I would like to say that it has been a true honor to serve as President of AIANY, here in this city of great architecture and great architects. We have a dynamic Chapter, aiming always to make our profession more visible, more relevant, and more aligned with the needs and concerns of our membership. When I took the helm as President in January, I found a well-run entity in strong financial shape, a growing membership base thanks to previous presidents and to excellent management by AIANY staff, and a growing and impressive home base at the Center for Architecture, widely acknowledged as presenting a positive face for our profession, broadening our impact and influence. Read More
The AIA New York Chapter membership gathers each June to elect the Board of Directors and members of select committees, as well as to conduct chapter business and honor those who contribute to New York’s built environment. In a time when organizations are fleeting, it’s incredible to know that this was our Chapter’s 146th Annual Meeting.
Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, was elected 2014 President. Principal of Lance Jay Brown Architecture + Urban Design, he is also a Distinguished Professor in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York. Tomas J. Rossant, AIA, of Ennead Architects, was elected First Vice President / 2015 President-Elect.
All awards and citations conferred are below, and the entire elected slate can be viewed here. Read More
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg outlined the roadmap to resiliency in a remarkable speech titled “A Stronger, More Resilient New York” on Tuesday, 06.11.13 at the Duggal Greenhouse of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Announcing and summarizing a 400-page report prepared by an interdisciplinary and interagency team led by the NYC Department of City Planning and NYC Economic Development Corporation staff, the Mayor was eloquent, cogent, and succinct.
Representing AIANY at the event were AIANY 2013 President Jill N. Lerner, FAIA; President-elect Lance Jay Brown, FAIA; Policy Director Jay B. Bond, and Executive Director Rick Bell, FAIA, your scribe. Brown, also the co-chair, with Illya Azaroff, AIA, of the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee, said, “The comprehensive nature of the 400 page proposal to protect the city is laudable. It will take some time to review the entire proposal but it lays down the gauntlet, as no doubt intended, for whatever administration succeeds this vitally committed Mayor of our City, a true follower of the Ephebic Oath.” Some remember Mayor Bloomberg in an inaugural speech promising, as per the Athenian or Ephebic Oath, to leave the City “greater and better” than it was before.
Excerpts from the Mayor’s remarks follow after the jump. The recommendations parallel many of the options outlined in the Post-Sandy Initiative Report: Building Better, Building Smarter: Opportunities for Design and Development prepared by the Post-Sandy Initiative team led by AIANY with a host of sister organizations including the ACEC, APA, ASLA, CHPC, NYSAFA, RPA, and SEAoNY. Read More
Denise Scott Brown, RIBA, Int. FRIBA, is a household name in the world of architecture. An architectural education that does not include Learning from Las Vegas, written in collaboration with her husband Robert Venturi, FAIA, and Steven Izenour, FAIA, is incomplete. Nonetheless, in 1991, the Pritzker Prize jury overlooked one half of the team responsible for a tremendously influential body of work, conferring the award solely to her husband. Twenty-two years later, at an Architects’ Journal Women in Architecture luncheon, Scott Brown asked to be retroactively acknowledged in the 1991 Pritzker Prize. This statement spurred a passionate debate about the role of women in architecture, and led two young women in the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Women in Design Club to launch a petition to include Scott Brown as a Pritzker winner. The petition now has more than 14,000 signatures, including Rafael Moneo, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Venturi himself. Read More
“Tower E… it could certainly use a better name,” David Childs, FAIA, joked, referring to the new 61-story mixed-use building Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM) is designing on the southeast corner of 11th Avenue and West 33rd Street. Indeed, worthy and waiting for a new moniker, it is a part of the 26-acre Hudson Yards. Childs, now a consulting design partner with SOM, was at the Center for Architecture on 05.30.13 for a conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Justin Davidson, who covers architecture and classical music for New York magazine. The event was the latest in the “Design in the New Heart of New York” series exploring this future neighborhood, which for decades, per the New York Times, has been a “mishmash of rail yards, tunnel ramps, and parking lots.” Read More
The Emerging New York Architects Committee’s (ENYA) annual Got License? event brought representatives from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and the New York State Office of the Professions to the Center for Architecture. Robert Lopez, executive secretary for the NYS Board of Architecture, explained the specific licensure requirements within New York State, highlighted statewide licensure trends, and presented various paths to licensure. Read More
One of the Center for Architecture’s current exhibitions “Low Rise High Density” has attracted some critical dialogue around a housing typology that inspired optimistic schemes in the 1960s and ‘70s. While the exhibition displays low-rise, high-density projects in their idealized forms, the panel discussion, Marcus Garvey Park Village at 40, reassessed the seminal housing project four decades post-occupancy. After breaking ground in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1973 to great fanfare, Marcus Garvey today confronts a very harsh reality as a crime- and poverty-striken community. The ensuing discussion questioned the role that architecture played in this unfortunate state of affairs. Read More
Ever peeking through the curtain wall of the Denver Convention Center, its 42-foot-tall blue bear designed by Lawrence Argent will soon see the best of New York, since more than two dozen speakers at the 2013 AIA Annual Convention 06.19-06.22.13 are from NYC and AIANY.
Denver-bound are 2013 AIANY President Jill Lerner, FAIA, Past Presidents Mark Ginsberg, FAIA, and Mark Strauss, FAIA, and many more, along with Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY executive director, and three AIANY members on the AIA National board of directors: Susan Chin, FAIA, Anthony Schirripa, FAIA, IIDA, and Burt Roslyn, FAIA. Many members of the Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) will also be attending, including Venesa Alicea, AIA, LEED AP, Julie Ann Engh, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, and AIANY Board member Jessica Sheridan, AIA, LEED AP. Read More
In April, the Municipal Art Society of New York invited four prominent NYC-based firms to take part in the MAS Design Challenge for a New Penn Station and the Next Madison Square Garden (MSG). On 05.29.13, a packed house at the TimesCenter (along with the rest of the world) got to see what Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Josh Sirefman (DS+R), H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (who stepped in when Santiago Calatrava bowed out), SHoP Architects, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) came up with. Read More
Thought leader and lifelong contributor to the business interests and intersections of architects and their practices, Rena M. Klein, FAIA, gave a talk called “Small Firm Practice in the New Normal: Learning from Chaos Theory” on 05.06.13. In the latest iteration of the Leading Architecture in a Changing World Series, organized by the AIANY Professional Practice Committee, Klein addressed a wide range of topics, from productivity and profitability in small practices, and national demographic trends and their impact on the architecture talent pool, to new business models for delivering architecture in a new economy. Read More
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