Events at Van Alen Books
Van Alen Books hosts book launches, discussions, and panels engaging themes of architecture, design, and public space. Grab a seat on our yellow steps and join the conversation!
All events take place at Van Alen Books, 30 W. 22nd Street, on the ground floor between 5th and 6th Avenues in Manhattan. Missed previous events? Check out video clips from selected readings on our Vimeo page.
Our hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, with extended hours on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Find out more at www.vanalenbooks.org
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, May 17, 7:00 P.M.
Michael Maltzan, Geoff Manaugh
No More Play: Conversations on Urban Speculation in Los Angeles and Beyond
In No More Play: Conversations on Urban Speculation in Los Angeles and Beyond, architect Michael Maltzan traces the transformations that have taken place in the city of Los Angeles since the early 1990s. Through a series of conversations with the city’s leading artists and intellectuals, Maltzan explores such issues as real-estate speculation and future urban development, infrastructure, resources, site density, urban experience, political structure, commerce, and community, attempting to transform our understanding of how each affects present-day Los Angeles. Join Maltzan and Los Angeles transplant, contributor, and Studio-X co-director Geoff Manaugh for a conversation about the book.
Thursday, May 24, 7:00 P.M.
Marilyn Jordan Taylor, Cathryn Dwyre, K.T. Anthony Chan
DIRT
DIRT presents a selection of works that share dirty attitudes: essays, interviews, excavations, and projects that view dirt not as filth but as a medium, a metaphor, a material, a process, a design tool, a narrative, a system. Rooted in the landscape architect's perspective, DIRT views dirt not as repulsive but endlessly giving, fertile, adaptive, and able to accommodate difference while maintaining cohesion. This dirty perspective sheds light on social connections, working processes, imaginative ideas, physical substrates, and urban networks. Join Marilyn Jordan Taylor, dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, along with DIRT managing editor Cathryn Dwyre and designer K. T. Anthony Chan for a lively discussion about the newest book from viaBooks, PennDesign’s student-led publication.
Saturday, May 26, 1:00 P.M.
Chelsea and the High Line with John Hill
Take in the new cutting-edge architecture in the Meatpacking District and Chelsea in this walk that traverses the length of the High Line, the impetus for much of the area's dramatic change. Grab your walking shoes and join John Hill, author of Archidose Blog and the recently released Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture for a two and a half hour tour that embarks from Van Alen Books and ends at the northern terminus of the High Line at West 30th Street and Tenth Avenue.
$15 General / FREE for VAI Members
Wednesday, May 30, 7:00 P.M.
PLOT
Launch Party: PLOT Volume 1
The Graduate Landscape Architecture Program of the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, is launching the first volume of its new student-edited journal, PLOT. Featuring submissions by students, faculty, staff, and friends of the Landscape Architecture program, Volume 1 explores the theme of the Marginal Street, developed by the second year MLA student editorial board in collaboration with faculty advisor Catherine Seavitt Nordenson and designed by Isaac Gertman. Contributions to this issue explore the fringes, cracks, and edges of urban terrain. Come celebrate PLOT’s debut issue and toast to the 2012 graduating class of Master of Landscape Architecture students.
Thursday, May 31, 7:00 P.M.
Eran Ben-Joseph, June Williamson
ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking
While the majority of us consider parking lots in functional terms, ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking asks: What can a parking lot be? How could parking lots become valuable public spaces? In this new book, MIT professor of landscape architecture and urban planning Eran Ben-Joseph argues that surface parking lots shouldn’t be treated as mere residual waystations in our built world. Instead, they can transcend a purely utilitarian role to embrace the parking lot’s historical significance, growing multitude of cultural uses, and potential for transformation. Ben-Joseph will be joined in conversation by June Williamson, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York.
PREVIOUS EVENTS
Tuesday, May 15, 7:00 P.M.
Jean-Louis Cohen, Richard Pare, Asif Siddiqi, Xenia Vytuleva
ZATO: Secret Soviet Cities During the Cold War
Join Van Alen for a conversation investigating ZATO, sites of highly secretive military and scientific research and production in the Soviet Empire. Nameless and not shown on maps, these remote urban environments followed a unique architectural program inspired by ideal cities and the ideology of the Party. Panelists Jean-Louis Cohen, professor in the History of Architecture at NYU; distinguished photographer Richard Pare; Asif Siddiqi, Professor at Fordham University; and curator Xenia Vytuleva will discuss these “realized utopias” within a larger socio-political and artistic discourse.
Saturday, May 12, 1:00 P.M.
Madison Square to Bryant Park with John Hill
The area just east of Broadway between 23rd and 42nd Streets hasn't witnessed as much change as other parts of the city, but it still has some new gems worth discovering. Grab your walking shoes and join John Hill, author of Archidose Blog and the recently released Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture for a two and a half hour tour that embarks from Van Alen Books and ends at Bryant Park, taking in stretches of Madison Avenue, Park Avenue, and 42nd Street.
$15 General / FREE for VAI Members
Thursday, May 10, 7:00 P.M.
Alexandra Lange, Chappell Ellison, Molly Heintz, Angela Riechers
Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities
Writing About Architecture is a handbook on writing effectively and critically about buildings and cities. Each chapter opens with a reprint of a significant essay written by a renowned architecture critic, followed by a close reading and discussion of the writer’s strategies. Join Lange and three of her former students from the School of Visual Arts Design Criticism MFA for a discussion of teaching, learning, and writing criticism. Where do you start? What assignments work? And what forms can criticism take, once you're out of school?
Saturday, April 28, 1:00 P.M.
Madison Square to Union Square with John Hill
The area east of Broadway between 14th and 23rd Steets is the focus of this tour, an area defined by its parks: Union Square Park, Stuyvesant Park, Gramercy Park, Madison Square Park. Grab your walking shoes and join John Hill, author of Archidose Blog and the recently released Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture for a two hour tour that snakes around these parks and highlights some of the recent architecture in their midst. The tour will depart from Van Alen Books.
$15 General / FREE for VAI Members
Friday, April 27, 7:00 P.M.
Andres Lepik, Sarah Williams Goldhagen
Moderators of Change: Architecture That Helps
Moderators of Change: Architecture That Helps demonstrates how innovative design solutions can transform society. By directly including users in the planning, design and building process and working with new economic models, the designers featured in this volume have realized projects that have had profound, positive effects with minimum investment of money and materials: besides urban infrastructures, this volume presents model projects such as schools, libraries, gardens, converted buildings, and art projects. Join curator and editor Andres Lepik and critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen for a conversation on the social impact of architecture and the changing role of architects.
Thursday, April 26, 7:00 P.M.
Craig Buckley, Michael Bell, José Rafael Moneo, Mark Wigley, Gary Higbee, Mabel Wilson
Post-Ductility: Metals in Architecture and Engineering
Metals, as surface or structure, play a role in nearly every strain of modern architecture. Non-architectural metals in the form of automobiles and hard goods are the engines of our sprawling cities. Known for superior strength, metals allow us to build higher and span greater distances. However, they can also be soft, forgiving, and ethereal. In Post-Ductility, an inter-disciplinary group of architects, historians, theorists, and engineers collectively explores the past, present, and future possibilities of this essential building material. Post-Ductility includes works and essays by contemporary architects, engineers, and educators such as José Rafael Moneo, Steven Holl, Rory McGowan, Mark Wigley, Sylvia Lavin, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Paola Antonelli, Ana Miljacki, Hillary Sample, Galia Solomonoff and Theodore Prudon.
Saturday, April 21, 1:00 P.M.
Chelsea and the High Line with John Hill
Take in the new cutting-edge architecture in the Meatpacking District and Chelsea in this walk that traverses the length of the High Line, the impetus for much of the area's dramatic change. Grab your walking shoes and join John Hill, author of Archidose Blog and the recently released Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture for a two and a half hour tour that embarks from Van Alen Books and ends at the northern terminus of the High Line at West 30th Street and Tenth Avenue.
$15 General / FREE for VAI Members
Thursday, April 19, 6:00 P.M.
Pippo Ciorra, Ada Tolla, Mark Robbins, Elisabetta Terragni
Re-Cycle: Strategies for Architecture, City and Planet
Join Van Alen to celebrate the U.S. release of Re-Cycle: Strategies for Architecture, City and Planet, the catalog for the major exhibition at Rome’s MAXXI museum devoted to exemplary projects involving the recycling of architecture, cities, and landscapes together with works by artists, photographers, and media producers. Senior curator Pippo Ciorra will be joined by contributors Ada Tolla of LOT-EK, Mark Robbins, dean of the Syracuse School of Architecture, and Elisabetta Terragni of Studio Terragni to discuss the practice of recycling as “one of the greatest generators of creative innovation.”
Wednesday, April 18, 7:00 P.M.
Julie Iovine, Suzanne Frank, Diana Agrest, Suzanne Stephens, Frederieke Taylor
The Institute as the Women Saw It
IAUS: An Insider's Memoir
At first affiliated with New York's Museum of Modern Art and Cornell University, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies was intellectual home to architects, artists and historians who worked on creative design and conceptual projects that would shape the architectural conversation for decades, while bringing renown to all associated with it, from think-master Peter Eisenman, historian Kenneth Frampton, and young Rem Koolhaas, whose work on Delirious New York was spurred on by the Institute. Suzanne Frank's new book IAUS: An Insider's Memoir sets the stage for a conversation between IAUS alumni Suzanne Frank, Diana Agrest, Suzanne Stephens, and Frederieke Taylor, moderated by Julie Iovine of The Architect's Newspaper.
Friday, April 13, 7:00 P.M.
Tom Angotti, Paula Horrigan, Sally Harrison, Clara Irazabal
Service Learning in Design and Planning: Educating at the Boundaries
This rich collection of case studies by design educators critically explores the current practice of service-learning in architecture, landscape design, and urban planning. Join editors Tom Angotti, Cheryl Doble, and Paula Horrigan, and chapter authors Laura Lawson and Sally Harrison for a conversation on the pedagogical framework advanced by the book and their set of examples, ideas, and guidelines that will help educators, professionals, and students develop a truly generative and inclusive design process.
Thursday, April 12, 7:00 P.M.
Joan Ockman, Stan Allen
Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America
Rooted in the British apprenticeship system, the French Beaux-Arts, and the German polytechnical schools, architecture education in North America has had a unique history spanning almost three hundred years. Architecture School provides the first comprehensive history of North American architecture education with six essays, and a "lexicon" of more than two dozen topics that have figured centrally in architecture education's history, from competitions and design pedagogy to research, structures, studio culture, and travel. Join editor Joan Ockman and dean of the Princeton School of Architecture Stan Allen for a talk on the issues of architecture education that this history highlights.
Friday, April 6, 7:00 P.M.
Book Launch: Empowering Architecture
Join us for the launch of MASS Design Group’s Empowering Architecture, their first publication showcasing the recently completed Butaro Hospital in Rwanda. Celebrated as a case study in designing for social justice, the project uses architecture as a means to deliver innovative design solutions that improve health care services and positively impact the surrounding community. Empowering Architecture features an introduction by Partners in Health Founder and President Dr. Paul Farmer, and images by renowned architectural photographer Iwan Baan.
Saturday, April 7, 1:00 P.M.
Madison Square to Bryant Park with John Hill
The area just east of Broadway between 23rd and 42nd Streets hasn't witnessed as much change as other parts of the city, but it still has some new gems worth discovering. Grab your walking shoes and join John Hill, author of Archidose Blog and the recently released Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture for a two and a half hour tour that embarks from Van Alen Books and ends at Bryant Park, taking in stretches of Madison Avenue, Park Avenue, and 42nd Street.
$15 General / FREE for VAI Members
Friday, March 30, 7:00 P.M.
PIDGIN Magazine
Launch Party: Issues 11 & 12
Published to make work generated at Princeton School of Architecture accessible to fellow students and the outside world, PIDGIN Magazine features submissions by students, faculty, staff and friends of the school. Visit Van Alen Books for the launch of issues 11 & 12 and a screening of The Box, a short film by Reyner Banham featured in PIDGIN 11. Topics discussed in the latest issues include rereading Landscape Urbanism, a visit to Dubai, a Constructivist steel town, imaginary freeways, and more. Join PIDGIN in celebrating their latest release.
Thursday, March 22, 7:00 P.M.
Susan Morgan, Gabrielle Esperdy
Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader
This new reader is the first collection of the writings by the groundbreaking architectural historian, author and curator who articulated the concepts and vibrant character of West Coast modernism as it was being created. The volume includes out-of print essays, articles, and short stories, as well as hitherto unpublished lectures, correspondence, and memoirs that together illuminate the breadth and complexity of McCoy’s work. Join Editor Susan Morgan and architectural historian and critic Gabrielle Esperdy for a discussion of the development and diversity of McCoy’s writing and the region that inspired it.
Wednesday, March 21, 7:00 P.M.
Lori Brown, Peggy Deamer, Dagmar Richter, and Despina Stratigakos
Feminist Practices: Pedagogy
For our third Feminist Practices event, Lori Brown is joined by Dagmar Richter, Chair of Pratt Institute Undergraduate Architecture Department; Despina Stratigakos, Professor at University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning; and Peggy Deamer, Professor at Yale University School of Architecture, for a conversation on the state of architectural pedagogy.
Thursday, March 8, 7:00 P.M.
Deborah Schneiderman, Anita Cooney
Inside Pre-Fab: The Ready-made Interior
As an inherently sustainable and affordable building method, prefabrication has enjoyed a revival in recent years, attracting clients and architects alike. In Inside Prefab, author Deborah Schneiderman offers a fascinating history of prefabricated interior design, followed by twenty-four contemporary case studies. This first book-length discussion and showcase of the prefabricated interior environment includes projects by established architects such as Shigeru Ban, Atelier Tekuto, and Greg Lynn, as well as up-and-coming firms. Schneiderman will be joined in conversation with Anita Cooney, Chair of the Department of Interior Design at Pratt Institute.
Wednesday, March 7, 7:00 P.M.
Lori Brown, Yolande Daniels, Olympia Kazi, and Catherine Seavitt
Feminist Practices: Design Research
Lori Brown returns to continue Van Alen Institute’s Feminist Practices series with a conversation on design research. Joined by Van Alen director Olympia Kazi, principal of Studio Sumo Yolande Daniels, and designer Catherine Seavitt, Brown presents a panel on female-led investigations in the design field with three women whose research spans design in the public realm, social systems and technologies of difference, and sea level rise in urban regions.
Thursday, March 1, 7:00 P.M.
Lori Brown, Meta Brunzema, Ronit Eisenbach, Kyna Leski, and Margarita McGrath
Feminist Practices
Lori Brown’s Feminist Practices explores the relationship between feminist methodologies and various approaches to design. Presenting the work of up-and-coming female architects and designers whose projects range from the global to the local, Feminist Practices challenges conventional ideas of architecture, and of what constitutes a feminist practice. Join Lori Brown and contributors Ronit Eisenbach, Meta Brunzema, Margarita McGrath, and Kyna Leski for a panel on the evolving definition of feminism in the 21st century.
Monday, February 27, 6:30 P.M.
Van Alen Institute at the Austrian Cultural Forum
Socio-Political Maps: A Participatory Public Discourse on the City
Van Alen Institute and the Austrian Cultural Forum present a round table discussion on the questions of urban mappings and participatory public discourse on the city. Using Sophie Hochhäusl’s book Otto Neurath – City Planning: Proposing a Socio-Political Map for Modern Urbanism as a departure point, panelists Christine Gaspar, Sophie Hochhäusl, Prem Krishnamurthy, Bart Lootsma, William Menking, Nader Vossoughian and moderator Olympia Kazi will discuss the state of socio-political mapping in architecture and urbanism historically and today.
Thursday, February 23, 7:00 P.M.
Eva Franch
Spotlight on: Contented Formats/Formatted Discontents
Storefront for Art and Architecture is a nonprofit organization committed to the advancement of innovative positions in architecture, art and design. Their program of exhibitions, artists talks, film screenings, conferences and publications is intended to generate dialogue and collaboration across geographic, ideological and disciplinary boundaries. As part of our Spotlight On series, Storefront director Eva Franch visits Van Alen Books to discuss the Storefront PublicA[c]tions program and address different models of making ideas public.
Friday, February 17, 7:00 P.M.
Kyle May, Julia van den Hout, Jacob Reidel and The Office of PlayLab Inc.
CLOG : APPLE
Last June, Steve Jobs presented Apple Campus 2 to the Cupertino City Council. Due to Apple’s high profile—not to mention the scale and iconic nature of Foster + Partners’ design—the online reaction to the “spaceship” was immediate and strong. While Apple has been constructing retail stores throughout the world for over a decade, discussion of the company, even among architects, has typically focused on its famed product design. With one of the largest American office projects in history underway in Cupertino, join CLOG as we explore Apple and architecture.
Thursday, February 16, 7:00 P.M.
Mitch McEwen, David Turnbull, Fran Benitez, Chloe Bass, Prerana Reddy
Spotlight On: SUPERFRONT
SUPERFRONT, a not-for-profit dedicated to promoting architectural experimentation, visits Van Alen Books to introduce their publications and celebrate the launch of their most recent project chronicling the Lab for Urban Futures series at the Queens Museum of Art. Mitch McEwen, founder and director of SUPERFRONT, along with David Turnbull, Francisca Benitez, Chloë Bass, and Prerana Reddy, will discuss their collaborations in translating the interdisciplinary programs, events, and exhibits of SUPERFRONT into publications such as Making Space, Unplanned: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale, and Detroit: A Brooklyn Case Study.
Thursday, February 9, 7:00 P.M.
Milton Curry, Peter Gilgen
CriticalProductive
CriticalProductive is a new biannual journal/magazine focused on covering the processes of urbanization in the world’s fast-moving economies and geographic environments. Come celebrate the launch of the first issue, V1.1 Theoretic Action. The significance of working within and outside of the walls of the academy was evident when workers and students converged in Paris, Mexico City, and in the streets and campuses of the United States in 1968 to give voice to democratic, political, and social movements -- consequently changing the trajectory of history. Theoretic Action inaugurates a new discourse on the political role of aesthetics and space in contemporary culture.
Friday, February 3, 7:00 P.M.
Aaron Levy, William Menking, Thomas Weaver
Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse
Architecture on Display coalesces around the simple premise that architecture is something that problematizes its own display. Exploring the questions that exhibitions raise rather than recapitulating the exhibitions themselves, this two-part research and publication series hopes to offer a new model for future curatorial endeavors through open-ended conversation. In Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse, Slought Foundation’s Aaron Levy and William Menking of The Architect’s Newspaper depart from the findings of Volume One, On The History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Assuming a dialogic approach, Volume Two draws from conversations with fifty practitioners, including architects and designers, theorists and historians, editors and publishers, students and professors to investigate the importance of cultivating critical and creative publics. Join Levy, Menking, and publisher Thomas Weaver of the Architectural Association for a lively discussion of their publication and of architecture’s public.
Thursday, January 26, 7:00 P.M.
Alexander Brash, Jamie Hand, Kate Orff
Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park
In 2006, Van Alen Institute partnered with the National Parks Conservation Association and Columbia's GSAPP to host an international ideas competition that looked afresh at the fate of natural and cultural resources in dense urban settings by reimagining an urban national park in New York City: the Gateway National Recreation Area. Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park showcases entries from the competition, and considers them within broad contexts of ecological regeneration, cultural diversity, urban policy, and environmental education. With contributions from editors Alexander Brash, Jamie Hand, and Kate Orff, as well as reflections from historian Ethan Carr, critic Christopher Hawthorne, the National Park Service’s Rolf Diamant, former VAI executive director Adi Shamir, and others, the book documents the innovative competition process and ways that urban parks can foster democracy and community. Join the editors, photographer Laura McPhee, and GSAPP's Sarah Williams to celebrate the launch of Gateway.
Friday, December 9, 7:00 P.M.
Nader Tehrani
Testing to Failure: Design Research in MIT's Department of Architecture
Following 2009’s Uncertain Futures, this book presents a range of provocative student and faculty research within MIT’s Department of Architecture. Transcripts from symposia and panel discussions, essays from friends of the department, as well as architectural installations developed and produced in honor of MIT’s 150th Anniversary celebrations in April 2011 all find their way into a book organized around “forums” of critical discussion within the school and the discipline at large. Join department head Nader Tehrani at the New York debut of this new volume. Contributors include Liam O’Brien Jr., Marc Tsurumaki, Sheila Kennedy, Rodolphe el-Khoury, Shih-Fu Peng, J. Meejin Yoon, Mark Jarzombek, and many more.
Thursday, December 8, 6:30 P.M.
At the Museum of the City of New York
Diana Balmori, Joel Sanders, Geoff Manaugh
Urban by Nature: Healing the Landscape/Architecture Divide in NYC
Van Alen Books heads uptown to the Museum of the City of New York for this special event exploring landscape and architecture in New York City. Nowhere is the divide between nature and culture, country and city seemingly more stark than in New York, where concrete, glass, and steel long ago tamped down the native flora and fauna. How can architecture and landscape architecture, themselves the product of the nature/culture divide, help mend this physical and philosophical rift? Join landscape and urban designer Diana Balmori and architect Joel Sanders, co-authors of Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (Monacelli, 2011) along with Geoff Manaugh, co-director of Studio-X NYC, for a discussion of New York City’s attempts to integrate the natural world into the city, and the role that potential collaborations between landscape architecture and architecture in New York City can play.
Tuesday, December 6, 7:00 P.M.
Caitlin Lempres Brostrom, Richard C. Peters
The Houses of William Wurster
Over the course of a career that spanned forty-five years, William Wilson Wurster designed hundreds of residences up and down the West Coast. A blend of modernism with vernacular, Wurster described these homes as "frames for living": spaces that could be fully transformed by the occupant to meet their needs and desires. Authors Caitlin Lempres Brostrom and Richard C. Peters draw upon extensive historical research as well as personal relationships with Wurster to tell the story of his career.
Thursday, December 1, 7:00 P.M.
George Baird and Mary McLeod in conversation
Public Space: Cultural/Political Theory; Street Photography
In this new book, George Baird describes the decline of confidence in the idea of “public space” on the part of a surprising number of prominent architectural designers and theorists in recent years. Arguing against this tendency, he re-asserts the importance of a commitment to “the public”, and proposes an alternative approach that begins from the phenomenology and the politics of the individual body in the world. Baird gives relevant architectural and urban examples and illustrates his ideas through archival street photographs. George Baird will be joined by Mary McLeod for a conversation about the book and the future of public space.
Tuesday, November 29, 7:00 P.M.
Spotlight on Center for Urban Pedagogy: Making Policy Public
While the effects of public policies can be widespread, the discussion and understanding of these policies are usually not. Center for Urban Pedagogy Executive Director Christine Gaspar visits Van Alen Books to discuss Making Policy Public, a series that pairs advocacy groups with graphic designers to create fold-out posters that explore, explain, and improve access to public policy. The series seeks to create opportunities for designers to engage social issues without sacrificing experimentation, and helps advocacy organizations reach their constituencies better through design.
Monday, November 21, 7:00 P.M.
John Hill
Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture
The first decade of the 21st century has been a time of lively architectural production in New York City. A veritable building boom gripped the city, giving rise to a host of new-and architecturally cutting-edge-residential, corporate, institutional, academic, and commercial structures. With the boom now waning, this guidebook is perfectly timed to take stock of the city's new skyline and map them all out, literally. The guide features 200 of the most notable buildings and spaces constructed in New York's five boroughs since the new millennium, grouping them by neighborhood for easy, self-guided tours, with photos, maps, directions, and descriptions that highlight the most important aspects of each entry.
Saturday, November 19, 5:00 P.M.
Topos Launch: Crisis Landscapes
When a crisis occurs in the world around us, we commonly think in terms of the human or architectural scale. The new issue of Topos examines crisis situations in relationship to the landscape. These landscapes unfold as the result of natural disasters like earthquakes or floods or over time as the result of failures in human systems such as military or economic instability. This issue explores a range of situations and responses, ultimately asking the question: What is the role of design in the face of traumatic conditions? Contributors include: Anthony Acciavatti, Alan Berger, Jessica Bridger, Livia Corona, Frank Eckardt, Mohamed Elshahed, Justin Fowler, Anna Grichting, Kristina Hill, Miho Mazereeuw, Hiko Mitani, Elisabeth Mossop, Ute Plagge, Julian Raxworthy, John Walsh, and Christian Werthmann.
Friday, November 18, 7:00 P.M.
Spotlight on the Architectural League: 30 Years of the League Prize
The Architectural League Prize (formerly known as the Young Architects Forum) provides a valuable opportunity for young architects and designers to explore and express their ideas, and to present them to an audience of their peers and more established members of the artistic community. Anne Rieselbach, Program Director for the Architectural League, reflects back on 30 years of the League Prize and, with previous winners David Benjamin, Stella Betts, Andrew Bernheimer, Phu Hoang and Jared Della Valle, traces the evolution of winners work within the context of the program, as well as some of the other work and ideas of firms featured in the Young Architects series, published annually by Princeton Architectural Press.
Saturday, November 12, 5:00 P.M.
Gareth Doherty and El Hadi Jazairy
New Geographies
New Geographies is a journal of Design, Agency, Territory, founded and produced by doctoral candidates at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Through critical essays and design projects, New Geographies positions design's agency amidst concerns of scale, infrastructure, ecology, and globalization with the “geographic” condition, reflecting a desire for a synthetic scalar practice that links disciplines and attributes, and opens a range of technical, formal, and social repertoires for architecture and design. Join us on November 12 to celebrate the launch of New Geographies 3: Urbanisms of Color and New Geographies 4:Scales of Earth.
Saturday, November 5, 2:00 P.M.
John Hill
Contemporary Architecture Walking Tour
The last decade's building boom in New York City gave rise to a host of new and cutting-edge residential, corporate, institutional, academic, and commercial structures designed by big names and up-and-comers alike. This walking tour, starting at the northeast corner of Union Square Park, next to the Comfort Station, highlights recent additions to the area east of Broadway roughly between 14th and 23rd Streets. The approximate duration of the tour is two hours, and it is about 2.5 miles in length, so please wear comfortable walking shoes. The tour is led by John Hill, architect, blogger, and author of the forthcoming Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture (W. W. Norton).
Tuesday, November 1, 7:00 P.M.
Charles Bloszies
Old Buildings, New Designs
The quest for sustainability will increasingly concentrate development in cities, resulting in architecture that will be a fusion of new and old forms, especially as policy incentives are implemented that encourage major additions to existing buildings. San Francisco architect Charles Bloszies, joined by Megan Carey of Princeton Architectural Press, will explore this topic as he presents case studies from his recently released book.
Saturday, October 29, 1:00 P.M.
Steven Guarnaccia
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Tale Moderne
Come to a reading of modern furniture-themed Goldilocks and The Three Bears: a Tale Moderne by award-winning author/illustrator Steven Guarnaccia. Then join us for a drawing activity that immediately follows the reading. Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear each have a chair of their own. Why not you? Bring out your inner furniture designer as you draw your ideal chair right on the stairs of Van Alen Books! RSVP encouraged, rsvp@vanalen.org.
Friday, October 28, 7:00 P.M.
Thom Mayne
Combinatory Urbanism
Thom Mayne's Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form is both a manifesto on urbanism and a comprehensive presentation of 12 urban projects that exist in the hybrid space between architecture and urban planning. These projects, many of which have never been published, range in scale from a 16-acre proposal for rebuilding the World Trade Center site to a 52,000-acre redevelopment proposal for post-Katrina New Orleans.
Thursday, October 27, 7:00 P.M.
Nicholas de Monchaux
Spacesuit
In Spacesuit, Nicholas de Monchaux tells the story of the twenty-one-layer spacesuit in twenty-one chapters addressing twenty-one topics relevant to the suit, the body, and the technology of the twentieth century. He touches, among other things, on JFK's carefully cultivated image, the CBS lunar broadcast soundstage, NASA's Mission Control, and the applications of Apollo-style engineering to city planning. The spacesuit, de Monchaux argues, tells us about the distinctions between natural and man-made complexity and teaches us to see the future as a set of possibilities rather than scripted scenario.
Wednesday, October 26, 12:30 P.M.
John Tauranac
New York from the Air: A Story of Architecture
John Tauranac knows architectural New York, but even he was stumped by some of the subjects that the great aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand shot for their newest book. Tauranac takes it all with a sense of humor and more than a dash of humility as he discusses some of the mysteries with which he was presented. He will share the stories with you, and he'll show some of his favorite photographs and tell the tales behind them.
Wednesday, October 19, 12:30 P.M.
Anne Fougeron
Opposition / Composition
Fougeron Architecture is an award-winning architecture firm based in San Francisco. This first monograph on the woman-led firm examines the broad range of the practice, including residential, institutional, and mixed-use projects. The book features 14 projects, illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings, as well as a foreword by Hitoshi Abe.
Saturday, October 15, 12:30 P.M.
Miroslav Sasek
This is New York Reading and Activity
Van Alen Institute invites families with children to join us at Van Alen Books. Visitors will gather on the store’s striking installation for a reading of This is New York, the charming children’s classic by Miroslav Sasek. After the reading, families will share their own impressions and experiences of the city, creating a picture book to illustrate famous landmarks and places of personal importance. Picture book supplies will be provided.
Thursday, October 13, 7:00 P.M.
Matus Vallo, Justin Fowler, Andrea Kahn
Urban Interventions: From Architects with Love
Beginning in Bratislava, Prague, and Brno, the Urban Interventions Project asks designers to step out of their conventional role to share their thoughts on how to make cities more successful. This resulting publication is a portfolio of future public spaces and catalogue of visual strategies through which architects approach the urban environment, with essays and designs from 255 architects who spent a collective 9,800 hours and close to $250,000 to improve their cities.
Wednesday, October 12, 12:30 P.M.
Rogers Marvel Architects
New York City-based Rogers Marvel Architects has garnered high praise for its distinctive blend of elegance, technical mastery, and civic consciousness. Rogers Marvel Architects, the firm's first monograph, showcases recent and award-winning work, from large-scale public projects such as their contest-winning entry (along with West 8 from Rotterdam) to the redesign of New York City's Governors Island to institution-specific buildings such as the recently completed Westchester Reform Temple.
Wednesday, October 5, 12:30 P.M.
Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr
Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture
Showcasing the best examples of current design, Carrot City presents strategies for reintroducing urban agriculture to our cities. Over forty innovative projects explore creative approaches to making space for urban food production, ranging from ambitious urban plans to simple measures for growing food at home.
Thursday, September 29, 7:00 P.M.
Mario Carpo
The Alphabet and the Algorithm
In The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011), Mario Carpo compares digital craftsmanship to traditional hand-making, and to the cultures and technologies of variations that existed before the coming of machine-made copies. Carpo suggests a new agenda for architecture in an age of variable media, generic objects, and participatory authorship.
Wednesday, September 28, 12:30 P.M.
Anne Guiney and Brendan Crain
By the City / For the City: An Atlas of Possibility for the Future of New York
The Institute for Urban Design's Anne Guiney and Brendan Crain present their new atlas of proposals for making a more livable New York, a 352-page compendium of the schemes and dreams that hundreds of citizens and designers around the world shared through the By the City / For the City process.
Wednesday, September 21, 12:30 P.M.
Princeton Architectural Press
Stop by with a lunch for this week's Brown Bag Reading to hear from Margaret Rogalski about recent and upcoming releases from Princeton Architectural Press. Come for the sneak-preview and stay for the giveaway: PAP will be sending a selection of the books home with attendees!
Friday, September 16, 7:00 P.M.
Slum Lab Launch Party
Last Round Ecology
The latest issue of SLUM Lab magazine, Last Round Ecology, edited by Alfredo Brillembourg and Denise Hoffman Brandt, has a global scope, covering projects from around the world that reveal the destructive capacity of contemporary city-making and ideas for alternative futures. This launch is jointly hosted by the Institute for Urban Design and Van Alen Institute.
Thursday, September 15, 7:00 P.M.
Public School: Eileen Joy
Toward a Speculative Realist Literary Criticism
Author and co-director of punctum books, Eileen Joy engages in the current debate over reading strategies. Analyzing the construction of narratives, Joy leads a conversation about the way in which narratives of human action shape the world around us, and indeed how we might find an "inhuman" reading that sees the world through non-human-centric lenses.
Thursday, September 8, 7:00 P.M.
Public School: Graham Harman
New Paths from Husserl and Heidegger
This event will be held in Van Alen's sixth-floor gallery space.
Join the Public School at Van Alen for a lecture and discussion lead by Graham Harman, philosopher and author of The Quadruple Object (2011). From Deleuze in the mid-1990's, to Badiou and ZiZek in the present century, Harman argues, continental philosophy has experienced a “general fatigue,” while Husserl and Heidegger still represent the high-water mark. Come hear his radical approach to the future of philosophy.
Wednesday, September 7, 12:30 P.M.
John Cary
The Power of Pro Bono
Drawing on seven years he spent building the pioneering nonprofit Public Architecture, John Cary presents the national impact of public-interest design in The Power of Pro Bono. From the vantage point of both the architects and clients, the book tells the stories of 40 design projects, including Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation and the Robin Hood Foundation’s L!brary Initiative, as well as work by SHoP Architects, Studio Gang, Perkins+Will, Gensler, and others. Cary will discuss pro bono work in the context of the greater public-interest design movement.
Wednesday, August 24, 12:30 P.M.
Hans Venhuizen
Game Urbanism
Join us at Van Alen Books for a midweek game! Rotterdam-based spatial planner Hans Venhuizen introduces Game Urbanism, leading a discussion of his recent book and a demonstration of his concepts in practice--or we should say play. Noting the lack of public engagement in many planning efforts, Venhuizen uses ingenious large-scale social games to explore an area’s culture and the various interests at stake. Drawing on cultural history, architecture, and art as points of departure, Venhuizen makes game theory a playful yet powerful way to involve citizens in the fate of rapidly changing urban spaces.
Wednesday, July 27, 12:30 P.M.
Sina Najafi and Jeffrey Kastner
Cabinet 41: Infrastructure
The latest issue of Cabinet offers an anything but nuts-and-bolts look at the theme of infrastructure, including D. Graham Burnett’s history of telegraph wires; the ins and outs of Paris’ pneumatic postal tube system; an exploration of crowd dynamics and the wizards who model mass public behavior; a photographic series paying loving tribute to that humble abode, the parking valet booth; and much more. Cabinet editors Sina Najafi and Jeffrey Kastner discuss how the team girded for this ambitious topic, and which offramps went sadly unexplored.
Wednesday, July 20, 12:30 P.M.
Adam Harrison Levy and Erin Barnett
Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945
Eleven years ago, a suitcase containing 700 photographs of post-bomb Hiroshima was found on a street corner near Boston. They are previously classified images taken by the U.S. government. They document the architectural and structural effect of the first use of the atomic bomb. How did they end up on a street corner? What do they say about Hiroshima and its legacy in terms of photographic depictions of war, urban design, and cultural memory? Adam Harrison Levy, author of the essay “Hiroshima: Lost and Found” from the new book Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 and Erin Barnett, curator of the related exhibition currently on view at the International Center of Photography through August 28—tell the story of these haunting urban portraits.
Wednesday, July 6, 12:30 P.M.
Chris Mottalini
After You Left, They Took It Apart: Demolished Paul Rudolph Homes
Brooklyn-based photographer Chris Mottalini discusses his powerful final portraits of three Paul Rudolph homes awaiting their destruction. Published as the catalog for last year’s exhibition at Auburn University, After You Left, They Took It Apart is a poignant exploration of modernism unmade, showing Rudolph’s residential work—and the modern movement’s pioneering spirit—in shocking states of abandon. Mottalini will also discuss The Mistake by the Lake, his photographic record of school bus-stop shelters in Buffalo. Built by parents to protect children from brutal winters, these ad-hoc outposts are a tribute to the city’s vernacular imagination.
Update: Video from Chris's talk is now uploaded on Vimeo.
Wednesday, June 29, 12:30 P.M.
LOT-EK with Thomas de Monchaux
The award-winning designers of Van Alen Books, LOT-EK's Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, discuss their current publication concept Container with collaborator Thomas de Monchaux. Signed copies of LOT-EK's monograph Urban Scan will also be available for purchase.
Wednesday, June 22, 12:30 P.M.
Niels Van Tomme
Where Do We Migrate To?
Based on the recent exhibition at the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, this unique collection reflects on the ways that migration and displacement shape the complex world around us. Curator and critic Niels Van Tomme has commissioned essays from international writers Svetlana Boym, Amitava Kumar, and Aaron Schuster, along with postcards from 19 artists in the exhibition. Tomme and artist Brendan Fernandes, whose work Homecoming is featured in the book and exhibition, discuss the project's evocative look at the migrant experience.
Wednesday, June 15, 12:30 P.M.
Pratt School of Architecture
Insidious Urbanism
tarp Architecture Manual, Spring 2011
Students from Pratt Institute’s graduate programs in architecture and urban design have produced this engaging look at design practices that subvert prevailing urban paradigms. Featuring wide-ranging essays from Eve Blau (Project Zagreb), Andrew Herscher (shrinking Detroit), Thomas Holliday (boutique hotels), Stephen Zacks (the postsuburban elite), and others, the book concludes with portfolios from contemporary designers such as Archeworks, common room, Interboro Partners, and Macro-Sea. Join editors Alpna Gupta and James Williams, with faculty advisor Erik Ghenoiu and contributors Carla Leitao and Mimi Zeiger, for a talk about architecture that radically rethinks the urban realm.
Update: Video from this event is now uploaded on Vimeo.
Wednesday, June 8, 12:30 P.M.
School of Visual Arts D-Crit Program
At Water's Edge
Join us for our first Brown Bag event as we present At Water’s Edge, the inaugural volume in the School of Visual Arts’ series of D-Crit Chapbooks. Participating students from the SVA’s MFA in Design Criticism program will discuss their short essays on the subject of New York’s waterfront, which grew out of instructor Akiko Busch’s first-year course called “Reading Design.”
Update: See a video clip from the event on our Vimeo page.
All events take place at Van Alen Books:
30 W. 22nd Street
Ground floor
Between 5th and 6th Ave.
New York, NY 10010
Call 212-924-7000 or vanalenbooks@vanalen.org for more information.
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