In this issue:
· The Future Arrives by Train
· Artists Take to the Streets
· Women Share Secrets to Success
· Symposium Spotlights Bucky’s Artistic Heirs

Event: Greening the Iron Ribbon: Redefining the Northeast Corridor
Location: NYU Kimmel Center, 09.16.08
Keynote: Eugenie Birch, FAICP — Co-Director, Penn Institute for Urban Research and Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research, University of Pennsylvania
Introductions: James McCullar, FAIA — AIANY 2008 President; Allison C. de Cerreño, PhD — Director, NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management; Robert D. Yaro — President, Regional Plan Association (RPA); Donald Burns, AICP — President-elect, American Planning Association (APA) New York Metro Chapter
Speakers: Along the Corridor: Center City Transit Oriented Development: Mark Kocent, AIA, AICP — Principal Planner, Office of University Architect, University of Pennsylvania; Daniel Baudouin, AICP — Executive Director, Providence Foundation; Along the Line: Between the Stops: Tom Suozzi — Nassau County Executive; Michael Kearney — Director of Design, JBG Properties; David Dixon, FAIA — Principal, Goody Clancy; The World View: Lessons Learned from Beyond: Donald Burns, AICP — President-elect, American Planning Association (APA) New York Metro Chapter; Mustafa Abadan, FAIA — Urban Design, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Craig Schwitter, PE — Buro Happold; Respondents Panel: Petra Todorovich — Director, America 2050, RPA; Martin Tillman — Associate, Steer Davies Gleave; Ernest Tollerson — Director for Policy and Media Relations, Metropolitan Transit Authority
Moderators: Ernest Hutton, FAICP, Assoc. AIA (moderator, Along the Corridor); Mark Strauss, FAIA, AICP, LEED AP (moderator, Along the Line); Lance Jay Brown, FAIA (moderator, The World View); Mark Ginsberg FAIA, LEED AP (moderator, Respondents Panel)
Organizers: AIANY; NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management; Regional Plan Association (RPA)
Sponsors: AIANY; NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management, and Wagner Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems; RPA; APA Metro Chapter; ULI NY District Council; Boston Society of Architects; AIA Philadelphia Chapter; AIA Washington Chapter

Amtrak rail lines cut through the suburbs of Stamford, CT.

Courtesy Google Earth

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is not just a green solution; it is a logical answer to sprawl, and a well-timed response to recent fossil-fuel price shocks. Craig Schwitter, PE, of Buro Happold, articulated the symposium’s consensus: regardless of improvements in station design and efficiency, “getting more people to use mass transit will take a bigger chunk out of our carbon use than anything [else] we’ve talked about.” Presentations of urban-reanimation success stories in Philadelphia, Providence, metropolitan Washington, and overseas showed how appropriate incentives for developers are producing demonstrable results in the forms of mixed-use TOD and infrastructure improvements.

Mode shifting is under way: Petra Todorovich, the director of America 2050 at the Regional Plan Association (RPA), cited Amtrak data claiming that the rail-to-air split among NY-D.C. travelers has reached the highest rail percentage to date. The rising downsides of auto dependence could signal the resurgence of passenger rail, at least between Boston and D.C. However, there’s a gap between recognizing the economic and ecological strengths of the rail-ready northeast and convincing regional and federal policy makers to strengthen and integrate America’s rail system. With a capsule history of the region’s development-transit relationship, keynote speaker Eugenie Birch, FAICP, spotlighted a few notable victories in planning and restoration despite chronic underfunding for Amtrak. (The problem persists: Sen. Tom Coburn [R-OK] is currently procedurally withholding $11 billion in Amtrak support, obstructing majorities in congress as well as rail advocate groups.)

Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi outlined various plans to build a “New Suburbia,” staving off the decline of low-density areas into “slumburbs” (as defined by Brookings Institution reporter Christopher Leinberger). Proposals include incentives for high-skill industries, arts- and entertainment-based “cool downtowns” aimed at attracting both young-adult and empty-nester populations, and strategically placed interventions such as greenways and light rails. But he also spoke starkly about the cultural factors that drove many Long Islanders there in the first place — they dislike cities and their residents. Many are untroubled by segregation and resist any development that urbanizes their space.

Recounting a conversation with NYU President John Sexton about how major cities are centered economically on particular industries, such as NYC’s massive FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate), Suozzi asserted that the economic future belongs not to FIRE but to ICE: ideas, culture, and education. Still, he takes suburbanites’ anti-urbanism as an ideological immovable object, claiming that most of his constituents would view this conference as heresy. He also condemned the subsidies that redistribute wealth toward cheap and wasteful development approaches, thus locking many regions into transport monocultures. The tax system, he noted, is biased against the very regions with the best-developed transit networks. Until the northeast can stem this sprawlward cash flow, we are effectively “subsidizing our own demise,” he contended. In response, MTA’s Ernest Tollerson was more optimistic: “This region has the intellectual capital, the financial capital, and the social capital to do it on its own.”

The revival of rail and the spread of TOD are dependent on design solutions, political will, and ingrained beliefs on all scales. Ernest Hutton, FAICP, Assoc. AIA, considering the University of Pennsylvania’s efforts to foster transit habits among employees as it expands along the Schuylkill River, emphasized that mass walking-distance preferences are a function of the quality of pedestrians’ experience, and thus of design. British planner Martin Tillman noted that standard preferences remain just 400 yards to a bus and 800 yards to a rail station, and less in harsh climates. Panelists stressed that to catch up with France, China, the U.K., and other nations, America needs to change some of its core beliefs about transportation. The U.S. needs to integrate two governing factors: funding and organizational coordination (Istanbul’s new Bosporus Straits rail tunnel, described by SOM’s Mustafa Abadan, FAIA, may allow single-seat travel from Europe to Asia before riders can take a comparable trip from Long Island to New Jersey), and grassroots assumptions about different transit modes’ purposes and implications.

History offers grounds for hope, even amid financial collapse. AIANY 2008 President Jim McCullar, FAIA, mentioned infrastructure programs of the New Deal as a precedent — perhaps underscoring Governor David Paterson’s commitment, voiced at last week’s Building Congress forum, to completing Moynihan Station. As McCullar’s reminiscence of growing up in a small rail-connected Texas town implied, Americans’ view of the future would benefit from a look back at what railroads meant in the past.

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

Event: Conflux Festival
Location: Center for Architecture and other locations in NYC, 09.11-14.08
Artists, Speakers, Performers: For a full list of participants, go to the Conflux website
Organizers: Conflux Festival; Center for Architecture
Sponsors: Conflux Festival

Christine Foerster performs “Art.hro.poda: Cognigestation” (2008).

Pippa Connolly

Recently, you may have seen people walking down the sidewalk blindfolded, spinning wildly in “foga” (freak yoga) exercises in Washington Square Park, stealthily slicing up ads in SoHo, or imitating an insect in front of the Center for Architecture. All these mysterious shenanigans can be traced to Conflux, a five-year-old art and geography festival exploring NYC inhabitants’ relationship to their urban surroundings. Headquartered at the Center this year, the festival is loosely inspired by “psychogeography,” a Situationist term for the effects of the geographical environment upon people’s emotions and behavior.

Beginning with two days of talks at the Center, Conflux then burst into the city streets where festival-goers could sample urban games, walking tours, and other activities often defying easy definition. A game geek, an affordable-housing developer, and others led a walking tour/scavenger hunt called Kicking Over the Traces (2008), aimed at uncovering the gentrifying East Village and Lower East Side’s more radical past. Participants visited places and institutions that are rich in activist and cultural history, and watched video clips on iPods that helped bring bygone days back to life. In the low-tech but also engrossing walking tour Looking for… (2008), Columbia Urban Studies graduate Steve Duncan led a group to peer down manholes and explore the city’s hidden layer of subterranean waterways such as Minetta Brook, which once ran aboveground near where the Center now sits.

Collaborative mapmaking was the mission of some projects, such as artist o.blaat’s “Broadway Dreams” (2008), an electronic map complete with digital photos and tiny video and audio clips. The Urban Disorientation Game (2007) renounced maps; instead, its teams played the game blindfolded, taking inspiration from early psychogeographers’ technique of willfully disorienting themselves by exploring one city with the map of another.

Aside from such group activities, art performances and installations provided provocations. Blending architecture, fashion, and performance art was “Art.hro.poda: Cognigestation” (2008), in which El Paso, Texas-based artist Christine Foerster shed an outer layer of clothing (called “Shell-ter-ware”) to form a tent-like nesting pod for her insect character to inhabit. In a time when climate change and homelessness are pressing social issues, the adaptability of arthropods provides ample inspiration, according to the artist. London-based art collective CutUp’s sliced and remixed ad billboards created in SoHo provided an eye-catching antidote to the area’s brand-saturated visual landscape. To see images, go to the CutUp Ad Herennium blog.

The tension between marketing and art is playing out in the fate of the festival itself: Conflux has resisted corporate sponsorship, but lack of funding makes it difficult to sustain its huge popularity and corresponding growth, said co-founder Christina Ray in an opening speech. When it began, it was a small, spontaneous street-art party among friends; this year, it drew more than 100 artists from a dozen countries. Its fate next year is uncertain — Ray revealed that she is stepping down as director. But just as our city continually evolves, here’s hoping that if Conflux fades out, other events exploring the lively intersection of geography and art will emerge to take its place.

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, The LEAF Review, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: Women in Architecture Leadership Roundtable: Women As Design Principals in Architecture Firms
Location: Bulthaup Showroom, 09.16.08
Speakers: Audrey Matlock, AIA — Principal, Audrey Matlock Architect; Yvonne Szeto, AIA, LEED AP — Partner, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Moderator: Abbey Suckle, FAIA, LEED AP — Secretary, AIANY Board of Directors
Organizers: AIANY Women In Architecture Committee

Chelsea Modern by Audrey Matlock Architect (left), and the NASCAR Hall of Fame by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (right).

Audrey Matlock Architect (left); Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (right)

As successful women in architecture, Audrey Matlock, AIA, principal of Audrey Matlock Architect, and Yvonne Szeto, AIA, the only female partner that Pei Cobb Freed & Partners has ever had, enjoy the freedom that comes with their positions. Matlock has organized her office around projects that engage her personal design principles and aesthetics. Szeto is able to explore building types and work with clients that she is unfamiliar with while balancing her responsibilities at home with her young daughter. Whatever the list of priorities (career, family, friends, etc.), being happy is most important.

Although Matlock has yet to secure business from cocktail parties (an important way to network, she believes), she thinks her well-respected reputation has led clients to seek her out instead. Matlock guarantees that each project receives individualized attention, strict adherence to program, and an emphasis on sustainability. The Chelsea Modern, for example, reflects the artsy, active neighborhood, literally, with a reflective glass façade that changes colors with shifting daylight. The offset horizontal bands have a dynamic street presence, and allow for open and flexible spaces within.

Szeto has designed many of Pei Cobb Freed’s most prominent corporate structures. Being a “newbie” to the sport of racecar driving and museum design, as design partner of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, NC, she was given an opportunity to focus on a new building type. The end result is a design based on literal interpretations of the raceway.

The discussion centered on giving professional women advice on “climbing the ladder” and making important work/life balance choices. Szeto presented the statistical realities of being a woman in the field, and how the disparity not only exists in the profession, despite the equal number of men and women studying architecture, it grows in proportion to experience (the greatest gap exists with principals of firms). Although women are still very obviously a minority in the field, Matlock and Szeto are helping lay the groundwork for women to have a meaningful and prosperous career as architects.

Lori Adrienne Apfel, Assoc. AIA, is a member of the AIANY Women In Architecture committee and is coordinating their 2nd Annual Speed Mentoring event. She is an Associate at Brian O’Keefe Architect.

Events: Buckminster Fuller Symposium: On Architecture, Design and Science; On Influence and Contemporary Art
Location: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 09.13.08
Speakers: On Architecture, Design and Science: Peter Galison — Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, Harvard University; Chuck Hoberman — Founder & President, Hoberman Associates; Felicity Scott — Assistant Professor of Architecture, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Anthony Vidler — Dean & Professor, The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union; On Influence and Contemporary Art: Carol Bove — Artist; Elizabeth A. T. Smith — James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Victoria Vesna — Artist; Pedro Reyes — Artist
Moderators: On Architecture, Design and Science: K. Michael Hays — Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University Graduate School of Design & Adjunct Curator of Architecture, Whitney Museum of American Art; Margie Weinstein — Senior Coordinator of Public Programs and Academic Initiatives, Whitney Museum of American Art (introduction); On Influence and Contemporary Art: Dana Miller — Associate Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art; Margie Weinstein — Senior Coordinator of Public Programs and Academic Initiatives, Whitney Museum of American Art (introduction)
Organizer: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

Hoberman Associates’ hexagonal shading system at the Foster + Partners-designed Audiencia Provincial channels Buckminster Fuller.

Foster + Partners

A quarter century after his death, Buckminster Fuller’s theories and inventions are still sending ripples of influence through the work of contemporary designers, architects, and artists. Therefore, a recent symposium aimed not only to historicize Fuller, but to explore his work’s ongoing relevance.

Chuck Hoberman of Hoberman Associates, an artist, inventor, engineer, and designer who often collaborates with architects, has been profoundly influenced by Fuller. Like Fuller, he shares a love of highly geometric and eco-friendly designs, as evidenced in his “transformable design” — structures and objects that can change in size, shape, form, and surface. In an era of global warming, devices such as Hoberman’s sun-responsive shades represent a form of adaptation, he said, offering a quote from structural designer Peter Rice: “When we get into trouble, we invent our way out of it.” For Madrid’s planned Audiencia Provincial (Appeals Court) by Foster + Partners, Hoberman designed such a system made from hexagonal shading cells that sense light levels and close as needed, creating leaf-like, dappled shadows inside the atria that minimize unwanted solar gain while maximizing natural light.

Aside from Hoberman’s discussion of his architectural collaborations, there wasn’t much talk about Fuller’s influence on architecture in the session titled “On Architecture, Design and Science.” Anthony Vidler made a case for the value of Fuller’s architectural work, despite Fuller’s autodidact status, but the bulk of his talk was on Fuller’s relationship with artist-writer John McHale.

One session was entirely devoted to Fuller’s influence in the realm of contemporary art. Artist Pedro Reyes presented his “Velotaxi” (2007), a human-powered vehicle reflecting a concern with aesthetics coupled with sustainability, along with several mathematically based sculptures recalling the familiar Fuller domes. Reyes also once took inspiration from Fuller’s geographical projects such as the World Game and the Dymaxion Map; his “Ideas for Iraq” (2008) is a table whose surface displays a digital map of Iraq and neighboring countries to help viewers visualize a war happening far away.

New-media artist Victoria Vesna discussed Fuller’s belief that art and science are closely aligned — the more advanced science gets, the closer it is to art, and vice versa. Both she and Carol Bove discussed some of their own artworks that use “tensegrity” structures, whether virtual or material. (The Fuller-coined term “tensegrity” refers to structures with a synergy between tension and compression components.) Elizabeth A.T. Smith of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, traced Fuller’s legacy in the work of several other artists, including Josiah McElheny, Andrea Zittel, and Olafur Eliasson.

While talks on Fuller at the Center for Architecture in June centered on personal anecdotes about him, featuring many of Fuller’s former associates (See “Bucky: Longtime Hero to a Few, at Last Comes into his Own,” by Lisa Delgado, 07.08.08), these talks complemented that earlier event, bringing an examination of Fuller’s work up to date.

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, The LEAF Review, and Wired, among other publications.