Louise Harpman & Mitchell Joachim on the Future of Ecological Cities: Thursday, Sept. 26th at 12:30-1:30pm | 285 Mercer St. 10th Floor.

ABSTRACT

Global warming effects pose new challenges to the architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design communities. The immediate response has been a turn toward a host of energy-saving technologies. What has rarely been addressed, however, is the problem of scale. How can designers make sure that global solutions do not come at the expense of local traditions, cultures, and environments? By placing human rational, emotional, technological, and social needs at the center of our environmental concerns, this seminar proposes a new global design initiative for the future of our cities. The aim is to develop a language of design that can create proximity between individual responsibility and the current global environmental crisis. The featured projects showcase leading-edge innovations at multiple scales.

Mitchell Joachim and Louise Harpman will present various ways in which their designs reformat the unfortunate separation between humans and the natural world, followed by a discussion led by Peder Anker.

Global Design NYU is the research and design laboratory founded by Peder Anker, Louise Harpman, and Mitchell Joachim.  Their forthcoming book, Global Design (to be published in the spring of 2014) is based on the Global Design New York University GDNYU exhibitions and symposia hosted in New York (2011) and London (2012).

BIOGRAPHIES
MITCHELL JOACHIM is a Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor in Practice at NYU. He was formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, and Pei Cobb Freed. He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Moshe Safdie and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT. He was chosen by Wired magazine for "The Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To". Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell in "The 100 People Who Are Changing America". Mitchell won many awards including; AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities Car. Dwell magazine featured him as "The NOW 99" in 2012. He earned a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch. Columbia University.

LOUISE HARPMAN is a founding partner at Specht Harpman | Architecture, a multi-disciplinary architecture, urban design, and design research firm in New York City. The firm has received five Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects and is included in the “Emerging Voices” program sponsored by the Architectural League of New York. Specht Harpman’s solar-powered, off-the-grid modular house, zeroHouse, has won a number of design awards and has been published in over 45 international books and magazines. Harpman is Associate Professor of Practice in the areas of Architectural Design, Urban Design and Sustainability at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She also holds Associate Faculty positions at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and in Environmental Studies. Harpman is a graduate of Harvard (A.B in East Asian Studies), Cambridge (M.Phil. in Social Anthropology) and Yale (M.Arch in Architecture). She is an Associate of the American Institute of Architects, a Senior Fellow of the Design Trust for Public Space, Inc., a member of the Architectural League of New York, the Municipal Art Society, and the New York Academy of Sciences.

 

To learn more about the NYU Environmental Studies Department please visit:

http://environment.as.nyu.edu/page/newevents

 

 

"NYU Environmental Studies Program Events." NYU Environmental Studies Program. New York University, Arts and Sciences, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2013.