Ideas at Work: TKTS 2K
Victoria Bailey, Theatre Development Fund
Victoria Bailey is Executive Director of Theatre Development Fund (TDF), the largest not-for-profit service organization for the performing arts in the country. Prior to her appointment at TDF, Bailey had a nearly 20-year association with the Manhattan Theatre Club, serving primarily as General Manager, and has additionally served as a member of the Executive Board of the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers. Bailey is a member of the adjunct faculty at the School of the Arts, Columbia University, and a member of the board of the Times Square Alliance. She has also been a member of the New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Awards Selection Committee, and is currently serving a second term on the Tony Awards Nominating Committee.
Marshall Berman, CIty College of New York
Marshall Berman is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, teaching political philosophy and urbanism. Berman’s publications include The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (1970), All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982), Adventures in Marxism (1999), On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (2006), and New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg (2007) with Brian Berger.
Jack Goldstein, Actors' Equity Association
Jack Goldstein is National Director of Policy for Actors’ Equity Association. He was a founding member and Executive Director of Save the Theaters Inc., responsible for the actors’ campaign to designate Broadway theaters as landmarks, and contributing to theater district zoning innovations and the 42nd Street redevelopment. Consulting clients have included Actors’ Equity Association, the Economic Development Corporation, the Department of City Planning and Department of Economic Development, the 7th Regiment Armory Conservancy, and St. Peter’s Church at Citigroup Center. As Executive Director of Theatre Development Fund from 1998 to 2000, he conceived the TKTS Design Competition. He has served as Chairman of Community Board #5, on the TONY Awards Nominating Committee, and as Chair of the NYSCA Theater Panel.
Tim Tompkins, Times Square Alliance
Tim Tompkins is President of the Times Square Alliance. Prior to his post at the Alliance, he was the Founder and Director of Partnerships for Parks, a joint program of the City Parks Foundation and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation that works to support New York’s neighborhood parks. He has also served professionally at New York City’s Economic Development Corporation and the New York City Charter Revision Commission, and was an editor at The News, an English-language newspaper in Mexico City.
Claire Weisz, WXY Architecture + Urban Design
Claire Weisz is a founding partner of WXY, a design studio whose current work includes both urban and architectural projects. WXY recently completed the interior renovation of the Times Square Visitors Center, and in 2009 completed the NYC Information Center with Local Projects. Previously, Weisz served on the founding board and was co-executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space. She is currently on the faculty of NYU’s Wagner School of Public Policy, and has taught and lectured at architectural schools including Yale University, Columbia University, and Pratt Institute.
Ideas at Work: Governors Island
Abby Hamlin, Hamlin Ventures, LLC
Abby Hamlin is president of Hamlin Ventures, LLC, a real estate development company and creative studio that focuses on design driven projects that open up new ideas about cities, public space and how people interact with their built environment. An active member of New York City’s real estate community and a dedicated proponent of the arts, Hamlin is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Van Alen Institute, serves on the advisory board of the NYU Real Estate Institute, is a member of the Board and the Executive Committee of Art Omi, and is currently an adjunct professor of Real Estate Development at the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University.
Andrea Kahn, designCONTENT
As founding principal of designCONTENT, Andrea Kahn has extensive experience teaching architects and urban designers to articulate, elucidate and graphically demonstrate the merits of strong design ideas. Kahn is an Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, and her research interests include the formative roles of representation and analysis in the urban design process; site thinking in theory and practice; and urban design competitions. She is a contributing editor of Constellations: Constructing Urban Design Practices (2007), Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies (with Carol Burns, 2005), and Drawing/Building/Text: Essays in Architectural Theory (1991).
Leslie Koch, Trust for Governors Island
As president of The Trust for Governors Island since 2006, Leslie Koch is responsible for the planning, redevelopment and on-going operation of the 150 acres of the Island owned by The Trust. Koch developed the strategy to create new park and public spaces, expand public access and early signature uses, invest in infrastructure and stabilization and plan for mixed-use public and private development. Formerly Koch was an executive at Microsoft, and the CEO of the Fund for Public Schools, the nonprofit organization affiliated with the New York City Department of Education, where she developed initiatives to increase public participation and private sector support for public education, securing nearly $160 million for system-wide initiatives and school-based programs.
Setha Low, Public Space Research Group, CUNY
Setha Low is currently Professor of Environmental Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Public Space Research Group at The Graduate Center, City University of New York where she teaches courses and trains Ph.D. students in the anthropology of space and place, urban anthropology, culture, emotion and environment, and cultural values in historic preservation. Low has been awarded numerous fellowships and is widely published and lectures internationally on these issues. Low received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent books include: Politics of Public Space (2006 Routledge with N. Smith), Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity (2005, University of Texas Press with S. Scheld and D. Taplin), Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (2004, Routledge), The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (2003, Blackwell with D. Lawrence-Zuniga).
Anuradha Mathur & Dilip da Cunha, Mathur/da Cunha
Anuradha Mathur & Dilip da Cunha are principles of the Philadelphia firm Mathur/da Cunha. Mathur is an architect and landscape architect and is the Associate Chair, Landscape Architecture Department, University of Pennsylvania. Cunha is an architect and planner. He is on the faculty at Parsons School of Design, and at the University of Pennsylvania. Mathur/da Cunha have focused their work for the past decade on cultural and ecological issues of contentious landscapes. Their exhibition and book Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape (2001) presents a layered landscape that demands negotiation more than control; the exhibition and book Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore's Terrain (2006) brings together unique and extensive documentation of Bangalore’s history and landscape agency; and SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary (2009), a book and exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai responds to the flood of 2005 and presents a new visualization of Mumbai’s terrain.
Ideas at Work: Urban Voids
Glen J Abrams, Philadelphia Water Department
Along with his 16 years of experience in municipal planning, from affordable housing and environmental policy to visioning and sustainability, Glen Abrams also frequently lecturs on water resources planning, green infrastructure and urban hydrology. Additionally, Mr. Abrams serves as adjunct faculty at Philadelphia University, where he teaches Environmental Science.
Ray Gastil, Gastilworks Planning & Design
Former Director of Seattle Planning and Development, Director of Planning for Manhattan in New York City, and founding director of Van Alen Institute, Ray Gastil currently runs an interdisciplinary planning and design firm. Prior to his tenure at VAI, Gastil served as Director of the Regional Design program for the Regional Plan Association, where his work focused on growth in rail-served communities in the New York City metropolitan area.
Interboro Partners
Interboro is an urban design, planning and architecture firm based in New York City. Partners Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca, and Georgeen Theodore have won many awards for their innovative projects, including the New Practices Award from the AIA New York Chapter and the Architectural League’s Young Architects Award. Interboro’s work has been published and exhibited widely, notably in the Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, Walker Art Center, and Wexner Center for the Arts.
Deenah Loeb, City Parks Association Philadelphia
Deenah Loeb has over 25 years of program innovation and implementation experience in arts and the environment. With the City Parks Association, Ms. Loeb has developed numerous educational symposia and initiated LANDvisions, an idea-generating program to address vacancy in Philadelphia. Ms. Loeb holds a MLA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Wesleyan University.
Christopher Marcinkoski, PORT Architecture + Urbanism
A founding director of PORT, Christopher Marcinkoski was formerly a senior associate at James Corner Field Operations where his work included the winning competition entry for the planning and design of the 18 square kilometer QianHai Water City district of Shenzhen, China and the Brookfield Properties West Side Rail Yards Master Plan in New York City. Mr. Marcinkoski is currently an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Chariss McAfee, Charles Loomis, Loomis McAfee Architects
Charles Loomis and Chariss McAfee both received Masters of Architecture from Yale University and have worked for the past 22 years in Philadelphia. Together, they have completed well over 200 projects, most recently a site plan for the Community Design Collaborative and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which focuses on a vacant brown field site on the Schuylkill River and pairs prototyping and manufacturing facilities with an urban greenway.
Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer
Inga Saffron has been the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Architecture Critic since 1999. She writes a weekly column called Changing Skyline and has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three times--in 2004, 2008, and 2009. Ms. Saffron’s columns are known for pushing the boundaries of architectural criticism, focusing not just on high-profile buildings but also on less heralded projects that directly affect Philadelphians. Previously, Ms. Saffron served as a correspondent for the Inquirer in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Susanna Sirefman, Dovetail Design Strategists, LLC
Founder and President of Dovetail Design Strategists, Susanna Sirefman focuses on creating and leading the architect selection process for a broad range of clients. Trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Ms. Sirefman has created, developed and led several international design competitions. She is currently the Competition Advisor for the urbancanvas design competition for the City of New York and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Design Trust for Public Space.
Harris M. Steinberg, PennPraxis
Harris M. Steinberg is the Executive Director of PennPraxis and an adjunct assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Steinberg’s work at PennPraxis, the applied research arm of the School of Design at Penn, focuses on large-scale civic visioning and advocacy processes such as the creation of the award-winning 2007 A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware. Mr. Steinberg previously served as a member of the Philadelphia Historical Commission and was elected to the College of Fellows of the AIA in 2006.
| 