In this issue:
· AIANY Design Awards Jury Announces 2010 Winners
· Constructing New Work Roles for High-tech Times
· NYS’s Strict Corporate Entity Rules May Loosen
· What Is a Business Plan and Why do We Need One?
· Lessons Learned from the NYC Street Design Manual
· Films Tell Tales of Mallrats and a Modernist
· Puerto Rican Architects Spice Up NYC
· Lofty Designs for Strange Weather

Event: Design Awards Winners Announcement and Jury Symposium
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.01.10
Speakers: Design Awards Jurors: Architecture: Stanley Saitowitz; Gilles Saucier; Julie Snow, FAIA; Interiors: Brian MacKay Lyons, Hon. FAIA; Glenn Pushelberg; Brigitte Shim, Hon. FAIA; Unbuilt Work: Craig Hodgetts, FAIA; Quinyun Ma; Karen Van Lengen, FAIA; Urban Design: Maurice Cox; Teddy Cruz; Julie Eizenberg, AIA
Moderator: William Menking — Editor-in-Chief, The Architect’s Newspaper
Organizer: AIANY
Sponsors: Chair’s Circle: F+P Architects New York; Patrons: Mancini Duffy; Studio Daniel Libeskind; Trespa; Lead Sponsors: A.E. Greyson + Company; Dagher Engineering; FXFOWLE Architects; Gensler; Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti; JFK&M Consulting Group; Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates; MechoShade Systems, Inc.; New York University; Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; Syska Hennessy Group; Toshiko Mori Architect PLLC; VJ Associates

Courtesy AIANY

“We want the world to appreciate New York architecture and New York architects,” said 2010 AIANY President Anthony Schirripa, FAIA, IIDA, as he introduced the Design Awards Symposium. “The design that comes out of New York is important, and the Design Awards celebrate the great work of architects, planners, clients, and consultants who are inspired by and constantly inspiring our great city.”

As in previous years, the Design Awards received well over 400 entries in four categories — Architecture, Interiors, Urban Design, and Unbuilt Work, with Architecture receiving the lion’s share with close to 200 submissions.

There were two “firsts” in this year’s Design Awards Competition. For the first time submissions were filed online saving the jurors from sifting through boxes of paperwork. And, there were separate categories for Urban Design and Unbuilt Work, which in the past had been grouped together under the ubiquitous Projects category.

Despite the efficiency of working online, the jury for Unbuilt projects was the last to finish deliberations. Eleven projects won Merit Awards. Why the difficulty? The jurors explained that it is difficult to compare the projects because of the diversity of typologies and scale. Each winner received an award based on its own merits. According to Karen Van Lengen, FAIA, “what we’re looking for are projects that could influence the communities they’re in.”

After a full day of deliberations, the jurors’ symposium revealed some of the drama behind the decisions. What began as a discussion of various projects, turned into a more heated debate about the role of architects, particularly as they interact with community groups. Case in point: the High Line, which was the only project to garner an Honor Award in the Urban Design category. The project was called a “perfect storm of clients, architects, and politicians” by urban planner Maurice Cox, noting that the design itself was award-winning, but the story of community involvement in its creation heightened its success to the level of an Honor Award. Julie Eizenberg, AIA, countered that perhaps community activism “is a different award.”

More opportunities to learn about this year’s winners are on the calendar including: the Design Awards Luncheon on 04.14.10; the Design Awards Exhibition, which opens on 04.15.10; the Winners’ Symposia, scheduled for 04.27.10 and 06.17.10; and the Summer/Design Awards Issue of OCULUS.

For the full list of winners and projects, see Names in the News…

Linda G. Miller is a NYC-based freelance writer and publicist, and a contributing editor to e- Oculus and OCULUS.

Event: Building in the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture
Location: Center for Architecture, 02.24.10
Speakers: Peggy Deamer — Principal, Deamer Studio & Professor, Yale School of Architecture; Phillip G. Bernstein, FAIA — Vice President, Autodesk & Lecturer in Professional Practice, Yale School of Architecture; Scott Marble, AIA — Founding Partner, Marble Fairbanks Architects & Faculty, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Chris Noble — Partner, Noble and Wickersham
Organizers: Yale School of Architecture

Toni Stabile Student Center, designed by Marble Fairbanks Architects.

Jongseo Kim

There are books aplenty about how digital design is spurring formal innovations in architecture, but one new book, Building (in) the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), focuses on a different, equally important topic: the seismic shifts in labor roles that have accompanied technological advances. At a recent book launch event, some of the book’s editors and authors discussed the ways in which the work — and the self-image — of architects is transforming.

The book grew out of interviews and conversations at a Yale symposium in 2006, and the essential issues remain the same today, said Peggy Deamer, who co-edited the book with Phil Bernstein, FAIA. Advances in technology are accompanying a shift away from the ideal of the architect as a highly individualistic “Howard Roarkian figure.” Instead of striving to be a “master architect,” architects now gravitate more toward the role of “master builder:” someone who organizes and depends on the expertise of contractors, fabricators, etc., to create a project in tight collaboration. “The fabricator or sub, who used to be an anonymous character at the end of the food chain, offers essential input into the possible parameters of the design solution, thereby claiming authorship rights,” she said.

This shift in the division of labor is ill understood, and for the architect, it is rife with issues of risk vs. control. “The authors want to have us make sure that risk — as the essential ingredient to innovation — still has a place,” Deamer remarked.

For tech-savvy firm Marble Fairbanks, embracing risk is essential to what they do. The firm’s forte is “pushing these technologies and these new working protocols in the interest of design and innovation,” Scott Marble, AIA, said. For the Toni Stabile Student Center for Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, the firm experimented with breaking down the usual hierarchy between architects and consultants. Marble Fairbanks collaborated with a range of other design and technology entities, which they treated as equals in the design process. The unconventional approach allowed the small firm to greatly expand its capabilities.

To design a cloudlike pattern of perforations in steel ceiling panels in a social hub, Marble Fairbanks enlisted the help of design firm Proxy, which provided a script to create a pattern that would meet the necessary acoustic requirements. Stevens Institute of Technology’s Product-Architecture Lab was recruited to help develop a sunshade system for a glass-enclosed café. The collaborators used a series of computer scripts to develop the design of steel panels whose patterns of perforations and corrugations reduced the heat gain by 80%.

The project highlights the importance of “designing design,” as Marble called it. With these new technologies, “design processes themselves need to be foregrounded as an issue to take on,” he said. “Same with fabrication. With direct file fabrication technologies, the potentials of material — the potentials of craft, even — begin to be reformulated.”

Bernstein remarked that in three-and-a-half years “there has been a tremendous acceleration in the kinds of technologies that are available to the building industry.” The adoption of building information modeling (BIM) has increased dramatically, and other technologies may herald new shifts in the work of architects, in which the design process and field implementation become linked even tighter. With the book, he hopes “to create a theoretical frame in which we can begin to explore these options, because the technology is moving even much, much more quickly than we could possibly have known,” he said.

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

Event: Permissible Corporate Entities & Practice Guidelines for Architects & Landscape Architects
Location: Center for Architecture, 02.23.10
Speaker: Robert Lopez, RA — Executive Secretary, New York State Boards for Architecture and Landscape Architecture; Douglas Lentivech, Esq. — Assistant Counsel, Office of the Professions, NYS Education Department
Organizers: AIANY Professional Practice Committee; AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee; NY Chapter of the ASLA

The regulations for establishing corporate entities in New York State are the strictest in the U.S., stated Robert Lopez, RA, executive secretary of the NYS Boards for Architecture and Landscape Architecture. According to Article 147 for architecture and Article 148 for landscape architecture, the only individuals who can own professional design services firms are those licensed in the state as architects or landscape architects.

Part of the reason that the regulations are so strict in New York is because the written rules are very general. “The Articles are more like a constitution, rather than a statute,” said Douglas Lentivech, Esq., assistant counsel to the Office of the Professions, NYS Education Department. At the core, the most important principle is that “professional services” must run directly from a professional to a client without interference from a third party. This ensures that a licensed individual is delivering the business qualified by his or her title (i.e., R.A. or R.L.A.), and also indicated in the firm name (i.e., Architecture or Landscape Architecture). In other words, if an individual is a registered architect, he or she may establish a business that provides architectural services and he or she may call the firm an architecture firm. On the other hand, if an individual is not licensed, he or she cannot provide architectural services, nor can he or she own an architecture firm.

One of the pitfalls of the regulations is that all of the shareholders of a firm must be licensed. Employees in charge of business development or marketing, for example, cannot own any part of architecture or landscape architecture firms in New York. This may change in the near future, however. While firms currently fall under categories ranging from sole proprietorships, to professional service corporations (PCs), to limited liability partnerships (LLPs) — all of which require licensed shareholders — there is a bill under review to create a “design professional service corporation (DPC).” This category would require that the president or CEO of a firm be a licensed professional and the single largest shareholder, but up to 25% of the shareholders may be non-licensed. The bill would also allow employee stock ownership plans, currently not permitted.

To learn more about practice and corporate entity regulations, visit the New York State Office of the Professions. There you will find the NYS Education Law; commissioner’s regulations; regent rules; and practice guidelines.

Event: NBAU: Not Business Planning As Usual
Location: Center for Architecture, 02.24.10
Speakers: Magnus Magnusson, AIA — Principal, Magnusson Architecture and Planning; Stephen Yablon, AIA — Principal, Stephen Yablon Architect; Richard McElhiney, AIA — Principal, Richard McElhiney Architect
Moderator: Ralph Steinglass, FAIA — Principal Consultant, Teambuilders, Inc.
Organizer: Center for Architecture
Sponsors: AMX; Chief Manufacturing; Lutron Electronics; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Sixty architects, many of whom are either practicing independently in their own small firms, or are hoping to do so soon, met to learn the basics of business planning. After an introductory panel discussion, attendees participated in breakout groups and presented preliminary business plans for three start-ups and one small firm.

For the panel, Magnus Magnusson, AIA, Stephen Yablon, AIA, and Richard McElhiney, AIA, each a founding principal of his own firm, were joined by Ralph Steinglass, FAIA, of Teambuilders, Inc., a management consultant for architects, to provide personal insights into how their firms got started, what they had to do to become viable and grow, and what strategies they developed to survive recessions.

Key questions and answers that were posed by attendees included:

· How do you finance a “start-up” without projects in hand? You must be prepared to survive for at least six months without generating much or any income, relying on personal savings and/or loans.

· How much time should I be spending on marketing versus working on projects? After you’ve gotten your first major job, you must continue to spend at least 50% of your time marketing, or you may not have any work when the job is completed.

· How can I break into new markets, and how important is market research? Form relationships or strategic alliances with firms that have developed specialized expertise in the new building type or with a firm that has a local presence in a new geographic region. But before deciding on pursuing a new market, do the research. Is there enough projected work in this market; what is the competition; and will the work be profitable?

During the breakout session, attendees were given six questions to answer when developing their respective business plans: What business are we in? What new markets will need to be developed? Where will that work come from? What will the cost of doing business be? How much revenue is needed? What’s your action plan? With the panelists acting as moderators, at the end of the day, the groups agreed that by working together they had learned about the process that has proven daunting for many firms — but is vital for survival.

Ralph Steinglass, FAIA, is the principal consultant of Teambuilders, Inc.

Event: Conversations on the NYC Street Design Manual
Location: Center for Architecture, 02.22.10
Speakers: Wendy Feuer — Assistant Commissioner for Urban Design & Art, NYC Department of Transportation (DOT); Edward Janoff — Senior Project Manager for Streetscapes and Public Spaces, NYC DOT
Organizer: AIANY Public Architecture Committee

Courtesy NYC DOT

Published in May 2009, the NYC Street Design Manual outlines what NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan calls “world class streets.” Co-authors Wendy Feuer, assistant commissioner for urban design and art at DOT, and Edward Janoff, DOT senior project manager for streetscapes and public spaces, assessed the guide’s initial impact on shaping our streets, lessons learned, and future updates.

Some of the successes attributed to the guidelines can be seen in several of Sadik-Khan’s pilot programs, which she established because she didn’t want to wait five to seven years (the typical amount of time required to implement capital projects) to see her visions come to fruition. Green Light for Midtown, which established pedestrian streets at Times and Herald Squares, recently became permanent due to its success in reducing traffic and accidents in the areas. The Ninth Avenue bike lane has also reduced accidents by 50% for pedestrians, bikers, and motorists alike, according to DOT studies.

Other pilot projects have disappointed, but have provided learning experiences for the DOT. For example, the public plaza at Gansevoort Street and Ninth Avenue is being redesigned with a new and more permanent design that follows the Street Design Manual’s recommendations. “As streets are transformed, you’re transforming the form of a city,” Feuer stated.

Periodic updates to the manual, such as the recent recommendation that sidewalks are poured with 3% tinted concrete for consistency, are posted on the website or are available through e-mail subscriptions. The next version of the manual will include a more thorough explanation of the DOT review process, hyperlinks to specifications in the .pdf version, expanded furniture and lighting chapters, and new chapters on wayfinding and signage.

Murrye Bernard is a freelance architectural writer and a contributing editor to e- Oculus.

Event: Art on Screen: Selections from Montreal International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA)
Location: Center for Architecture, 02.27.10
Speakers: Helene Klodawsky — Filmmaker; Murray Grigor — Filmmaker
Organizers: MUSE Film and Television; Center for Architecture

West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (left); Mamba Parks, Osaka, Japan (Jerde Partnership).

Courtesy Instinct Films

Two documentaries shown back-to-back one afternoon at the Center, Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner and Malls R Us, complemented each other, exploring the power of architecture to shape people’s lives and their relationship to the environment, for good or ill. The event was part of the annual NYC film festival Art on Screen, which presents a selection of films from the Montreal International Festival of Films on Art each February.

Featuring footage of major malls around the world, Malls R Us makes the point that malls these days are replacing town centers and places of worship. As theologian and social critic Jon Pahl explains, mall design emulates that of churches, with soaring ceilings, skylights yielding intense light, and water features that symbolize purity and life. With many malls offering attractions beyond pure retail (the 119-acre West Edmonton Mall in Canada features a roller coaster, sea lion show, and swimming pool), shopping malls, for better or for worse, are replacing downtown streets as places people go to find a sense of community.

In one interview, prominent mall architect Jon Jerde, FAIA, confesses that he was drawn to designing malls because, after growing up as a lonely child, he wanted to create social spaces. “America, strangely, is a very lonely place,” he explains in the film. Football and shopping malls seemed like the main expressions of togetherness.

Malls may be a communal environment, but they only provide the illusion of being public spaces. Footage of security staff in Paris’s Forum des Halles drives home the point that while malls might seem welcoming, in fact, they are tightly controlled, and anyone whose goal isn’t to spend money runs the risk of being tossed out. Malls R Us also highlights the inherent problems of overzealous, ill-thought-out mall development, such an environmentally insensitive construction and disruption to older traditions and economies, as in India, where malls are driving out local shopkeepers in markets.

Continues…

Event: The Making of Modern New York: Puerto Rican Architects and Their Contributions to New York
Location: Hunter College, 02.25.10
Speakers: Ruperto Arvelo, AIA — Owner, ARVELO Architecture + Design; Frank X. Moya, LEED AP — Principal, Matthews Moya Architects; Agustin Ayuso, LEED AP — Founder, Ayuso Architecture
Moderator: Warren James — Principal, Warren A. James Architects + Planners
Organizers: Center for Puerto Rican Studies/Hunter

38 Wilson Avenue Condominium, Brooklyn, NY.

Scott Larsen, courtesy Ayuso Architecture

New York City is home to the largest Puerto Rican population outside of Puerto Rico itself. Currently, there are more than 15 Puerto Rican-led firms based in NYC. For the fourth in a series of presentations by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, three Puerto Rican architects discussed their practices and projects, and what defines Puerto Rican architectural style.

Born in NJ, Ruperto Arvelo, AIA, principal of Arvelo Architecture + Design, moved with his parents to their native Puerto Rico at the age of 10. He returned to the U.S. to pursue his MArch from Syracuse University and later moved to NYC to work for a variety of firms before starting his own practice. Arvelo’s design aesthetic reflects both cultures, combining colors and textures from P.R. with his U.S.-learned work process. Completed projects include Morgan Stanley offices in NJ, Deutsche Bank Max Blue lobbies in both NYC and São Paulo, Brazil, and an apartment complex in Puerto Rico.

Like Arvelo, Agustin Ayuso, LEED AP, was born in the U.S. but raised in P.R. He chose to practice in the U.S. in part because he was frustrated with the limited material palette on the island. His firm has completed a variety of residential designs in NYC, from affordable housing to high-end residential projects. Condos at 38 Wilson in Bushwick, Brooklyn, feature an exterior clad in context-inspired corrugated aluminum. 44 Berry Street in Wiliamsburg involves the conversion of a historic seltzer factory to modern apartments.

Frank Moya, LEED AP, a painter, designer, and urban planner from San Juan, started his own practice in Trenton after attending Princeton University. The local Puerto Rican community was extremely supportive of his practice. Now in NYC, Matthews Moya Architects specializes in designs for the arts and education, and has completed a master plan for the Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart in NJ. Moya discussed his firm’s renovations for the Dalton School, a tight, urban building in Manhattan, including a common space with a freeform, wavy ceiling and a performing arts area located in the basement. A design for the Affirmation Arts foundations explores the contradiction between nature and technology: English ivy grows over a gridded structure reminiscent of the street grid.

While the speakers’ practices are thriving, moderator Warren James, founder of Warren A. James Architects + Planners, noted that P.R. architects typically work in the private sector but attain less public work. In fact, no Puerto Rican architects were among the finalists chosen for the design of a new FBI building in San Juan. However, James believes that young Puerto Rican firms can shape NYC by retrofitting existing buildings before graduating to new building designs and urban planning projects.

Murrye Bernard is a freelance architectural writer and a contributing editor to e- Oculus.

Event: State of Global Architecture
Location: Relative Space Concept Showroom, 02.19.10
Speakers: Jürgen Mayer H. — Principal, J. Mayer H. Architects (Berlin); Andres Lepik — Curator of Contemporary Architecture, Museum of Modern Art; Matthias Hollwich & Marc Kushner, AIA — Principals, HWKN, & Co-founders, Architizer
Organizers: Architizer; The Society; Azure magazine, Toronto

Jürgen Mayer H. and Neeraj Bhatia

Though the official title suggested a discussion of unrealistic breadth and forbidding gravity, this event in the “Azure Talks” series combined a preview of a forthcoming book, several of Jürgen Mayer’s recent projects, and an announcement of a competition winner by the latest social media website, Architizer. The talents behind this gathering imbued its diverse purposes with energy.

In the U.S., Mayer’s academic presence is larger than his built body of work, but this may change before long. His biomorphic-modernist designs have brought success early in his career; his buildings now appear throughout Europe, serving a wide range of programs and extending digitally generated geometries “beyond the blob,” in his description, into a kind of structurally plausible surrealism. The Metropol Parasol in Seville, Spain, built of Kerto laminated veneer lumber and resembling a half-dozen conjoined mushrooms sheltering a public plaza, market, and archaeological museum above recently discovered Roman ruins, is scheduled to open by the end of this year. Mayer expressed delight at its realization in Seville’s medieval town center, observing that “we have to celebrate Spanish culture to be brave enough to do something like this… I don’t think it would be possible to do something like this in Germany.” However, he also noted that a simpatico client would be more important than any particular project typology. Perhaps a local developer will be up to the challenge in the U.S.

Mayer also previewed and autographed his new book -arium (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010; co-edited with University of Toronto urban design professor Neeraj Bhatia), recently published in Germany and scheduled to appear here later this spring. The book uses weather, the fundamental antagonist of any form of shelter, as the central organizing principle for its theoretical and practical investigations (”weather and media,” “weather and war,” “weather and infrastructure,” etc.). In an era when architecture, economics, and culture are all searching for ways to adapt to climate change, Mayer’s fascination with the relations of order and disorder in both natural and built spaces promises a fresh set of provocations.

Launched last fall, Architizer occupies a digital niche complementary to established portals, databases, and resources and various publication sites for architects and designers.

The Architizer team of Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner, AIA, also announced the winner of their “Competition Competition 2010,” which invited entrants to submit unrewarded entries from any 2009 competition — a common- sensical way to recycle some of the ideas that architects prolifically generate, often with only the slimmest hope for recognition. A jury headed by Mayer and including MoMA’s Andres Lepik, Ada Tolla of LOT-EK, and Jared Della Valle, AIA, of Della Valle Bernheimer “judged [the 643 entries] on general architectural merit, not on the criteria of the original competition,” and selected “Dubaiing” by the Parisian team of Mickael Papin, David Neil, Pierre Silande, Nicolas Lombardi, and Magali Lamoureux, a zeppelin-like structure drifting freely above its host city, held aloft by helium and ballasted by a set of inverted building volumes. With Dubai itself behaving like a bit of a bubble, comparisons to the Floating Island of Laputa in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels may be inevitable, but in such a recession- dulled climate, flights of imagination this free have grown rare; considering Architizer’s efforts to encourage them, it would seem churlish for questions of practicality to shoot them down.

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

(Continued from above)

Despite its critical take, Malls R Us steers away from didacticism by acknowledging the positive aspects of the building type. Victor Gruen, the architect who invented the enclosed mall, saw malls as a way to simulate Europe’s cafés and street life, in America. Many mall-goers develop an attachment to malls as a center for activities and memories. However, they tend to have a short lifespan of three to five years; when they start to become dated and profits fall, they’re abandoned or replaced. (The site deadmalls.com is a testament to that.) If malls are to truly work as a substitute for town centers, they need to be rethought. “As soon as the commercial end doesn’t work anymore, the communal spaces are gone,” filmmaker Klodawsky said in a Q&A after the film.

Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner ended the afternoon on a more uplifting note, with its portrayal of a Modernist visionary who used his talent for residential design to enhance his clients’ quality of life and create a keen sense of harmony with nature. Featuring interviews with family members, clients, architects, and others, the documentary traces the story of the late architect’s life, from his childhood in Michigan, to his Taliesin apprenticeship, to his growth to establish his own design identity, marked by a futurism combined with a flair for creating synergies with a site’s natural beauty. “I think Lautner’s the missing link between people like Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and… humanist modernism like Frank Lloyd Wright did,” director Murray Grigor remarked in a Q&A. “Frank Lloyd Wright always said that Lautner was the second best-architect in the world,” he added.

Infinite Space offers insights into Lautner’s working process, such as his long, intense study of a site’s natural features before coming up with a design. Judith Lautner, his daughter who worked in his office, recounts, “When my father would get a new client, he would get a topo of the property, of the contours, and go off to the site with it. He’d take a soft pencil with him and mark all of the aspects of the property that he could perceive while he was on the site… Then he would come back to his office, and he could sit in his chair staring at that thing… He could sit for days, actually… And then one day, he would suddenly have the idea.”

While Lautner became famous for his hillside residences such as the Chemosphere in Los Angeles and the Mar Brisas House in Acapulco, as well as his “Googie” restaurant designs, he was frustrated by the fact that his larger commissions remained un-built, a problem he blamed on politics. One of his few public buildings was the Midtown School in Los Angeles, which featured radiant heat, natural ventilation, and all natural light, revealing a sensibility attuned to nature in ways that go beyond aesthetics.

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