In Redefining Lower Manhattan, How Are City Planners and Designers Rethinking Their Professional Practices?
Architecture Department and Urban Studies Program Host April 22 Forum: Changed by 9/11: Planning and Design After the World Trade Center
How has the process of redefining Lower Manhattan since the destruction of the World Trade Center impacted the thinking and work of top-level city planners, architects, urban designers and other professionals who are or have been involved in the redevelopment project at Ground Zero?
The Architecture Department and the Urban Studies Program at Barnard and Columbia Colleges will host a forum with leading design professionals and city planning officials to address this question on Thursday, April 22, on the campus of Barnard College. The discussion will take place from 6-8 P.M. in 202 Altschul Hall. The public is invited.
Participants will include Vishaan Chakrabarti , Director of the Manhattan Office for the New York Department of City Planning; Michael Fishman, founding member of Sam Schwartz LLC (SSC) and vice-president for Urban Design; Bruce S. Fowle , FAIA, founding Principal of Fox & Fowle Architects, P.C; Mindy Thompson Fullilove , MD, research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University; Richard T. Kennedy , Senior Director at Cushman & Wakefield, and Frederic Schwartz , founder, THINK -- an international group of architects selected as a finalist by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) for the World Cultural Center at the Ground Zero area.
David Smiley, a faculty member in the Barnard Architecture Department, explained that the forum will give the public insight into the thinking that went into the process of redefinining Lower Manhattan. "It's really an opportunity to meet the actors in this process and to hear first-hand how the World Trade Center work has changed the design and planning communities. The discussion will not focus on the new plans for the World Trade Center themselves but on the way the professionals participate in the project."
Smiley is teaching a course this semester at Barnard examining the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. "The remaking of the World Trade Center site offers a unique opportunity to examine architectural process as an integral part of American society and as a discipline with its own terms and anxieties," he said. "How did architects participate in the transformation of lower Manhattan and how do they continue to do so, weaving their own concerns and institutions with those of broader political and social structures, all of which, in turn, are struggling to adjust (or not) to the post-9/11 landscape?
The participants, Smiley said, will discuss how their disciplines have adjusted with respect to the changing landscape of government agencies, political structures, financial institutions and media representation in the Lower Manhattan area. "Given the complex interactions of urban discourse and action, how have the professional priorities, daily procedures, and long-term operations of the architectural and urbanist professions been reoriented since 9/11?"
Smiley's course has followed two threads: how current and past WTC proposals reflect the architecture's internal concerns and, second, how architectural culture connects to the urban, political and social processes in which the WTC site is being remade and was made possible in the first place. "The class examines how the practices of architecture shape, and are shaped by, their context," he said.
Biographies of the Participants
Vishaan Chakrabarti
Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, was appointed Director of the Manhattan Office for the New York Department of City Planning in 2002. A key member of the Department's executive staff, Chakrabarti advises the Mayor's Office and the City Planning Commission on planning issues throughout the borough, manages the thirty-person Manhattan Office, and acts as the primary liaison to a wide range of stakeholders including elected officials, community organizations, major institutions, and private sector entities on matters of urban design, land use, and economic development. Chakrabarti leads the City's urban design effort for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11. Other major initiatives he is currently directing include Hudson Yards, a plan for the redevelopment of the far west side of Manhattan; the redevelopment of the High Line, a 1.5 mile abandoned elevated railway, as a new linear park; and a river-to-river master plan for Harlem's 125 th Street corridor including a major new presence for Columbia University. Prior to joining the Department of City Planning, Chakrabarti was an Associate Partner for the New York Office of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, LLP. Chakrabarti is a David Rockefeller Fellow, a Crain's "40 under 40," is involved in numerous civic organizations, and frequently publishes, lectures, and serves on design juries.
Michael Fishman
Michael Fishman is a founding member of Sam Schwartz LLC (SSC) and is the vice-president for Urban Design. The SSC consults for public and private sector clients facing complex urban problems. For nearly a decade, the company has developed a remarkable reputation for its access, transportation and infrastructure work. Fishman is responsible for urban design, site strategy and community planning projects. Currently, he is directing work on the Columbia University Master Plan, Battery Park City Authority West Street Evaluation, World Financial Center / North Residential Neighborhood Streetscape and Security Design, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Strategic Open Space Projects and many other projects. Former projects include: The Intrepid, Rector and Morris Street Route 9A Pedestrian Bridges, The Brooklyn Museum of Art Master Plan, NYCEDC's Harlem Piers Master Plan, Chelsea Piers Access Plan and Canal Street Park. Mr Fishman has taught at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and has recently completed a Fellowship with the Design Trust for Public Space focused on Pedestrian Engineering in Times Square.
Bruce S. Fowle
Bruce S. Fowle, FAIA, is a founding Principal of Fox & Fowle Architects, P.C., and has been the firm's visionary leader since its inception twenty-six years ago. A recipient of the AIA/NYC Chapter's 2000 Medal of Honor and most recently a 2003 Chapter Design Award, his firm has been recognized worldwide for its design excellence and commitment to the environment. Immediately after 9/11, Fowle helped initiate and organize the NEW YORK NEW VISIONS coalition of twenty-one design and planning organizations that helped define design principles and establish processes for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. He continues to serve on the executive board which acts in an advisory capacity, providing vision and guidance to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
Mindy Thompson Fullilove
Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University. She is a board certified psychiatrist. After several years of work as a community psychiatrist, Dr. Fullilove joined the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at its founding in 1986. She moved to New York in 1990 and has continued to study AIDS and other problems of inner-city neighborhoods. Her work in AIDS is featured in Jacob Levenson's The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS in Black America . Most recently, with support of a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Investigator Award, she has studied the long-term consequences of urban renewal for African American people. As part of that work, she co-founded NYC RECOVERS, an alliance of organizations concerned with the social and emotional recovery of New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. This project provided the data for her recent book, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It . She is also the author of the 1999 book The House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place .
Richard T. Kennedy
Richard T. Kennedy is a Senior Director at Cushman & Wakefield with 23 years of real estate brokerage and consulting experience at the firm. Kennedy has been involved in some of the most significant public and private sector transactions in the City's downtown market and is actively involved in helping restructure the Lower Manhattan community. Kennedy's most recent major transaction is the Millennium High School at 75 Broad Street, the first new High School in Lower Manhattan. Under Mayor Giuliani, Kennedy chaired a private sector committee that advised city officials preparing the Mayor's Plan to revitalize Lower Manhattan, later signed into law in Albany, which helped create the Information Technology District in Lower Manhattan. Kennedy is on the Board of the Alliance for Downtown New York, Vice Chairman of Community Board 1 and Chair of its WTC Committee, and serves on an advisory council for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. He is also on the Board of NYU Downtown Hospital, Borough of Manhattan Community College and President of the Tribeca Performing Arts.
Frederic Schwartz
Frederic Schwartz's independent planning for Lower Manhattan "opened the door" to reduce market pressure at Ground Zero. In September 2002, The New York Times ran a profile titled "The Man Who Dared the City to THINK Again" and his ideas provided a framework for the New York Times Magazine's "Master Plan: THINK Big." He founded THINK -- an international group of architects selected as a finalist by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) for their internationally popular World Cultural Center. Schwartz has won major design competitions including the new Staten Island Ferry Terminal, the Southwest Regional Capitol of France, the Santa Fe Railyard Park and most recently a competition for affordable and market rate housing in Harlem. Schwartz is currently a finalist in four competitions: the Hoboken 9/11 Memorial; the Westchester 9/11 Memorial; the San Diego Waterfront Master Plan and the Canadian International Human Rights Museum. Frederic Schwartz was a recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture, a National Endowment for the Arts Design Fellowship and selected by the Architecture League of New York for both the Young Architect's Award and as an Emerging Voice in Architecture. Schwartz has taught architectural design at Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Penn and has written several books on architecture.
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