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
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.

Join us on Facebook.

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…

Join Design in 5 for a combined studio visit to Leroy Street Studio (LSS) and Hester Street Collaborative (HSC), as well as a site visit to their Robin Hood Library project at PS 110. LSS is an architecture firm with “a commitment to innovative design inspired by the building process.” HSC is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization founded by LSS to “empower communities and individuals to participate in the transformation of their neighborhoods through a participatory planning and design/build approach.” This program will highlight each of the studios’ current projects, and consider the unique relationship of a for-profit business parenting a non-profit organization to expand the scope and reach of design in the community.

Beginning mostly with residential projects, LSS developed a commitment to a collaborative process of making. The firm’s community involvement began through collaborations with artists and residents in underserved communities in East New York and Canarsie. This continued when the studio approached PS 134, a school near its offices attended primarily by immigrant children from non-English speaking families, and asked the principal how it could get involved. This led to a design-build education program that brought together local artists, activists, public school students, and teachers to work directly with architects on campus and community improvement projects.

LSS very quickly discovered a desire in underserved communities to have a voice and hand in the remaking of their neighborhoods. In order to take an activist design role, Leroy Street Studio formed Hester Street Collaborative, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit to achieve these goals. Many of the projects are located in the studio’s neighborhood of the Lower East Side and Chinatown.

HSC is currently working on the improvement of several sites including the Allen & Pike Street Malls, The East River Waterfront, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and several public school campuses. At Allen and Pike, HSC has engaged local students in design education programs which culminate in creation of public art and design installations to improve the malls and celebrate the cultural history of the community; HSC has also worked in coalition to advocate for capital funding to permanently improve the malls; and has organized a participatory design process around these capital improvements to ensure that the re-design of the malls is responsive to community needs and aspirations.

The program will be led by Marc Turkel and Morgan Hare, who co-founded Leroy Street Studio in 1995 and are current partners, along with Shawn Watts, partner, and Anne Frederick, Executive Director, Hester Street Collaborative.

Marc Turkel earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Architecture at Yale in 1986 and 1992, where he received the Ann C. Garland award for design. In 1988 he received a Fulbright fellowship to conduct architectural research in Indonesia. Following college, Marc worked in residential construction in New Haven, on masonry restoration in Florence, and as a designer in Hong Kong for Wong and Tung Architects. After graduating school, Marc worked in London for three years for Michael Hopkins and Partners, and in New York for Davis Brody Bond. In 1995 he founded Leroy Street Studio with Morgan Hare.

Morgan Hare earned his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in 1984, where he received the Fayerweather Award for independent study. He studied for one year at the Urban Institute for Architecture in New York, and earned his Masters degree in Architecture at Yale in 1992. Morgan also holds a Certificate in Construction Management from New York University. With several years of construction experience, Morgan started and managed his own contracting firm in New York for six years after college, focusing on design/build residential projects. For three years after graduate school, he headed a design and construction management practice, Measure Studio, also in New York. In 1995 Morgan founded Leroy Street Studio with Marc Turkel.

Shawn Watts earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and was awarded the Architecture Award for Excellence in Design, as well as a traveling fellowship to Rome. He earned his Master’s degree at Yale University, where he received The Drawing Prize. At Yale, Shawn was awarded the Takenaka Internship, affording him the opportunity to work in a leading architecture and construction company in Osaka, Japan. Upon graduation, Shawn joined Leroy Street Studio in 1997 as project architect with responsibility over many large-scale residential projects. In 2005 Shawn was made a partner in Leroy Street Studio.

Anne Frederick worked as an architect at Leroy Street Studio and taught as a built environment educator in the Parsons pre-college program and the New York Foundation for Architecture’s Learning by Design program. While working for Leroy Street Studio, Anne initiated a design-build education program entitled “Ground Up” at Chinatown’s M.S. 131. This program catalyzed the founding of Hester Street Collaborative. Anne Frederick graduated from Parsons School of Design and The New School for Social Research in 1998.

This program is open to all young designers 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 or call 212.753.1722 x 13 to reserve and receive more information. Admission is free for League members; $5 non-members. Join us on Facebook for additional programming and information.

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.

Image courtesy of the Leroy Street Studio/Hester Street Collaborative

Design in 5 Charrette
Jury: Sunil Bald, Partner, Studio SUMO; David Leven, Partner, LevenBetts; and Mabel O. Wilson, Associate Professor of Architectural Design, Columbia GSAPP
Saturday, October 17, 2009
2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Noguchi Museum
9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard)
Long Island City
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On Saturday, October 17th, come to the Noguchi Museum and participate in a sketch problem and open forum with an invited jury to hear your work discussed.

In 1913, Walter Gropius wrote, “The new times demand their own expression…The dominant spirit of our epoch is already recognizable although its form is not yet clearly defined.” Sketch120 will ask participants to think about the future of architecture and form.

The first part of the brief will be sent to registered participants on Friday, October 16. On Saturday, the 17th at 2:00 p.m., the specific design problem will be given to participants at the Noguchi Museum to solve in roughly two hours. All work will then be pinned up and the invited jury will hold an open discussion and critique with participants. A critical conversation will emerge from the work generated and the questions posed by the original brief.

The charrette is aimed at young designers five years or less out of school; whether you are a graphic, industrial, fashion designer, artist, architect, or planner, Design in 5 invites you to attend. Refreshments will be available. You may participate as an individual or as a team of up to three people.

Sunil Bald is a partner of Studio SUMO, a Long Island City based practice Bald co-founded with Yolande Daniels. SUMO’s projects range in scale, from small installations to large institutional buildings, and site, with projects in New York and as far a field as Japan. Bald currently teaches at Yale University School of Architecture and is an adjunct professor at Josai University in Japan.

LevenBetts Architects is a New York City-based architecture practice begun in 1997 by David Leven and Stella Betts. LevenBetts designs and produces buildings, exhibitions, interiors, furniture and urban spaces. The firm produces “an architecture with an innovative approach toward materials, technologies and the environment in projects at all scales.” LevenBetts is the recipient of numerous AIA Merit and Honor awards, was featured in Architectural Record’s 2007 Design Vanguard, and was runner-up for the Metropolis: Next Generation Prize. In 2009, Princeton Architectural Press published a monograph on the firm, Pattern Recognition: LevenBetts. David Leven is currently the Director of the Graduate Architecture Department at Parsons The New School for Design.

Mabel O. Wilson, Associate Professor of architectural design at Columbia’s GSAPP, navigates her multidisciplinary practice between the fields of architecture, art, visual cultural analysis, and American studies. Her design and scholarly research investigates space and cultural memory in black America, race and visual culture, and new technologies and the social production of space. Her collaborative design practices (KW: a and Studio 6Ten) have worked on speculative and built projects. Her work has been widely exhibited and published. She is currently completing the book Progress and Prospects – Black Americans and the World of Fairs and Museums that studies how ideologies of race, social uplift, and nationalism shaped black American sites of memory.

Registration is required. Registration for Sketch120 is $10; Architectural League and Noguchi Museum members receive free registration. Members should email designin5@archleague.org to register; non-members click here. Included in your registration is free admission to the Noguchi Museum for the day. Design in 5 and the Architectural League wish to thank the Noguchi Museum for generously hosting the event. Also visit Design in 5’s Facebook page.

Sketch 120 is brought to you by 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.

Images by Jon Lee

Please join us for drinks and an open forum meeting at Brass Monkey to help plan Design in 5’s fall programming. Design in 5 is a group of the Architectural League of New York, formed of designers of all disciplines 5 years or less out of school. 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.

The Open Forum will be preceded by an informal (and optional) meet-up on the High Line. Explore the city’s newest public space with other designers. We will meet at the 20th Street entrance to the High Line at 10th Avenue and make our way South. Following the tour, we will proceed to Brass Monkey [55 Little West 12th St]. You are more than welcome to attend only the Open Forum.

The Open Forum is open to all young designers 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.

Join us on Facebook for additional programming and information.

Design in 5
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
7:00 p.m.
Brooklyn Digital Foundry, DUMBO, Brooklyn

Brooklyn Digital Foundry, a full-service digital media firm, will host a presentation of recently released work and a few projects that are in development at their DUMBO studio. Informal discussion and drinks at a local bar will follow the presentation and studio visit.

The Brooklyn Digital Foundry offers solutions for graphic design, brand identity, custom websites, computer visualization, marketing materials, and video production.  The Foundry’s main interest is the application of cutting-edge technology to enhance the “every-day everything.” Their diverse clients include everything from small businesses to major corporations in architecture, fashion, real estate, visual arts, music, education, technology, and finance.  The Foundry “recognizes the potential within digital technology to marry beauty, convenience, and efficiency because it transcends barriers that limit physical methods.”

Drinks with a Designer is open to all young designers 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 or call 212.753.1722 x 13 to reserve and receive more information.  Admission is free for League members; $5 non-members.

Drinks with a Designer 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. Join us on Facebook for additional programming and information.

Photos courtesy of Brooklyn Digital Foundry

Leslie E. Robertson, founding Principal of Leslie E. Robertson Associates, will host a presentation and office visit of his structural engineering firm. The visit will feature an overview of work as well as a discussion about the integration of design in his projects. Drinks and casual conversation with the designer will follow the presentation.

Amongst many other structures, Robertson is responsible for the structural design of the World Trade Center (New York), the United States Steel Headquarters (Pittsburgh), the Bank of China Tower (Hong Kong), and the Puerta de Europa (Madrid) as well as many museums and the award-winning Miho Museum Bridge (Japan).

Robertson is currently working with I.M. Pei and the Pei Partnership on the Macao Science Center in Macao, China, and has completed designs for the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou, China and the Museum for Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. He worked with Kohn Pedersen Fox to complete the Shanghai World Financial Center, which opened in 2008. Standing at 492 meters (1,614 feet), the project won the Best Tall Building in the World, 2008 award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). The award jury stated that “the structure is nothing short of genius.”

Drinks with a Designer 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. Join us on Facebook for additional programming and information.

Photo courtesy of Leslie E. Robertson Associates