Current Work
Louisa Hutton
Friday, April 30
7:00 p.m.
The Great Hall, The Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street
1.5 HSW CEUs
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Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch founded Sauerbruch Hutton in the late eighties in London; in 1993 an office was opened in Berlin, where the firm is currently based. Louisa Hutton will discuss the firm’s sustainable approach to design in current and recent projects. Noted built work includes the Brandhorst Museum in Munich and the Federal Environmental Agency in Dessau.

Sauerbruch Hutton describes its design approach as “the enjoyment of the sensuality of space and material, as well as the mastery of up-to-date technology…combined with the intelligent use of existing resources of every kind” and explores the “extent to which sustainable design can be fully embedded in urban and architectural concepts and be translated into sensual and stimulating spaces.”

Other projects include the GSW Headquarters Berlin; Jessop West, Sheffield; offices for the KfW Banking Group, Frankfurt; Fire and Police Station, Berlin; Saint-Georges Centre, Geneva; and Experimental Factory, Magdeburg.

Louisa Hutton worked at A & P Smithson Architects, London before founding Sauerbruch Hutton. Since 2008, she has been a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She received her B.A. from Bristol University, an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association, and a RIBA Part III.

The firm has received the Fritz Schumacher Prize for Architecture and the Erich Schelling Prize for Architecture. Sauerbruch Hutton is the recipient of numerous RIBA and AIA honors and numerous projects have been long- and short-listed for Mies van der Rohe Awards. The firm’s work has appeared in numerous periodicals and was featured in the monograph sauerbruch hutton archive.

Tickets are required for admission to League programs. Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets here from April 23 until 3:00 p.m. the day of the program.

Co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. AIA and New York State continuing education credits are available.

This program is made possible, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Images from top to bottom: Sauerbruch Hutton, GSW Headquarters, Berlin. Image: Annette Kisling; Sauerbruch Hutton, Brandhorst Museum, Munich. Image: Annette Kisling.

Stories About Squares
Robert Gatje
Wednesday, April 28
6:00 p.m.
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
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Robert Gatje will present an illustrated talk on his new book Great Public Squares, An Architect’s Selection.

Based upon six years of research, visits, and composition, Gatje has chosen forty squares in western Europe and America for inclusion in this book from Bernini’s gigantic space in front of St Peter’s, to a small market cross-roads on the island of Rhodes.

The point is to stimulate fellow-architects who will be designing new squares in the future and fellow citizens who will need them.

Robert F. Gatje, FAIA, is an architect with 50 years experience in domestic and international practice. Formerly a partner of Marcel Breuer and of Richard Meier, Gatje served as President of the New York Chapter of the AIA from 1975 to 1976. For more information, click here.

Great Public Squares is published by W.W. Norton and will be available in April 2010.

Free and open to all. To rsvp, click here.

This program is organized by the Center for Architecture in partnership with W.W. Norton and the Architectural League of New York.

Images courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company

John Margolies: Roadside America
Celebration, book signing, and reception
Wednesday, April 14
6:00-8:00 p.m.
TASCHEN
107 Greene St.
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Join John Margolies in celebration of the publication of John Margolies: Roadside America, a collection of photographs from over 30 years of Margolies’s travels. The book includes an essay by Phil Patton, design writer, and an introduction by C. Ford Peatross, director of the Center for Architecture, Design, and Engineering in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The evening will include a reception and special discounts on architecture and design books.

Before the advent of corporate communications and architectural uniformity, America’s built environment was a free-form landscape of individual expression: signs, artifacts, and even buildings ranging from the playful to the eccentric, from the deliciously cartoonish to the quasi-psychedelic. John Margolies has spent over three decades and has driven more than 100,000 miles documenting these fascinating examples of a fast-fading aspect of Americana.

John Margolies: Roadside America brings together approximately 400 color photographs of Main Street signs, storefronts, movie theaters and drive-ins, gas stations, short-order restaurants, motels, roadside attractions, miniature golf courses, coastal resorts, giant figures, and statuary. In an age when online shopping and mega-malls have reconfigured American consumerism, stripping away idiosyncrasy in favor of a bland homogeneity, Margolies’s 30-year survey reminds us of a more innocent, unpredictable, and colorful past.

John Margolies is an author, photographer, and lecturer on American architecture and design. For over 30 years he has explored America’s highways and byways in search of unique and prototypical commercial and civic architecture. Beginning in 1979 with the Architectural League-sponsored Resorts of the Catskills, Margolies’s books include The End of the Road, Miniature Golf, Ticket to Paradise, Signs of Our Times, Pump and Circumstance, Home Away from Home, Hitting the Road, Fun Along the Road, and See the USA. His photographs and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Domus, and Architectural Record.

Free and open to all. To rsvp, email: store-ny@taschen.com; for more information, call 212.226.2212.

This program is organized by TASCHEN in partnership with the Architectural League.

From top to bottom: The Donut Hole, La Puente, California, 1991. Copyright John Margolies; Martin Theater, Panama City, Florida, 1979. Copyright John Margolies.

On Criticism: A Reading Group
Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture
Monday, April 5, 2010
7:00 p.m.
The Architectural League
594 Broadway, Suite 607
New York City
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This reading group is currently at capacity. If you would like to be added to the wait list, please email Nick Anderson at anderson@archleague.org.

In the past year, the published collections of articles by three of the most significant architectural critics in the United States–Paul Goldberger, Ada Louise Huxtable, and Herbert Muschamp–have reinvigorated a debate about the purposes and forms of architectural criticism. In this series of informal and open-ended reading groups, selected articles by each of these three critics will shape a conversation about the different approaches to criticism, the role of critics in shaping architectural discourse, and the relationship between critics, the profession, and the public. This is the last in the series of Reading Groups. Please note that this is a reading group only and that Paul Goldberger will not be attending this event.

Organized in conjunction with Urban Omnibus and its ongoing series of posts On Criticism.

Reservations will begin for this program on March 22, 2010.
This event is fully reserved.  To be added to the wait list, please email Nick Anderson at anderson@archleague.org.

Reservations are required. Due to the limited number of tickets and to facilitate fair access across our membership, reservations are limited to members only. Upper level members, including League Circle firms, are limited to two reservations. Please email rsvp@archleague.org. Further program information will be given upon confirmation.

Schedule
Please note: A reading list of selected articles will be emailed to confirmed participants two weeks before each event.

Monday, February 8, 2010
Hearts of the City: The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp
(Knopf, 2009)

Monday, March 8, 2010
On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change
Ada Louise Huxtable
(Walker & Company, 2008)

Monday, April 5, 2010
Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture
Paul Goldberger
(The Monacelli Press, 2009)

Deborah J. Norden Fund
Travel/Study Grants
Call for Applications

Application Deadline
March 29, 2010

About the Norden Fund
The Deborah J. Norden Fund, established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden, awards a total of up to $5,000 annually in travel/study grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies. For a list of past winners, click here.

The Deborah J. Norden Fund is administered by the Architectural League of New York.

How to Apply
Applicants should submit in letter form a brief proposal (no more than three pages), which succinctly describes the objectives of the grant request and how it will contribute to the applicant’s intellectual and creative development. The grant amount requested (up to $5,000) must be specified. The submission should also include a résumé of not more than two pages, project schedule, and budget for travel and other project costs. Two letters of recommendation must be requested from individuals who are knowledgeable about the applicant’s ability and project.

Eligibility
The fund may award one or more grants. Applicants must reside in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. The application process is extremely competitive. The intention of the fund is to support genuinely independent projects that require travel. Grant funds cannot be used for tuition, and grants will not be awarded to support an individual’s participation in an organized program, such as a university’s summer abroad program. While requests for support of dissertation research will be considered, they are not a priority of the fund. Preference will be given to strong proposals from applicants who have not had this sort of opportunity before.

Application Deadline
Applicants must submit six (6) copies of their proposal, résumé, schedule, and budget. The applicant’s name and brief project title must appear on the first page of the proposal. The postmark (not metered) deadline for these materials is March 29, 2010. Faxed or emailed applications will not be accepted. Late applications will not be accepted. The two letters of recommendation should be sent by the recommenders directly to the Architectural League by mail or email PDF; letters of recommendation must be postmarked by April 5, 2010.
Applications and letters of recommendation should be sent to:

Deborah J. Norden Fund
The Architectural League
of New York
594 Broadway, Suite 607
New York, NY 10012.

PDF recommendations
should be emailed to:
info@archleague.org.

Announcement
Awards will be announced in early June 2010.

Publication
Travel Reports from the Deborah J. Norden Fund, a publication documenting the first ten years of Norden Fund grants, was published in January 2007. For more information, click here.

For more information
Email info@archleague.org or call 212.753.1722 x13.

Emerging Voices: Tatiana Bilbao; molo
Tatiana Bilbao; Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen
Wednesday, March 24
6:45 p.m.
New Museum
235 Bowery
1.5 HSW CEUs
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The fourth and final evening of the 27th annual Emerging Voices lecture series, featuring Tatiana Bilbao and molo.

Tatiana Bilbao formed her own practice in 2004 in Mexico City. The multidisciplinary office “analyzes urban and social crises, as well as the rigid codes of communication and telematics. Through these strands, the office, regenerates spaces ‘humanized’ to be aware and reactive to global capitalism, opening up niches for cultural and economic development.” Projects in Mexico include the Botanical Garden Culiacan; Funeral House, San Luis Potosi; Universe House designed with Gabriel Orozco, Puerto Escondido; Parque Biotecnologico, Culiacan; Centro de Artes Escenicas, Guadalajara; and Ventura House, Monterey. The firm also designed the Jinhua Architecture Park in Jinhua, China.

Bilbao was named to Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard in 2007. Her work has been published in A+U, Domus, and The New York Times, among others. She studied architecture and urbanism at the Universidad Iberoamericana and co-founded mxdf with Derek Dellekamp, Arturo Ortiz, and Michel Rojkind. mxdf is an urban research center on the production of space, its occupation, defense, and control in Mexico City.

molo, based in Vancouver, Canada, is a design and production studio dedicated “to an exploration of space making in combination with innovative experiments in manufacturing, materials, and structure.” Led by founders and principal designers, Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen, along with co-founder Robert Pasut, the work of the molo studio “balances between the realms of art, architecture, and design for serial production, crossing a variety of scales, from tea set to museum.” The design of molo products grows from Forsythe + MacAllen’s architectural explorations. molo’s “soft collection” of flexible walls, building blocks, seating, and lighting exemplifies their “exploration of production processes and experiential space making.” Additional projects include the Aomori Nebuta House, Japan; and the Northern Sky Circle Passageway.

molo’s products have received numerous awards, including ICFF Editor’s Choice Awards, and have been acquired for the collections of museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art. The firm was a runner up for the Metropolis NEXT Generation Prize and was selected as a participant in the 2003 Architectural League Young Architects Forum. Stephanie Forsythe received her B.E.D. from the Technical University of Nova Scotia and her M.Arch from Dalhousie University. She has also studied printmaking, glass blowing, and metal work. Todd MacAllen received his B.F.A. from the University of Victoria, a B.E.D. from the Technical University of Nova Scotia, and a M.Arch from Dalhousie University.

Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets here, beginning one week before each program until six hours before the program start. Purchased tickets are available for pick-up at the venue check-in desk and are non-refundable.

For more information, email info@archleague.org or call 212.753.1722 x13. AIA and New York State continuing education credits are available.

Emerging Voices is generously supported by Maharam. The Emerging Voices program is also supported by the Next Generation Fund of the Architectural League.  For a listing of contributions to the Next Generation Fund, please click here.

Architectural League programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Images from top left to bottom right: molo, softseating serpentine bench. Courtesy of molo; Tatiana Bilbao, Exhibition Room. Courtesy of Tatiana Bilbao; Tatiana Bilbao, Irapuato Spectacle. Courtesy of Tatiana Bilbao; molo, urchin softlight. Courtesy of molo.

The Architectural League created the annual Emerging Voices lecture series in 1982 to recognize and encourage architects who are beginning to achieve prominence in the profession. The series focuses primarily on built work, at a variety of scales, and is structured to reflect the diversity of contemporary practice–geographically, stylistically, and ideologically.

The 2010 Emerging Voices are:

Tatiana Bilbao, Mexico City
LA DALLMAN, Milwaukee
L.E.FT, New York City
molo, Vancouver
Rojkind arquitectos, Mexico City
Slade Architecture, New York City
studio SUMO, New York City
UrbanLab, Chicago

For more information on the 2010 Emerging Voices lectures, click here.

American Masters: Building China Modern
Tuesday, March 23
6:30 p.m.
Paley Center for Media
25 West 52nd Street
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Screening followed by a panel discussion with:

Eugene Shirley, Producer and Originator of the Film
Anne Makepeace, Director of the Film
Sandi Pei, Son and Architectural Partner on Suzhou Museum
Moderator: Suzanne Stephens, Deputy Editor, Architectural Record

I.M. Pei, one of the most influential architects of the last half-century, returned to his Chinese homeland after seventy years, and designed a modern museum to house the antiquities of Suzhou, in the region where his forebears lived for centuries. The film follows Pei’s personal and architectural journey from west to east over the seven-and-a-half-year process of placing a modern building in the most ancient neighborhood of a 2,500-year-old city. With intimacy and immediacy, we experience the realization of Pei’s lifelong dream—and biggest challenge—a work that he ultimately defines as “my biography.”

Tickets are on sale to Architectural League and Paley Center members for $15. Non-member tickets are $25 and go on sale March 12. Architectural League members should use the code AL when ordering tickets online or on the phone for the discount. Order tickets here.

Organized by the Paley Center for Media in association with the Architectural League of New York.

I.M. Pei in Suzhou, Photo by Bing Lin, Pei Partnership Architects.

In conjunction with the New New York Photography Corps, a volunteer group of architects and design professionals who are documenting New York for a spring 2010 exhibition, the Architectural League presents a lecture by curator and historian Bonnie Yochelson about Berenice Abbott’s landmark photo project of the 1930s.

After nearly a decade in Paris where she had established herself as an accomplished photographer, Berenice Abbott returned to New York in 1929. Seeing for the first time the dramatic results of the 1920s building boom, she moved home, determined to document this new New York.  Assembled over a decade, funded in part by the Federal Art Project and sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York, the resulting Changing New York portfolio contained 305 photographs and was ultimately published as a guidebook for visitors of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  When asked in 1940 by Popular Photography magazine to name her “favorite picture,” Abbott responded:

“Suppose we took a thousand negatives and made a gigantic montage; a myriad-faceted picture combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city—that would be my favorite picture.”

Bonnie Yochelson, formerly Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, is currently an independent curator and art historian.  Her latest project is Alfred Stieglitz New York, an exhibition that will open September 2010 at the South Street Seaport Museum.  She has written extensively on photography, including: Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the Century New York; Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, The Complete WPA Project; New York to Hollywood: The Photography of Karl Struss, and Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography. She teaches the history of photography in the MFA Program in Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and she wrote regularly for “The City Visible,” a New York Times column in “The City” section.

Tickets are free for League and NNY Photo Corps members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets here, beginning one week before each program until six hours before the program start. Purchased tickets are available for pick-up at the venue check-in desk and are non-refundable.

Image: Lower East Side 1. Waterfront, South Street. Copyright Berenice Abbott.

The United Nations Capital Master Plan
Michael Adlerstein, Keith Fitzpatrick, John Gering, and Robert Heintges
Moderated by Cathleen McGuigan
Ford Foundation Auditorium
320 East 43rd Street
1.5 CEUS


UNITED NATIONS PROGRAM CANCELED: Thursday, March 18

Dear Members and Reserved Guests,

We are sorry to report that last weekend’s storm flooded Con Ed transformers, causing major damage to the Ford Foundation’s electrical systems. As a result, the building will be closed for public events for at least two weeks.

The Thursday evening program on The United Nations Capital Master Plan is therefore postponed. We are working to find a new date and will let you know by email when it is rescheduled. All seats for the program were fully booked; those with reservations for March 18 will be given priority for tickets for the rescheduled evening.

We apologize for the inconvenience. We know the program will be worth the wait.
The Skyscraper Museum, The Architectural League of New York, and DOCOMOMO-New York/Tristate


Historic preservation and sustainable design pose special challenges in the renovation and energy-efficient retrofit of classic early works of International Style modernism. The United Nations Capital Master Plan addresses complex issues of architecture, curtain wall design and technology, building systems, and landscaping with a thorough, state-of-the-art strategy and nearly $1.9 billion budget that will be presented by the project’s leadership and key consulting architects and engineers.

Speakers include:
Michael Adlerstein, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Executive Director of the United Nations Capital Master Plan

Robert Heintges, R.A. Heintges & Assoc., Curtain wall consultants and Architect for façade restoration/reconstruction of campus

John Gering, Managing Partner In Charge, HLW International, Architect and Structural Engineer

Keith Fitzpatrick, Syska Hennessy Group, Inc., MEP Engineer

Cathleen McGuigan, Editor and Critic, Newsweek Magazine

Free to Architectural League, Skyscraper Museum, and DOCOMOMO members; $5 non-member students and seniors; $10 all other non-members. League members, rsvp to rsvp@archleague.org. Non-members rsvp to programs@skyscraper.org beginning on March 11. All guests must have a photo ID when entering the Foundation.

This program is organized by The Skyscraper Museum in partnership with the Architectural League of New York and DOCOMOMO-New York/Tristate.

Image courtesy of Skyscraper Museum