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What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy.

Update: The deadline has been extended to January 4, 2016. 

LOCALIZING COORDINATES

In Mark Foster Gage’s essay “Rot Munching Architects,” published in Perspecta 47: Money, the Assistant Dean of the Yale School of Architecture strove to find meaning in the current design landscape. Taking the essay title from a larger stream of expletives spun across the facade of the Canadian pavilion as part of artist Steven Shearer’s installation at the 54th Venice Art Biennale in 2011, Gage found truth in the vulgarities, arguing that - in a very literal sense - “architectural experimentation has left the building” as the discipline has been made impotent under the hostage of late capitalist ambition.

Last summer, when Brooklyn Bridge Park unveiled 14 proposals as finalists for two residential towers at the park's controversial pier 6 site, you could be fooled into thinking that design is alive and well. A caveat of the park’s General Project Plan (GPP) was to set aside land for retail, residential and a hotel development, in order to secure funding and achieve financial autonomy. The plans had already fueled a decade of legal battles and fierce opposition from the local community, with arguments ranging from the environment, to park aesthetics, to money-making schemes, but last year a bright outcome appeared a possibility, when the park unveiled the competing plans including those by Asymptote Architecture, BIG, Davis Brody Bond, Future Expansion + SBN Architects, WASA Studio, and of particular interest, O’Neill McVoy Architects + NV/design architecture (NVda).

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Jacob A. Riis and Vilhelm Hammershøi were Danes of the same generation who took up the challenge of understanding modernity in radically different ways. Riis left Denmark for America to become the nation's leading advocate for the urban poor. He was a media-savvy journalist who used words and pictures to make a compelling case for reform. Hammershøi, by contrast, was a Copenhagen-based aesthete whose mysterious paintings of bourgeois domestic interiors suggested the psychological experience of modern life. Join two art historians and experts on Riis and Hammershøi, Bonnie Yochelson and Thor Mednick, for an exploration of their work. After their presentations, Ambassador Anne Dorte Riggelson will lead a conversation about Riis and Hammershoi's contrasting lives and perspectives.

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Critical Halloween is a party, an intellectual debate, a costume competition, and a space for the expression of radical thought. Over the past few years, it has become a referential event that brings people together through music, dance, and costume design to engage in critical discussion in New York City.

"If one wants to dance on a tightrope, one has to first tension the wire.” - Siegfried Ebeling, 1926, Space as Membrane

Bill Pedersen is a renowned architect and founding design partner of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, which is currently leading New York City's Hudson Yards Project. Less known, but equally important, is Pedersen's design versatility. He holds multiple design patents and recently created a new line of furniture, Loop de Loop, that is beautiful, comfortable, and technically innovative. Join Pedersen and Donald Albrecht, the City Museum's Curator of Architecture and Design, for a conversation exploring not only the new furniture and its influences, but also the history of architect-designed furnishings. This event is part of the Museum’s ongoing Design Talks series examining the today's leading trends in design, architecture, graphics, and multimedia.

On Thursday October 15, 2015, in conjunction with Archtober and New York Archives Week, the Guggenheim will host its third Wikipedia edit-a-thon - to enhance articles related to women in architecture on Wikipedia. The Guggenheim aims to further the goals of Ada Lovelace Day for STEM, and Art+Feminism for art, in a field that, by its nature combines both. The Guggenheim will work alongside ArchiteXX, the founders of WikiD: Women Wikipedia Design #wikiD, the international education and advocacy program working to increase the number of Wikipedia articles on women in architecture and the built environment.

We enjoy looking at historic interiors, but there’s more to them than meets the eye. Behind the walls, below the floors, and underneath the painted surfaces are the back-stories few people have heard about the city’s known and not-so-known landmarks. The authors of Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York (The Monacelli Press; September 29, 2015) will take us behind the scenes of some of the City’s most interesting spaces. They will tell little-known and fascinating stories about places like City Hall and the Tweed Courthouse, Loew’s Paradise Theater, the Four Seasons Restaurant, the Dime Savings, and Manufacturers Trust bank buildings. They will share stories of the political wrangling, financial skullduggery, design competitions, preservation challenges, and restoration problems that designers and builders dealt with to provide insight into why these venues are so special and how even being a landmark doesn’t guarantee that a great space will remain safe from damage, or change. This program delves into the themes of our exhibition Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks, on view through January 3.

School of Visual Arts honors designer, critic and educator Michael Bierut with the 27th annual Masters Series Award and Exhibition. “The Masters Series: Michael Bierut” is the first comprehensive retrospective of the designer’s work, and features groundbreaking logos, graphics and exhibition designs as well as personal works from his own collection. The exhibition will be on view from October 6 through November 7 at the SVA Chelsea Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor, New York City.

In conjunction with Archtober and New York Archives Week, the Guggenheim will host its third Wikipedia edit-a-thon—or, #guggathon—to enhance articles related to women in architecture on Wikipedia, the world’s largest source of free knowledge.

Historic preservation activism in New York City did not begin in the 1960s with the fight to save Penn Station and the effort to pass the Landmarks Law—it began in the late 19th century. Little-remembered preservation pioneers like Andrew H. Green and Albert Bard, as well as various women's garden clubs, and patriotic and civic organizations laid the groundwork for the generations of preservationists that would follow. Join us to recount the triumphs, failures, and tactics of these early preservationists, and discuss what they might teach us moving forward.This program delves into the themes of our exhibition Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks, on view through January 3.

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Drawings from the private collection of Alvin Boyarsky, Chairman of the Architectural Association (AA) from 1971 to 1990, will be on display as part of Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association. Hosted by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union from October 13 to November 25, 2015, the free, public exhibit will also feature panel discussions with Nicholas Boyarsky, Joan Ockman, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Michael Webb and Dean Nader Tehrani. Read more about this event and the drawings exhibited after the break.