BEAUX ARTS BALL 2010: UNSEEN WORLDS
Saturday, September 25, 2010

Benefactors’ Dinner 7:00 p.m.
Party 9:00 p.m. to midnight
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
633 West 155th St.
New York City
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To purchase tickets, click here.

To view photos from past Balls, click here.

You may call 212-753-1722, ext. 10, if you have any questions or would like to purchase tickets over the phone.

Submissions are now closed for this years Ball.

In the fourth of a series of Urban Omnibus artist interviews, Swoon discusses how the urban environment informs her work, from Brooklyn streets to Venetian canals to post-earthquake Haiti. Read more…

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Photo by Flickr user niznoz.

Foreign Office Architects
Current Work
Recorded: February 26. 2010
Running Time: 40:47

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Alejandro Zaera-Polo, co-founder with Farshid Moussavi of the London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA), presents the firm’s recent work and current projects under design and construction including the Meydan Shopping Center in Istanbul, the Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in Greenwich, UK, and Carabanchel Social Housing in Madrid.  Awards to the firm include the Enric Miralles Prize for Architecture; the Kanagawa Prize for Architecture; three RIBA Worldwide Awards; the Special Award in Topography at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale; the Charles Jencks Award for Architecture; an RIBA European Award for Carabanchel Social Housing in Madrid; and a 2009 RIBA Award for the John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex. FOA also represented Britain at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002. The work of the firm has been widely published and exhibited.

In parallel to his professional activities, Zaera-Polo has developed a substantial role within academia. He was the Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and currently occupies the Berlage Chair at the Technical University of Delft. He is also a Visiting Professor at Princeton University and the first recipient of the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professorship at Yale. He has published extensively as a theorist in El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Volume, Log and many other international magazines and is a member of the London School of Economics Urban Age project. The practice’s multi-award winning Yokohama International Cruise Terminal in Japan – a dramatically formed port integrated with urban facilities noted for its fascination with the interplay of architecture, landscape and nature and – is credited by the Design Museum as “a design sensation, alive with bustling urbanity and seaside tranquillity”. Zaera-Polo graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid and Harvard GSD with Distinction and worked at OMA in Rotterdam prior to establishing FOA in 1993

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Rafael Viñoly, founding principal and design leader of Rafael Viñoly Architects, discusses the New York, London, and Los Angeles based firm’s diverse projects and design approach. Projects included in this podcast are the Battersea Power Station Masterplan, London; the residential conversion of the Domino Sugar Refinery complex in Brooklyn; the Curve Theatre, Leicester, UK; and the Carrasco International Airport New Terminal, Montevideo.

Viñoly received the AIA NY Chapters’s Medal of Honor in 1995, was a National Design Award Finalist in 2004, and was given a Design Honor in 2007 from the Salvadori Center. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a member of the Japan Institute of Architects. Viñoly received his Diploma in Architecture and Master of Architecture from the University of Buenos Aires School of Architecture and Urbanism and has served as a guest lecturer and studio critic at a number of institutions.

Roy Strickland describes a student project that combines infill development, real estate financing and urban design to re-envision the housing projects of the Lower East Side. Read more…

Nicola Twilley recently asked designers, farmers, health officials, activists and CEOs in NYC and Toronto to discuss how we feed our cities. Find out what she’s learned. Read more…

Grimshaw Architects
Current Work
Recorded: November 24, 2009
Running Time: 24:46

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Andrew Whalley, partner in charge of Grimshaw’s New York office presents the firm’s recent and current work, including EMPAC (The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center), Via Verde, and the Fulton Street Transit Center.

Founded in 1980 by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Grimshaw is an international practice with permanent offices in London, Melbourne, and New York. Grimshaw’s worldwide presence and commitment to sharing resources between offices allows the firm to approach each project with a collective knowledge base and shared aesthetic. Each city’s workforce is made up of a balanced mix of staff originating from the London office and staff who have joined the firm in each city; this blend ensures the continuity of Grimshaw’s design culture while enabling the firm to respond to uniquely local contexts. The firm’s work has been the recipient of numerous AIA, RIBA, and World Architecture awards and has been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize.

Grimshaw established the New York office because “our contextually sensitive design culture demands geographical and cultural knowledge. We believe that our best architectural responses are created when we understand the wider context within which our designs take shape, and when we are able to interact with clients, sub-consultants, and peers on a frequent and personal basis.”

Andrew Whalley has been an instrumental part of Grimshaw since the earliest days of the practice, and has been Partner in Charge of projects in diverse sectors including education, performing arts, transportation, and workplace. His award-winning projects include the International Terminal at Waterloo, the Eden Project in Cornwall, and the redevelopment of the historic Paddington Station in London. He is currently Partner in Charge of Grimshaw’s New York office, which is one of eight architectural practices selected for major public projects under Mayor Bloomberg’s design excellence program. The New York office’s current portfolio ranges from the renovation of the 1939 Aymer Embury New York Pavilion as part of a redevelopment of the Queens Museum of Art, to the new Fulton Street Transit Center, part of the regeneration of downtown Manhattan. The Industrial Design Group recently completed the New York street furniture contract. Whalley oversees all live projects in the Americas.

Jennifer Pahlka, founder of a non-profit that links city governments and web 2.0 talent, envisions a future in which city governments act more like the citizens they serve. Read more…

Design Excellence at the Department of Design and Construction and the Department of Parks and Recreation
Thomas Balsley, Scott Marble, Charles McKinney, David Resnick, and Jennifer Sage, moderated by Julie Iovine
Recorded: May 17, 2010
Running Time: 01:16:39

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The Design + Construction Excellence program was initiated in 2004 with the goal of pursuing an “innovative and ambitious public works program in partnership with the most creative and experienced design professionals in the world.” As outlined by the city’s Department of Design and Construction, strategies for achieving this goal focused on “new procurement methods, new business policies aimed at enhancing project management, developing more accurate project scheduling guidelines, tightening the budget process and creating contemporary continuing education and evaluation standards.”

This lecture focuses on how the New York City Department of Design and Construction and the Department of Parks and Recreation have implemented the “tools” created by the Design + Construction Excellence program—in projects that are completed, in construction, or in design in all five boroughs. How has a policy of emphasizing design quality influenced the planning for, commissioning of, and shape of public architecture during the past six years?

Panelists:
Charles McKinney, Principal Urban Designer, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
David Resnick, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Design and Construction

Thomas Balsley, founder and principal designer, Thomas Balsley Associates
Scott Marble, founding partner, Marble Fairbanks
Jennifer Sage, founding partner, Sage & Coombe Architects

Moderator:
Julie Iovine, Executive Editor, The Architect’s Newspaper