
As his website reveals, Hancock "panics that he may not be able to draw everything in the world… at least once." Since Kindergarten, he's been obsessed with drawing in meticulous detail (or, as he tells the Atlantic Cities, with a mix of "technicality and whimsy"), a characteristic this native Australian brought with him when he moved to Brooklyn, New York.
What began as a blog, All The Buildings In New York, to keep track of his many sketches of New York's architecture (particularly the brownstones), is now a book (All The Buildings in New York: That I've Drawn So Far - which includes about 500 drawings). Organized by neighborhoods, it features New York architectural icons from the past and present, including the Chrysler Building, the Flatiron, Apple's 5th Avenue store, as well as the everyday buildings that make up New York's unique cityscape.
See more images from All the Buildings in New York, after the break...
Claire Weisz, AIA, founding principal of WXY and a frequently cited expert source on waterfront design, will be speaking on the topic "Ecological Barriers: Holding Sea Levels at Bay" with a panel at 6:00pm on April 25 in New York City. A leading advocate for post-Hurricane Sandy infrastructure design, Weisz's firm is known for such waterfront projects as the East River Blueway, a planned reconstruction of miles of Manhattan water's edge, as well as Transmitter Park, Rockaway Park, Sherman Creek Waterfront, and Battery Park.
New York's City Council have unanimously backed a proposed plan to restore and redevelop the aging giant that is Pier 57. Built in 1952, the 300,000 square foot pier was hailed by Popular Mechanics as a 'SuperPier' for its vast size and unconventional construction, as most of the pier's weight is supported by 'floating' air-filled concrete cassions. The pier was originally used as a bus depot by the New York City Transit Authority, however it has been lying vacant since 2003. The latest decision brings a concrete end to years of speculation as to what the fate of the pier would be.
Read more about the proposal after the break...
“There are of course the personal feelings — your buildings are like your children, and this is a particular, for us, beloved small child. But there is also the feeling that it’s a kind of loss for architecture, because it’s a special building, a kind of small building that’s crafted, that’s particular and thoughtful at a time when so many buildings are about bigness.” - Billie Tsien, quoted in The New York Times
After only 12 years, the Tod Williams & Billie Tsien-designed American Folk Art Museum is slated to be demolished. Despite the acclaim it has received from critics, including high praise from the likes of Paul Goldberger and Herbert Muschamp, and the importance it has been given in New York's architectural landscape, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA, which bought the building in 2011) reports that it must tear down the building to make way for an imminent expansion.
At the time of its construction, the building was of the first new museums built in New York in over thirty years. Unfortunately, the building will more likely be remembered for its short life, taking, in the words of The New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin, "a dubious place in history as having had one of the shortest lives of an architecturally ambitious project in Manhattan."
Read more about the American Folk Art Museum's imminent demolition, after the break...
Taking place April 11-12 in New York, the Facades+ Performance Symposium will focus on cutting through the jargon to consider the heart of high performance building envelopes. Presented by The Architect's Newspaper and enclos, they recently announced that an additional workshop will take place on Friday, April 12. This workshop will focus on the fundamental concepts and workflows for creating performance-based design models with the parametric design tool, Grasshopper for Rhino3D. Using Grasshopper, participants will be guided through a series of exercises designed to emphasize the relevant applications of parametric design for professional practice. To sign up, and for more information on the two-day event, please visit here. A video can be viewed after the break.