Evolve New York Open Studio: Rebuilding Proposals Held at Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University May 9-10, 2002 Elliott Sclar, Director, Urban Planning Program, GSAP David Stark, Director, Center on Organizational Innovation, ISERP How to use this page Click this button to watch video of the presentation (requires Real Player) Click this button to view the presented slideshow (opens in a new window) Click this button to visit the studio's Web site (opens in a new window) John Q. Sample Click a person's name to view their biography (opens in a new window) THURSDAY MORNING, MAY 9TH 8:30 REGISTRATION 8:45 OPENING REMARKS Elliott Sclar, Director, Urban Planning Program, GSAP David Stark, Director, Center on Organizational Innovation, ISERP I: MEMORIALS AS EXPERIENCE AND FORM Similar to all memorials, the memorial commemorating those lost in the World Trade Center challenges designers with competing requirements. It must have an enduring form that will preserve the memory of the dead but at the same time it must occasion an experience -- an emotional, cognitive, and social process that enables the living to bear their loss. It must address the loss of intimates that is deeply personal and individual and, at the same time, the loss of common humanity that is profoundly general and shared. It must evoke the particular events and acts arrested in time but translate them into thoughts and questions for a continuous conversation with generations that follow. What interpretive and analytical strategies permit designers to gain the perspective and vision that embraces these contrasting demands? 9:00 STUDIO PRESENTATIONS Pratt Institute Stephan Marc Klein Studio Yale University Diana Balmori Studio/Seminar Harvard University Alex Krieger Studio, Mitchell Joachim, PhD Candidate 10:30 BREAK 11:00 PANEL DISCUSSION Ray Gastil Executive Director, Van Alen Institute, Co-chair of the Memorial Process, New York New Visions Edward Tabor Linenthal Professor of Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh; Author of Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum and The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory James Young Professor of English and Chair of the Judaic Studies Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Author of At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture and The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning   MODERATOR   Francesca Polletta Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University 12:30 LUNCH BREAK THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 9TH II: POLICY MADE PUBLIC: REPRESENTATIONS IN URBAN REDEVELOPMENT Here we examine the decision-making process that will reshape Lower Manhattan. What are the explicit representational claims? Who claims to speak for whom? With what mechanisms of accountability? Whose interests are unspoken because they are excluded? Whose interests are not explicit because so deeply entrenched that they remain unspoken? Our task is not to unmask or denounce but to understand how competing visions of the city in the 21st Century find expression in the political process. Architects and urban planners make presentations. No less than elected officials and community spokespersons, they also make representations. Although their designs and plans might not explicitly represent social groups, they respond, consciously or not, to interests. The problem we address in this segment of the conference goes beyond the trope that "architecture is politics in stone." We are interested in the politics not only of the stone but also of the imaginary. The images, the imagination, of architects and urban planners are part of the political process; like the work of more conventional representatives, they also shape society by configuring identities as they give shape to the built environment that both constrains and enables. How might designers, architects, and planners enable particular social interactions and community practices in their designs? 1:30 STUDIO PRESENTATIONS Columbia University Richard Bass Regional Studio, Balancing the Dispersal of the Financial District New York University Craig Whitaker Studio   PANEL DISCUSSION   Amanda Burden Chair, City Planning Commission   Eva Hanhardt Director, The Planning Center, Municipal Arts Society; Co-director, Imagine New York   David Dyssegaaard Kallick Senior Research Fellow, Fiscal Policy Institute   Cao O Executive Director, Asian American Federation of New York   Susan Szenasy Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis; Co-founder, RDOT   Bob Yaro President, Regional Plan Association; Chair, Civic Alliance   MODERATOR   Susan Fainstein Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University and Rutgers University 3:00 BREAK III: RETHINKING THE REGIONAL ECONOMY Should we continue to think about downtown Manhattan as primarily a financial district? How might the larger metropolitan region position itself to be a center of economic growth for the emerging economy of the twenty-first century? If the future economy promises to be a knowledge based economy, what is the competitive advantage of the New York metropolitan region and what institutional and infra-structural changes should be introduced to optimize this advantage? What are the principle issues to be addressed if we frame the problem of economic development to encompass not only downtown Manhattan but also the outer boroughs and the wider metropolitan region? 3:30 STUDIO PRESENTATIONS City College of New York Michael Sorkin Studio, Rebuilding Through Disaggregation University of Applied Arts, Vienna Zaha Hadid Studio Yale University Zaha Hadid Studio   PANEL DISCUSSION   Matt Drennan Professor of Economics and City and Regional Planning, Cornell University   Ernest Tollerson Senior Vice President of Research and Policy, New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce   Bob Yaro President, Regional Plan Association; Chair, Civic Alliance   MODERATOR   Elliott Sclar Director, Urban Planning Program, GSAP, Columbia University 5:30 RECEPTION FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 10TH 8:30 REGISTRATION IV: SITE, CITY, REGION: LOCAL TRAFFIC, GLOBAL FLOWS Architects and urban planners confront a special challenge: in designing a site they are shaping a city. The site itself is a crossroads, where hurried commuters meet the digital crossroads of high-speed computers. The site, the seat of global finance, is also a neighborhood. Planners must think about multiple problems of connectivity, not only of the financial flows that could run through it from London to Tokyo but also of pedestrians who could walk through it from Battery Park City to South Street Seaport. What does it mean to be an engine of economic growth in a knowledge economy? From a fiscal standpoint, if jobs in finance leave for midtown or the outer boroughs, they remain in the city's tax base. But if the financial district dissipates, does it lose the synergies that accompanied proximity? Alternatively, would decentralization yield new synergies as the financial community interacts with more diverse industries? And what about regional planning? 9:00 STUDIO PRESENTATIONS Columbia University Studio Professor, Andrew MacNair Columbia University Studio Professor, Frederic Levrat Columbia University Studio Professors, Kathryn Dean, Reinhold Martin Columbia University Pablo Vengoechea and Douglas Woodward Local Urban Planning Studio, World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan 10:30 BREAK 11:00 PANEL DISCUSSION Eugénie Birch Professor and Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania Mel Horwitch Professor of Management, Director of the Institute for Technology and Enterprise, Polytechnic University Harvey Molotch Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics, University of Santa Barbara Marilyn Taylor Chair, Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill; Founder, New York New Visions   MODERATOR   David Stark Professor of Sociology, Columbia University 12:30 LUNCH BREAK FRIDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 10TH V: STATE, MARKET, ASSOCIATIONS Should the state or market forces guide the redevelopment process growing out of ground zero? What is the trade-off between executing a comprehensive development plan reached by committee vs. allowing the incremental evolution of an emergent order shaped by the market? How might non-profit and community associations mediate between and facilitate the collaboration and cooperation of public and private sectors? 1:30 STUDIO PRESENTATIONS   University of Toronto Christian Hubert Studio   Harvard University Ken Smith Studio Princeton University Peter Eisenman Studio 3:00 BREAK 3:30 PANEL DISCUSSION   George Baird Professor of Architecture, Harvard University   Mark Jarzombek Associate Professor of History and Architecture, MIT   Jerrold Kayden Associate Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard University   Reinhold Martin Assistant Professor of Architecture, GSAP, Columbia University Madelyn Wils Chair, Community Board One; Board Member, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation   Sharon Zukin Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College   MODERATOR   Mary Mcleod Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Columbia University 5:30 RECEPTION evolvenewyork.org is a project of the Center on Organizational Innovation at Columbia University

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