In Spring 2017, The CDD Designing Practice Series produced five talks over the semester from leading urban design practitioners around questions on the integration between infrastructural, urban, and natural systems in the contemporary city. The series was organized by Marie Law Adams as part of the 11.333J / 4.244J Urban Design Seminar: Perspectives on Contemporary Practice. Read on to learn about each lecture and see photos and posters from the events.

Infrastructural Apparatuses with Sandro Marpillero & Linda Pollak

3.1.17 / Room 10–485, 12:30–2PM

Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak, co-founding partners of Marpillero Pollak Architects, presented two recently completed public projects in New York, Queens Plaza and the Elmhurst Library, as a means to illustrate their concept of the ‘infrastructural apparatus,’ a hybrid architecture and landscape project that engages with and makes visible the complexities of urban and environmental flows.

Learning From Logistics: Research, Write, Index, Design, with Clare Lyster

Wed 4.5.17 / Long Lounge, 7–429, 6:30–8PM

Logistics networks structure the flows of information, people, and goods through the global environment. Clare Lyster is an architect, educator, and author of Learning From Logistics: How Networks Change Our Cities. Lyster presented research on corporate logistics platforms such as FedEx and Amazon, and a series of speculative design projects that suggest potential modes of engagement between network systems and the urban public realm.

Margarita Jover: Hybrid Infrastructures for Novel Synergies

Design by Sonny Oram 4.19.17

Long Lounge, 7–429, 6:30–8PM

Margarita Jover is a co-founder of aldayjover architecture and landscape, a landscape, urban design, and architecture firm widely recognized for projects that sensitively combine public open space and landscape with transit infrastructure, and for projects that re-integrate river systems within urban environments. Jover presented a collection of built projects and proposals for urban public spaces that cultivate dynamic relationships between living and non-living systems through tactical material and physical interventions.

Vishaan Chakrabarti: Mobilism: Architecture and the Public Metropolis

Design by Sonny Oram

Wed 5.3.17 / Room 10–485, 12:30–2PM

Vishaan Chakrabarti founded Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) in 2015, and is author of A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. Chakrabarti argues for encouraging increased density, a more mixed distribution of uses, and design excellence to create “a more prosperous, sustainable, joyous, and socially mobile nation.” Claire Weisz: Engaging Design: Infrastructure and Urbanism Wed 5.10.17 Room 9-451, 12:30–2PM Claire Weisz, FAIA is a founding principal of WXY architecture + urban design. WXY’s architecture and planning work for cities and with communities, is centered around the art of re-imagining infrastructure. Weisz’s work spans between scales of urban furniture design, to buildings, streetscapes, and regional planning. She recently co-edited Blue Dunes: Climate Change by Design, that forefronts the multidisciplinary collaboration between designers, engineers, planners, and scientists to develop a proposal for a barrier island network to mitigate impacts of climate change along the Northeast coast of the US.

Claire Weisz: Engaging Design: Infrastructure and Urbanism

Design by Sonny Oram

Wed 5.10.17 / Room 9-451, 12:30–2PM

Claire Weisz, FAIA is a founding principal of WXY architecture + urban design. WXY’s architecture and planning work for cities and with communities, is centered around the art of re-imagining infrastructure. Weisz’s work spans between scales of urban furniture design, to buildings, streetscapes, and regional planning. She recently co-edited Blue Dunes: Climate Change by Design, that forefronts the multidisciplinary collaboration between designers, engineers, planners, and scientists to develop a proposal for a barrier island network to mitigate impacts of climate change along the Northeast coast of the US.