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What’s worked in other cities
Lectures present fresh approaches to city planning
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
For those interested in the progress of contemporary architecture here and abroad, and planning in the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, the annual illustrated lecture series offered by the School of Architecture and Planning is a boon.
The Supreme Court building in Reykjavik is noted for its exterior use of pre-patinated copper sheet. The interior employs simple details and emphasizes local craftsmanship.
It not only presents some of the most exciting and influential public and private architectural and planning projects in the world, but the presentations are made by those responsible for designing and implementing them.
The lectures, which will be free and open to the public, will take place at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Crosby Hall, South Campus, and will be followed by a reception for the presenter.
Although the Spring 2006 series has begun, there's plenty on the table to entice those interested, including detailed appraisals of urban planning and architectural projects in Reykjavik, Venice, Milan, Leipzig, London, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Sardinia, Zurich, Madrid and other European cities, and others in Ithaca, Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
On Wednesday, for instance, architects from Iceland's Studio Granda will be in Buffalo to present and discuss urban architectural projects in Iceland that put the firm on the map.
In addition to notable private residences, Studio Granda designed Reykjavik City Hall, the Reykjavik Art Museum and the country's stunning Supreme Court building, noted for its exterior use of pre-patinated copper sheet, honed gabbró (an indigenous metamorphic stone), plinths and a tower of hewn basalt. On the interior, the architects employed a limited pallet of oak, plaster, polished and fair-faced concrete, and steel, using simple details and emphasizing local craftsmanship.
On March 1, the speaker will be Raoul Bunschoten, founder of CHORA, a prize-winning group that investigates and practices new forms of architectural and urban design, and formulates policies pertaining to the growth of cities, particularly those like Buffalo that are propelled toward new forms of urbanity by radical changes in their political, economic, social or cultural conditions.
CHORA has worked in collaboration with the Architectural Association, London; the Berlage Postgraduate Laboratory, Rotterdam; the University of Amsterdam; and the London School of Economics.
Its commissions include the master plan for the London borough of Homerton; the application of a gallery to a 10-year development plan for the City of Copenhagen; the design and building of a new theater and community center in Carndonagh, Ireland; and the application of "Urban Gallery," a planning instrument for knowledge-management in complex environments in the first round of a project for a new city and logistic center north of Breda, Netherlands.
CHORA's prize-winning projects include those for the Aarhus harbour areas, Aarhus, Denmark, and "The New Suburb," Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bunschoten is co-author of "Urban Flotsam," the major outline of the CHORA methodology, and "Stirring the City," among other works, and has held architecture and design positions in universities throughout Europe.
On March 8, the speaker will be Norman Krumholtz, professor in the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and author of "Making Equity Planning Work: Leadership in the Public Sector."
Krumholtz's equity-planning practice, which works on behalf of the poor and working class people of Cleveland, is now a national model for planners in other large cities struggling to retain their industrial and economic base while making their neighborhoods more livable.
Krumholtz is past president of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the American Planning Association. Prior to his academic career, he served as a planning practitioner in Ithaca, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, where he was planning director for 10 years under Mayors Carl B. Stokes, Ralph J. Perk and Dennis J. Kucinich.
David Chipperfield, who will speak here on March 9, is the principal of an internationally renowned and prize-winning architectural practice based in London and Berlin that is both multilingual and multinational (100 staff members from 16 countries speak 22 languages).
Chipperfield's firm is responsible for the architecture of a number of new civic buildings, including libraries and museums, as well as hotels, retail space, commercial buildings and residences in Germany, England, Spain and the U.S. Among them are San Michele's Cemetery on an island in a Venetian lagoon; an 18-story, five-star hotel tower and brewery complex in Hamburg, Germany; and projects in Shanghai, Anchorage, Des Moines, Tokyo, New York and beyond. The firm's work has been published and exhibited extensively.