Design in 5
Drinks with a Designer: Dror
Monday, October 17, 2011
7:00 p.m.
Dror
225 West 39th Street, 6th Floor

This program is sold out.  If you would like to be added to a wait list, please email anderson@archleague.org.

Join the New York studio, Dror, for a discussion of the firm’s interdisciplinary approach to innovative design, encompassing product design, architecture projects, interior design, and art direction. Conversation with designer Dror Benshetrit and staff will continue over drinks in the studio.

Dror’s QuaDror “space truss geometry” is a structural support system made of L-shaped interlocking forms, which while light, mobile, and flexible, remain exceedingly strong. The design innovation has been applied to a wide-range of uses and applications, including art installations, dividing walls, trestles, highway barriers, and emergency shelters.

Dror Benshetrit received his education at the Eindhoven Design Academy in Holland. Dror’s work has been described by Aric Chen as embodying “the complexity of the manifold meanings and uses that intersect at a single object. Rooted in a rigorous approach and methodology of movement, every project is driven with the desire to unleash the mutable and non-static nature of objects.” Clients include Alessi, Bentley, Boffi, Bombay Sapphire, Cappellini, Kiehl’s, Levi’s, Lualdi, Material ConneXion, Maya Romanoff, Marithé + François Girbaud, Puma, Rosenthal, Skins Footwear, Yigal Azrouël, Shvo, Swarovski, and Target. Awards include the GE Plastics Competition “Merging Boundaries” (2001), iF Product Design Award (2006), and the Good Design Award (2008, 2010).

Tickets
Drinks with a Designer is open to all young designers roughly five years or less out of school or under 35; whether you are a graphic, industrial, or fashion designer, an artist or architect, Design in 5 invites you to attend. Reservations are required as space is limited: email Anderson@archleague.org to reserve and receive more information. The program is free for Architectural League members and $5 for non-members.

Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, formed for designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school or under 35. Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun.

Design in 5
Behind the Scenes at MoMA: The Making of an A+D Exhibition
Barry Bergdoll, Ingrid Chou, Erika Mosier, Pamela Popeson, and Margot Weller
Thursday, April 21, 2011
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
MoMA
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This program is currently at capacity. If you would like to be added to the wait list, email anderson@archleague.org.

Join Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, for a behind the scenes look at what goes into making an A+D exhibition. The informal walkthrough and discussion will highlight the myriad conceptual and practical decisions that come together to create a compelling exhibition.

The discussion will center around Building Collections: Recent Acquisitions of Architecture, an exhibition that presents a selection of models and drawings acquired by the Department of Architecture and Design since 2005—the vast majority on view here for the first time. The exhibition is organized around several themes, including ornament and abstraction, modernist urbanism and utopias, Latin American modernism, the revival of Berlin architecture since reunification, and the role of process in architecture since the digital revolution. Featured works date from 1890 to the present, and represent such diverse figures as Louis Sullivan, Le Corbusier, Bodo and Heinz Rasch, Jean Tschumi, Ant Farm, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Sauerbruch Hutton, Barkow Leibinger, UN Studio, and Seung H-Sang of Korea.

Barry Bergdoll will be joined by Margot Weller, Curatorial Assistant, Architecture and Design; Pamela Popeson, Preparator, Architecture and Design; Erika Mosier, Conservator, Conservation; and Ingrid Chou, Assistant Director, Graphic Design.

A reception will follow.

This is a joint event with The Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

Registration is required. Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, targeting designers of all disciplines roughly 35 years old and younger. RSVP to anderson@archleague.org. This program is free for League members, $20 non-members.

Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, targeting designers of all disciplines roughly 35 years and younger. Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun.

Installation view of the exhibition Building Collections: Recent Acquisitions of Architecture, November 10, 2010–May 30, 2011, © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph: Thomas Griesel.

Design in 5
Sketch 120: Greenpoint Edition
Jury to include Andy Bernheimer, Mario Gooden, and Linda Pollak
Saturday, April 16
2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Fowler Arts Center
67 West Street
Brooklyn
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Greenpoint has lived disparate incarnations, from forests and farmland to a manufacturing hub and center of Polish immigrants; to an extension of “hipster” Williamsburg to an ever more gentrified community of professionals.

In 2005, the city approved a major rezoning of the waterfront, a formerly industrial area, allowing for larger-scaled residential structures, along with inclusionary housing and open space. The impact of the more recent recession, however, has slowed the ambitions of developers, leaving many projects incomplete or scrapped altogether.

Design in 5 invites you to design a building proposal within this context of a neighborhood in transition. In the coming years, Greenpoint will need to balance internal issues like demographic integration, preservation of architectural and cultural heritage, and toxic industrial remediation, while deciding upon its relationship with the city at large through adaptations in public transportation and infrastructure.

Participants will be asked to design a multifunctional building or buildings and open space on a formerly industrial plot, combining residential units with community-enhancing activity spaces. At three points during the charrette, a new constraint or demand will be announced which will require major revisions to the project designs.

Following the two-hour design exercise, all four iterations of the participants’ design proposals will be pinned-up for a discussion led by an invited jury. Two projects will be published and displayed online on Urban Omnibus and Architizer. Drinks and other refreshments will be served during the pin-up and discussion.

The charrette is intended for young designers five years or less out of school or under age 35. You may work as an individual or in a team of up to four people.

Registration is required. Registration for Sketch120 is $10 for League members; $15 for non-members. All participants must register individually here. If you would like to participate as a team, please email anderson@archleague.org specifying the names.  Additional information will be provided to registrants before the event.

About Design in 5
Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, targeting designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school. Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun.

About the Jury
Andrew Bernheimer is a partner of the Brooklyn firm Della Valle Bernheimer. Projects include an apartment building and church sanctuary in Brooklyn, R-House (with ARO) in Syracuse, Artreehouse in Connecticut, and the residential towers 245 Tenth and 459 West 18th both in Chelsea. The firm is the recipient of numerous AIA chapters’ Merit and Honor awards, the R+D Award from Architect Magazine, and the League’s Emerging Voices Award. Their work is the subject of a monograph published in 2009 by Princeton Architectural Press, entitled Think/Make. Bernheimer has taught at Parsons The New School for Design, Syracuse University, Lehigh University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the City College of New York. He received his B.A. from Williams College and his M.Arch from Washington University in St. Louis.

Mario Gooden is a partner of Huff+Gooden Architects. The firm specializes in educational, collegiate, commercial, civic, religious, institutional, and residential architecture as well as urban design and planning. Projects include Dunston Elementary School, Malcom C. Hursey Elementary School, Herbert Hassell Aquatic Facility, and the Wesley United Methodist Church all in South Carolina; and residential work in New York. The firm has received AIA South Carolina Merit and Honor Awards and the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award. Gooden received his B.Arch from Clemson University and his M.Arch from Columbia University. From 1993 to 2001, he was an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Florida. Currently he is an Associate Professor, Adjunct at the Yale School of Architecture.

Linda Pollak is a founding partner of Marpillero Pollak Architects (MPA), whose current projects include Queens Plaza, Elmhurst Library, and Staten Island Children’s Museum Lightweight Structures. MPA’s work has been recognized with awards from a wide range of organizations, including AIA, ASLA, EDRA, HUD, and Design Share. MPA has been a member of the New York City Design + Construction Excellence Program, and is a 1% Design Advocate, collaborating with Public Architecture to support and leverage the integral role of pro bono design. She is the co-author of the award-winning Inside Outside: between Architecture and Landscape. Pollak received her M.Arch degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she also studied Landscape Architecture. A member of the faculty of Architecture at Harvard from 1992 to 2004, and Rhode Island School of Design from 1988 to 1992, she has dedicated herself to full-time practice in New York City since 2004, participating in civic initiatives including Fit City and NYC Active Design Guidelines.

Architectural League programs are made possible, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, 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. The League thanks the Fowler Arts Collective for hosting this event.

Image by Flickr user themikebot

Design in 5
Drinks with a Designer: Pentagram
Michael Bierut, Abbott Miller, Eddie Opara, and Paula Scher
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
7:00 p.m.
Pentagram
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This program is currently at capacity.  If you would like to be added to the wait list, email rsvp@archleague.org.

Join the New York office of Pentagram for a studio visit and discussion of the firm’s multi-disciplinary approach to all aspects of design. As the world’s largest independent design consultancy, Pentagram engages in architecture, interiors, products, identities, publications, posters, books, exhibitions, websites, and digital installations. Conversation with Pentagram partners Michael Bierut, Abbott Miller, Eddie Opara, and Paula Scher and design staff will continue over drinks in the studio.

Pentagram’s design work ranges from aspects of brand identity and packaging for businesses such as Citi and Bausch + Lomb to iconic brands such as Tiffany & Co and Saks Fifth Avenue to cultural institutions including the Guggenheim, The High Line, and The Metropolitan Opera. The studio’s diverse work includes editorial for New York Magazine, Time, and The Atlantic; book design, such as the catalogue for The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, William Kentridge: Five Themes; and website and interactive design for clients from Diller Scofidio + Renfro to GE. Pentagram also led both the architectural and exhibition designs of the recently opened Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. In addition to New York, Pentagram has offices in London, Berlin, and Austin.

Drinks with a Designer is open to all young designers roughly five years or less out of school or under 35; whether you are a graphic, industrial, or fashion designer, an artist or architect, Design in 5 invites you to attend. Reservations are required as space is limited: email rsvp@archleague.org or call 212.753.1722 x 13 to reserve and receive more information. The program is free for Architectural League members and $5 for non-members.

Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, formed for designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school. Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun.

Images from left to right: Pentagram, Identity and packaging for Saks Fifth Avenue, 2007; Pentagram, Identity and environmental graphics for the High Line, New York, 2009.

Design in 5
Barbara Wilks, W Architecture; Len Greco, New York City Economic Development Corporation; and Signe Nielsen, Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects
Saturday, November 13, 2010
2:00 p.m.: Meet at lower middle section of West Harlem Piers Park [at seating area at 125th street]
3:30 p.m.: Meet at Hudson River Park [at parking area in front of Pier 40, at Houston]
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New York City’s diverse waterfront is the focus of various redevelopment initiatives. Esplanades, bicycle greenways, and new public parks have revitalized waterfront areas on the East River, Hudson River, on the Brooklyn waterfront, in the South Bronx, and throughout the City, creating a healthier, more livable and vibrant New York.

This event will take participants by bike (an option to travel by subway between the two locations is also possible) to two different Hudson River parks. The first stop will be the newly opened, West Harlem Piers Park, a 2–acre park area on the Hudson River waterfront between W125th and W135th Streets. Barbara Wilks, founding principal of W Architecture, will discuss the design of the park and Len Greco from the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) will discuss how this park was one of the first steps in the NYCEDC’s master plan for the west side waterfront.

Our second stop will be the Tribeca section of Hudson River Park, designed by Mathews Nielsen. The area features recreational, ecological, and educational piers, such as Pier 86, home of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum as well as the interim Pier 40 sports field complex and tennis courts south of West Houston Street. With the Tribeca South section nearing completion, this is an ideal time to hear how the project has taken shape from overall master plan to realization. Signe Nielsen, principal of Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, will offer her perspective on the design and coordination required for such a large scale endeavor.

This event is open to all young designers roughly five years or less out of school; whether you are a graphic, industrial, or fashion designer, an artist or architect, Design in 5 invites you to attend. Reservations are required as space is limited: email designin5@archleague.org to reserve and receive more information. Admission is free for League members; $5.00 non-members.

This program is brought to you by Design in 5. Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, formed for designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school. Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun.

Images from left to right: Hudson River Park, image courtesy of Mathews Nielsen; West Harlem Piers Park, image courtesy of Alison Cartwright.

Design in 5 with collaborators SUPERFRONT are pleased to announce the selected team from the May 15th charrette competition Sketch 120: Temporary Publics.  Lauren Page, Phil Kuehne, Justin Foster, and Read Langworthy of the design collective KIT won for their scheme for the New York City Explorer’s Carnival.  KIT’s design, which features hundreds of hula hoops forming a connected canopy, was selected by the Sketch 120: Temporary Publics jury comprised of DJ /rupture, Mimi Hoang of nARCHITECTS, and James Slade and Hayes Slade of Slade Architecture.  The winning design will now be constructed in SUPERFRONT’s backyard for use throughout the summer.

If you are interested in joining the volunteer construction team, email nicole@superfront.org with your interest and availability from June 1 – June 30, weekends especially.

On May 30th, come to the opening of a pin-up exhibition of all the work produced from the charrette and a backyard afterparty at SUPERFRONT, 6:00 p.m. opening, 8:00 p.m. party, 1432 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn.  For more information, click here.

Sketch 120: Temporary Publics was a program of the League’s Design in 5 group in collaboration with SUPERFRONT.  The summer installation is a program of SUPERFRONT.  Follow Design in 5 on Facebook.

–Nick Anderson, Program Associate

Winning hula hoop canopy design by KIT.

Design in 5 Charrette
A program within SUPERFRONT’s spring series, “Cypher on Urban Affairs”
Jury: DJ/rupture, Geoff Manaugh, nARCHITECTS, and Slade Architecture
Saturday, May 15, 2010
2:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
SUPERFRONT
1432 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn
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All places in tomorrow’s Temporary Publics Sketch 120 charrette competition have been filled. At this time, we are unable to take any additional registrations.

“Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art.”
-Alvar Aalto

“The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.”
- Albert Einstein

Mismanaged crises of the past few years (from the failure of physical infrastructure to the catastrophes of bond markets) have complicated our notion of the architectural relationship between temporality and typology. For example, temporary FEMA trailers in New Orleans remain occupied as primary homes five years later, or luxury projects that became icons before they were even constructed remain stalled as holes in a sidewalk.

Sketch 120: “Sketch Cypher — Temporary Publics” hosted by SUPERFRONT and Design in 5, a group of the Architecture League, invites you to reconsider the possibilities of public architecture in this moment of temporal-typological crisis. What if the industry never returns to normal, if real estate financing never materializes, and all we had to work with, as architects, were our own ideas, a discarded space, and a nebulous public?

What if temporary were forever? The goal is to design a public space with these precepts.

Participants will be randomly assigned a detailed program brief, submitted by community organizations through a SUPERFRONT open-call, with parameters for a semi-outdoor space to be managed for public activity in Brooklyn. The selected team will have the opportunity to construct their design in a 1,000 square foot outdoor space behind the SUPERFRONT gallery in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, in collaboration with SUPERFRONT. Construction will be supported through donated materials from Materials For The Arts, other partners, and novice construction volunteers. Winners will be given a budget of $500 for additional supplies. The temporary outdoor installation will open on June 26th and will run until August 15th.

The charrette is aimed at (though not limited to) young designers five years or less out of school or under 35. You may participate as an individual or as a team of up to four people.

Registration is required. Registration for Sketch120 is $10 per person; registration for Architectural League members is $5.  If you plan to participate in a team, please email Nick Anderson at anderson@archleague.org with the members of your team. Each teammate should register individually. Refreshments will be available during the jury discussion following the charrette.

Registrants will receive additional information on May 10th.

About the Jury
DJ/rupture is a New York-based artist, DJ, and producer. For more information on his work, click here. He has collaborated with SUPERFRONT on the Architecture Mixtape programs, which are part of SUPERFRONT’s spring series: Cypher on Urban Affairs.

Geoff Manaugh is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor. He is the author of BLDGBLOG and The BLDGBLOG Book.

nARCHITECTS founded by principals Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang in 1999 is a New York-based architectural practice. Recent projects include Rising Currents at MoMA and the Switch Building. In 2004, nARCHITECTS was selected for the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program, for the project “Canopy.”

Slade Architecture led by Hayes Slade and James Slade is a New York-based architectural practice founded in 2002. Recent projects include Barbie Shanghai and the Staten Island Zoo.

About Design in 5
Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, targeting designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school. Design in 5 responds to this youngest group of designers, providing unique opportunities and activities for exchanging ideas across disciplines, fostering camaraderie, and above all, having fun. Architectural League programs are 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.

About SUPERFRONT
Since January 2008, SUPERFRONT has invited students, emerging architects, designers, visual artists, and performance artists to engage in a public forum that raises awareness of contemporary architectural practice and theory. Dedicated to supporting, promoting, and producing radical contemporary architecture while fostering creative interdisciplinary exchange, SUPERFRONT recently opened a satellite gallery in the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles in addition to its location in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Summer at SUPERFRONT is partly enabled by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Images from top to bottom: Photo by Jon Lee; Location of Temporary Publics Installation. Photo by SUPERFRONT.

A call to all those who want to get involved with Design in 5 programming and event planning. Design in 5 is a committee of the Architectural League of New York, formed of young designers of all disciplines. Design in 5 is committed to hearing your ideas for future events, impromptu meet-ups, and interdisciplinary opportunities. Programs are committee generated in coordination with the Architectural League, so here is your chance to brainstorm, plan, and implement the design programming you’ve always wanted to do.

Students, individuals less than five years out of school, or who are under 35 are invited to attend; whether you are a graphic, industrial, or fashion designer, an artist or architect, Design in 5 welcomes you.

All are welcome to attend the open forum on Tuesday, December 8. For more information or to rsvp, please email designin5@archleague.org with your name, contact info, design discipline, and year of design degree.

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On Saturday, October 17, Design in 5, a group of the Architectural League formed for designers of all disciplines five years or less out of school, hosted its third annual “Sketch 120” at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City.  Sketch 120 is a two-hour charrette on a given design problem, engaging participants to think creatively about the question at hand.  A pin-up follows with an invited jury of critics discussing the questions and proposed designs with the goal of open conversation, provocation, thought, and hopefully some humor.  League Program Associate Nick Anderson recounts the event.

Each year the Design in 5 committee works toward refining a topic for its annual design charrette, “Sketch120.”  It’s harder than one would think. The committee’s current members–Farzana Gandhi, Jon Lee, Michelle Cianfaglione, Scott Steffes, and I–have to ask: how much information overwhelms?  How little leaves the designer without the information needed to approach the problem with any degree of probing intelligence.  Too broad and you are left with attendees looking about with horror and fear at a problem with a hundred paths all too long to travel in two hours; too narrow and the question is answered on its own.  And as Design in 5’s mission is to be as multi-disciplinary as possible between architecture, art, landscape architecture, engineering, planning, and graphic, fashion, and industrial design, the problem needs to be approachable from the many languages of design.

The first charrette in 2007 at the height of the pre-crash building boom considered scaffolding.  Scaffolding was everywhere, yet it all looked bleakly the same.  One only needed to turn toward Fourth Avenue, on the border of Park Slope, from the charrette’s location at Gowanus’s Old American Can Factory to see the repetitive assault of scaffolding on the urban scape.  Could scaffolding be reenvisioned to serve multiple uses?  Could it enrich and organize public space rather than simply darken it?  Could its surfaces be utilized graphically?  The participants impressed in their diversity of approaches, considering pedestrian movements, scaffolding’s possibilities as shelter and scrim, and new construction methods that are more sustainable, elegant, or efficient.

In 2008 at 3^rd Ward in East Williamsburg, Sketch 120 turned its attention to trash.  Largely absent from our mind, disappearing from our stoop every week, we New Yorkers are habitualized to the urban detritus of our streets and subway platforms, to the jetsam and flotsam of our islands’ waterways.  As both an act and object of environmental damage, trash seemed an ideal part of daily life to rethink. From the packaging of food to a city’s organization to move trash efficiently about, how could design help solve the problems of our consumerist society?  Proposals ranged from the reuse of trash and more efficient receptacles on our streets and in our alleys to broad urban networks of trash disposal and designs that made the destructive nature of trash in the urban aggregate visible.

This past spring and summer, as the economy stumbled and designers and architectural practice itself felt squeezed more and more, it seemed best to pause: to look anew at architecture after the end of the recent era of excess.  With this in my mind someone began thinking of all the “isms” and fads and styles of the past, and it occurred to the committee that a charge to think of the next “ism” may in fact prove useful.  Where would architecture go from here?  What ideas could reanimate architecture and drive practice and theory?  Naming the charrette “…ism,” the committee gave this admittedly broad and challenging brief to the participants.  In an attempt to ground the charrette in design, the committee asked participants to manifest this “ism” in the design of a chair rather than a manifesto.  Not only are chairs objects that need no explanation or example, but they also represent many of the iconic art historical images of past “isms.”

As organizers of the event we were nervous.  Would people feel overwhelmed to articulate a theory?  Would people take it too seriously or gravitate toward the obvious: “greenism” or the like.  We had nothing to worry about.  For the twenty-five young designers who took on this challenge in the serene precincts of Long Island City’s Noguchi Museum, the brief stimulated a fascinating conversation on the future of design.  Joined by jury members Sunil Bald, David Leven, and Mabel Wilson, participants played with issues of prefabrication and mass-production against craft, customization, and individual ergonomic sensitivities; from cultural differences in the way one sits to the specific needs of populations such as the disabled; and, most broadly, with the ways “sitting” plays into life in work, rest, and recreation.

Perhaps what was most interesting about the event was the broad, global approach of all the participants to the problem.  Rather than fetishize the object (one even negated the object entirely, proposing instead a system) or engage in a colloquy with the past, taking down and idolizing past styles and their masters (there were no Breuer 2.0s), each participant considered a broader social need and then designed a solution to that problem.  As the jury remarked, this generosity and outward orientation away from design qua design and toward design as a solution to society’s problems, suggest a new generation of designers keen to make a difference, keen to take design out of a sometime hermetic profession to something which can address real problems in the world.  What “ism” might this be?  Well that we left alone – what we enjoyed was the eagerness to take design out of the office or the glossy pages of shelter magazines and into a global conversation.

Click on any of the images above for a slideshow of more photos. The League gratefully acknowledges the Noguchi Museum for its generosity in hosting this year’s event.

Click image to read the article on Urban Omnibus.

Design in 5 brings designers together across the city to visit studios, tour projects and participate in an annual charrette. Learn more and watch a video of their latest event. Read more…