The Arthur M. Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture on Museum Design is a signature event organized each year by the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee. This year, the committee is honored to host Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos on October 6, 2022, at 6pm at the Center for Architecture to present their work.

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos was founded in 1985 by Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano and has offices in Madrid and Berlin. The internationally recognized, award-winning firm was recently awarded first prize in the competition for the design of the Museum of Fine Arts in Vannes, France. Among their notable works are the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia, the Madinat al-Zahra Museum in Cordoba, the Moritzburg Museum in Halle, the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián, the Zaragoza Congress Centre, the Martin Chirino Foundation in Las Palmas, the Joanneum Museum extension in Graz, and the Contemporary Art Centre in Cordoba. Current projects include the extension of the Archaeologische Staatssammlung in Munich, the extension of the Museo Sorolla in Madrid, the Montblanc Haus in Hamburg, the Archive of the Avant-Garde in Dresden, and the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Girona. Along with being widely published, including four monographs of their work, the work of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos has been exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunsthaus in Graz, and at the MAST Foundation in Bologna. They are the recipients of the 2007 National Prize for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage and the 2010 Nike Prize issued by the Bund Deutscher Architekten, as well as the 2010 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the 2011 Piranesi Prix de Rome, the 2012 European Museum of the Year Award, the 2012 Hannes Meyer Prize, 2015 AIA Honorary Fellowship, the 2015 Alvar Aalto Medal, and the 2017 Spanish Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts.

Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano are graduates of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University in New York City. Enrique Sobejano is a design professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin and Fuensanta Nieto Fuensanta is an associate design professor in the School of Architecture at the Universidad Europea de Madrid. Both have taught and lectured internationally, and from 1986 to 1991 were Directors of Arquitectura, the magazine of the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid.

Read more about the speakers and register here.

As the world rapidly changes around us, old frameworks for the development of cultural centers look less and less relevant. Continuing the success of the 2020 “Future of Cultural Centers” dialogue series, this year AIA New York will look at cultural institutions that take a mixed-use approach to programming and space and a more holistic view at the human experience. We will touch on opportunities and challenges around these hybrid organizations, questioning what would happen if we were to take this unprecedented time to explore new missions, visions, and models to help address existing institutional deficits. What will 21st-century arts and community spaces be like? Join us for this Spring line-up of conversations as cultural forecaster and museum expert David van der Leer, Principal of DVDL, speaks with professionals from around the US and beyond.

Organized by the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee and DVDL, and sponsored by Microsol Resources. Intro video by DVDL.

Alex Sarian, Arts Commons

Tuesday, 4/6, 6-7pm

Arts Commons is a multi-venue arts center in downtown Calgary, Canada, located in the Olympic Plaza Cultural District.

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Melanie Keen, Wellcome Collection

Tuesday, 4/20, 12-1pm

The Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library based in London, UK, that aims to challenge how we all think and feel about health.

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Gabriel Kogan on SESC Pompéia

Tuesday, 4/27, 6-7pm

Architect, critic, and professor Gabriel Kogan will discuss São Paulo’s SESC Pompéia, a remarkable adaptive reuse project by one of Modernism’s best-known female architects, Lina Bo Bardi.

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Pieternel Thijssen, LocHal Library

Tuesday, 5/11, 12-1pm

LocHal is a world-class urban living room designed by Amsterdam-based studio Civic Architects.

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Kristina Newman-Scott, BRIC

Tuesday, 5/18, 12-1pm

BRIC is a leading arts and media institution based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work spans contemporary visual and performing arts, media, and civic action.

See event details >

Previous Series Videos

Watch, or re-watch, dialogues from previous installments of the series

Fall 2020

Courtney J. Martin, Yale Center for British Art

Miranda Massie, The Climate Museum

Uzodinma Iweala, The Africa Center

NextGen Reflections

Danny Vargas, Museum of the American Latino

Summer 2020

Nico Wheadon, NXTHVN

Alexandra Munroe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Margriet Schavemaker, Amsterdam Museum

Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Cooper Hewitt

Scott Cooper, Academy of Natural Sciences

Damion L. Thomas, National Museum of African American History and Culture

On February 23 at 6:00 PM EST, Juan Herreros, founder of Madrid-based estudioHerreros, will present an in-depth look at the process behind the design and construction of the new Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. The commission for this ground breaking building was won through an international design competition in 2009 whose twenty invited participants represented a who’s who of world architects. Since being awarded the project, estudioHerreros has negotiated a complex environment of agendas from various political, social, media, and technological interests that ultimately informed the project’s progress and design. The design process also coincided with growing debates on the role of art institutions as urban infrastructures, the importance of the visitor experience beyond the prototypical model of building as archive, and emerging paradigms about sustainability and a building’s responsibility to minimize its carbon foot print. The Munch Museum is opening in 2021.

Speakers:

Juan Herreros, PhD, Founder, estudioHerreros; Chair Professor of Architectural Design, Madrid School of Architecture; Full Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Karla Rothstein, Founder and Director, Columbia University GSAPP DeathLAB; Design Director, LATENT Productions and Greylock WORKS; Associate Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Register here for the February 23 event

To date, the first round of post-Covid-19 Pandemic reopening guidelines for cultural and performing arts facilities have focused on process. Most of the attention has been directed to public safety and audience comfort levels. For many, these buildings are a place of employment as well as a place of enjoyment. What can we, as planners and designers, do to enhance safety beyond that of the attendees in response to the current pandemic—and can we better prepare these buildings for the future?

Moderator:
Alexa Antopol, Chief Intelligence Officer, Fisher Dachs Associates 

Speakers:
Steven A. Adelman, V.P., Event Safety Alliance; Founder, Adelman Law Group
Heather McAvoy, ASTC, Principal, Schuler Shook
Delia Nevola, AIA, LEED AP, Principal, Steinberg Hart
Steven A. Wolff, CMC, Founding Principal, AMS Planning & Research Corp

Register for the June 19 event here!

Join the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee for a day trip to Art Omi, an arts center with a sculpture and architecture park and gallery in Ghent, NY. Within the 200-acre campus of Art Omi the unique Architecture Fields consist of 60 acres dedicated to curated installations and pavilions designed by contemporary architects. On the tour a total of 18 works, including 4 new ones to be previewed, will be visited. (Register here.)

In addition to the Architecture Fields, the Art Omi: Architecture program includes a new residency for architects, curated architecture exhibitions on the galleries on campus, and an annual specially-designed event in NYC.

Program
Lunch 12:30pm-1:30pm
Meet at Cafe, Benenson Center
Boxed lunch reserved in advance. Specify: regular or vegetarian.
Beverages/Coffee/Tea available separately from Cafe.

Tour 1:30-3:00pm
Starts at Newmark Gallery, Benenson Center
Tour of Katherine Bernhardt exhibition: GOLD, remarks by Nicole Hayes, art curator and architecture project manager, Art Omi.
Tour of the Architecture Fields with architect Warren James, Director of Architecture, Art Omi.

Getting There

Participants are expected to make their own travel arrangements.  Many will take the train and may wish to organize a hired car service together.

By Car: Approximately 2.25 hours North of Manhattan, via the scenic Taconic Parkway.
By Amtrak: Penn Station to Hudson approximately 2 hours. From Hudson train station to Art Omi campus by private taxi, add 15 mins. Calling local taxi companies ahead is recommended.

Footwear:
Suitable for walking in open fields and woods.

Organized by:
AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee
Art Omi: Architecture

Register here >

A performing arts center is one of the most challenging and rewarding buildings an architect can design. It is a landmark building, celebrating its community’s commitment to the arts and culture, and requires an architectural expression that is memorable and unique.  At the same time, it is a highly technical building, weaving together the functional requirements of multiple theaters, front and back of house areas, rehearsal spaces, classrooms, lobbies, dining spaces, loading docks, and parking facilities. It demands the highest level of leadership from a design team, which must balance expression and function. It is a collaboration with a large group of stakeholders:  artists, directors, institutions, and donors, all dedicated to the success of the project, but often with different visions of how best to achieve it.  When the curtain rises on opening night and the crowd cheers, there are few moments in an architect’s career that are as rewarding.

These buildings must perform. They house performances and performers. They are high-performance machines, tuned to resonate with a range of different performers, from solo artists to the massive orchestra and chorus required for an opera or symphony. They must also perform for their users—the audiences and production companies—allowing them to arrive, stay and depart with ease and efficiency. All of this is achieved, in part, through the spaces and volumes of the architecture.

Please join us for a panel presentation and discussion that focuses on these issues, followed by a book signing for Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects’ newly published Perform: Designing for the Performing Arts.

On October 18, 2018, the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee presents its annual lecture on excellence in museum design, the 12th Annual Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture: Odile Decq. (Register here.)

Odile Decq, is a French architect and urban planner. International renown came in 1990 with her first major commission: La Banque Populaire de l’Ouest in Rennes, France. Since then, she has been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research. Being awarded The Golden Lion of Architecture during the Venice Biennale in 1996 acknowledged her early and unusual career. Other than just a style, an attitude or a process, Odile Decq’s work materializes a complete universe that embraces urban planning, architecture, design and art. Her multidisciplinary approach was recently recognized with the Jane Drew Prize in 2016, and she was honored with Architizer’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 for her pioneering work, but also her engagement and contribution to the debate on architecture.

Odile Decq has been teaching architecture for the past 25 years. She has been invited to be a guest professor in prestigious universities such as the Bartlett (London), the Kunstakademie (Vienna & Düsseldorf), SCI-Arc (Los Angeles, CA), Columbia University (New York, NY), and more recently at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (Cambridge, MA). In France, she was Head of l’École Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA) in Paris from 2007 to 2012. Following this experience, she created her own school in Lyon in 2014: the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, recently accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2018, she received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, in recognition of her outstanding contributions in building science, design and education.

In 2018, Odile Decq has opened a new exhibition about the Studio’s work (“Horizons”) at the House of Art in Ostrava (Czech Republic) and has been invited to create two installations (“Phantom’s Phantom”, “Diagonal 0”) during the 16th annual Biennale of Architecture in Venice). Amongst other projects, she is currently working on a residential tower in Barcelona (“Diagonal 0”); an office building in Paris (“Twist”); and an experimental house in China (“Flying Horse House”). Her most recent completed projects include Study Hall (Lyon, France, 2017); Le Cargo (Paris, France, 2016); La Résidence Saint-Ange (Seyssins, France, 2015); Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark Museum (Nanjing, China, 2015); GL Events Headquarters (Lyon, France, 2014); FRAC Bretagne (Rennes, France, 2012); Phantom: Opéra Garnier Restaurant (Paris, France, 2011) and the MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome, Italy, 2010).

Speaker: Odile Decq, Studio Odile Decq, Paris

Moderator: Cathleen McGuigan, Editor-in-Chief,  Architectural Record

On July 25, the Cultural Facilities Committee will present a lecture and discussion reflecting on how designers create memorials in the wake of the 9/11 Memorial competition. The last fifteen years have been marked by numerous tragic events (mass violence, terrorism, hate crimes, etc.) and the discussion of memorials to remember these events. The design of these memorials has generated a complex dialogue in the design community about how we memorialize the victims. Our program will reflect on the ideas expressed in the 9/11 Memorial competition and consider methods to promote better design and construction of memorials today. Lester Levine will provide a retrospective on the competition by presenting examples from a variety of entrants to highlight the important characteristics that formed the zeitgeist of this seminal competition. The presented approaches will represent the confluence of previous tendencies in memorial design, as well as innovative ideas and precursors to contemporary trends. This presentation will be followed by a panel and audience discussion to reflect on the trends explored in the 9-11 competition and drive a wider dialogue about what we should be doing as a society and design community to memorialize tragic events.

Register for the event here >

The Cultural Facilities Committee is proud to announce that we are partnering with the Raymond Farm Center to present an exciting one-day symposium on the history, theory, and evolution of modern residential architectural detailing, form the early 20th century to contemporary architecture.  The symposium is in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the publication of Antonin and Noemi Raymond’s Architectural Details 1938.  The symposium will be at the Raymond Farm Center in New Hope, PA on Saturday, June 30th. For more information about this event and tickets, visit the Raymond Farms website.

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located twenty miles north of Copenhagen, Denmark, is famous for its enchanting seaside setting, distinctive architecture, and welcoming, unpretentious atmosphere. Constructed around a park, the museum occupies the grounds of a nineteenth-century estate, Louisiana, established by a beekeeping aristocrat who planted a collection of exotic trees and married three women named Louise. 100 years later, the art collector Knud W. Jensen purchased the estate, adopted the existing villa as the centerpiece of his new museum, and began planning an unconventional institution that would unite art and nature. The first extension to the villa, designed by Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert, opened in 1958 and is a masterpiece of modern architecture. Over the next four decades, the same architects would construct five more extensions that reflected changes in the character of contemporary art and the evolution of Louisiana’s collection. The result is a place for experiencing culture in every form, dedicated to the idea that art is life.

Speaker
Michael Sheridan, author of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art: Landscape and Architecture

Register for the April 23 event here!

The AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee presents a panel presentation and discussion on strategies for including public art into public spaces. Panelists will present ways in which public art can meet the standards and flavor of a community, integrate the artist’s intent into a building’s design, and provide enhancement of sites for property development and client interest. Community involvement, with a focus on public murals, will be among the topics discussed by esteemed panelists from the public and private sectors and design community. Register here.

Panelists:
Tania Duvergne, Director, Public Art for Public Schools, NYC School Construction Authority
A.J. Pires, President, Alloy Development
Heidi Theunissen, Project Architect, ODA Architects

Moderator:
Meta Brunzema, Architect, Urban Design consultant and faculty member at Pratt Institute

In 2006, the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee developed an annual lecture series to honor the work and memory of their founding Committee chair, Arthur Rosenblatt. Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Rosenblatt was the Vice President for Architecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 19 years during its period of great expansion, the founding Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as a highly regarded Museum design consultant. He was an enthusiastic promoter of the architectural profession through his long involvement with the AIA, a generous friend to countless colleagues, and passionate about the role of art in our everyday lives. The Arthur Rosenblatt Lecture is a highlight of Archtober, the AIANY’s annual month-long festival of architecture activities, programs and exhibitions held each October.

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Past Lectures:

2018 – Odile Decq, Founder, Studio Odile Decq
2017 – Farshid Mousavvi, RIBA, “Thoughts on a New Architecture”
2016 – David Chipperfield, RIBA
2015 – Moshe Safdie, FAIA, “Made to Measure”
2014 – Brad Cloepfil, AIA, Allied Works, “Amplifiers”
2013 – Ben van Berkel, (F)RIBA, Hon. FAIA, UNStudio, “Every Day Culture”
2012 – Craig Dykers, AIA, RIBA, Snohetta, “Being Alone Together: Managing the Museum as Mausoleum Syndrome”
2011 – David Adjaye, OBE, RIBA, Hon. AIA, “Evolving Art and Exhibition Spaces”
2010 – Richard Gluckman, FAIA, “Content Context = Concept”
2009 – Dr. Vishakha N. Desai, President, Asia Society, “The Role of Museums in 21st Century Asia”
2008 – Tod Williams / Billie Tsien, FAIA, “Museums Balance Unform Form”
2007 – Richard Meier, FAIA, “On Museums”