49 Cities

In celebration of the release of the third edition of the visionary urbanism publication, 49 cities, special guests Amale Andraos and Dan Wood (WORKac), Chip Lord (Ant Farm), Stan Allen (architect, Princeton), and Kate Orff (SCAPE) gather for a discussion about the evolution and future of architecture in relation to city planning and urban development.

49 cities edited and published by WORKac, is a call to re-engage cities as the site of radical thinking and experimentation, moving beyond "green building" towards an embrace of ideas, scale, vision and common sense combined with delirious imagination in the pursuit of empowering questioning and re-invention. The book includes a new interview with Michael Webb (Archigram) and an essay by Sam Jacob (FAT).

WORKac, founded in 2003 by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, is interested in positing architecture at the intersection of the urban, the rural and the natural. Their projects include the New Holland Island Cultural Center in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wieden+Kennedy’s 50,000 sq ft, three story New York offices, the Blaffer Museum in Houston, Texas, the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan, the Edible Schoolyard at P.S. 216 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, the new home for the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in downtown Brooklyn; an expansion of the Museum of Sex in Manhattan; and a new storefront facade for a parking garage in Miami’s Design District.

Stan Allen is an architect working in New York and George Dutton ’27 Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. From 2002 to 2012 he was Dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton and has developed an extensive catalogue of innovative design strategies, in particular looking at field theory, landscape architecture, and ecology as models to revitalize the practice of architecture. His most recent book is Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain, published in 2011.

Originally trained as an architect, Chip Lord is a media artist who works with video and digital photography. As a member of the alternative architecture and art collective, Ant Farm (1968-1978), he produced the video art classics Media Burn and The Eternal Frame as well as the Cadillac Ranch roadside sculpture in Amarillo, Texas. Lord’s interest in architecture and urban public space has led to the production of a series of works in video that document and explore issues that engage with urban geography and planning. The latest piece in this series, El Centro del Mundo, is an interactive DVD installation.

Kate Orff is a landscape architect and founder of SCAPE. She focuses on retooling landscape architecture relative to global challenges of climate change and social and environmental justice, which she has explored through publications, planning, and built work. Kate Orff is also the Director of the Urban Design Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she teaches graduate design studios and interdisciplinary seminars focused on sustainable development, biodiversity, and community-based change.

In its seventh year, Architectural Explorations in Books, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a series surveying the critical role that architecture publications play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.

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