The Municipal Art Society of New York

MAS is proud to announce the inaugural Summit for New York City, a unique gathering of civic-minded New Yorkers and leaders in the fields of urban planning, urban design, housing, economics, and research and development. This cross-section of accomplished thought leaders will gather on October 21 and 22 to discuss key issues and challenge the current thinking about New York City’s livability.

The program, currently in formation, will include thought-provoking presentations, panels and keynotes, as well as smaller sessions that will enable the audience to participate more fully in the debate about our city’s future. For more information, updates, and registration, click here.

On Saturday, May 8, nearly 150 New Yorkers attended the fourth annual Livable Neighborhoods Training Program (LNP) at Hunter College. The LNP was created to provide communities with the knowledge, tools, and training needed to strengthen neighborhood decision-making and transform local vision into effective plans. Since its inception in 2007, it has served more than 600 New Yorkers.

This year’s program was especially exciting as we reached new constituents from communities throughout the five boroughs, with Queens and the Bronx being more strongly represented than in previous years, thanks, in part, to assistance from the offices of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., and Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall. Participants took part in a full day of training in topics including community organizing, affordable housing, and planning for parks and open space. Check out the slide show above to learn more about the day’s training program and to learn more about the courses offered, click here. Continue Reading>>

Pioneering architect, planner and theorist Denise Scott Brown brings her singular perspective to MAS on November 12 for what is sure to be a lively evening. Ms. Brown, who was educated in the 1940s and 1950s at Witwatersrand University in South Africa, the Architectural Association, and the University of Pennsylvania, has taught and led her Philadelphia firm, Venturi Scott Brown and Associates since the 1960s in collaboration with Robert Venturi.

“I have come to feel like a grandmother in architecture, a guardian of its institutional memory who knows its pitfalls and where the bodies are buried.”
– Denise Scott Brown

Following a short talk about her new book, Having Words, Denise Scott Brown will be joined by architects Sarah Whiting and Hilary Sample for a panel discussion moderated by Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA.

Denise Scott Brown: 40 Years of Evolving Architectural Imagination
Thursday, November 12, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., at MAS, 457 Madison Avenue
Free, but reservations required. Reserve your place online or call 212-935-2075. MAP.
This program is underwritten by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

Last Saturday, MAS, the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE), and the Pratt Institute Planning Student Association sponsored the Livable Neighborhoods Program at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Students of Pratt and other city universities, joined members of the local community for a half-day of training sessions focused on the public’s role in New York’s planning decisions.

Launched in 2007, the Livable Neighborhoods Program (LNP) provides New Yorkers with the tools and resources necessary to effectively plan their neighborhoods. GCPE has recognized the value of the program to train incoming students on planning processes in New York City.

For more information on the LNP, visit MAS.org/lnp.

Join MAS President Vin Cipolla and an expert panel tonight for a fascinating discussion of the future of parks in New York City. The city’s parks system is currently undergoing an ambitious expansion that seeks to intertwine natural and designed environments, and the primary focus of this panel is a trio of exciting new parks that have been developed through a variety of innovative approaches in this regard.

Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx would never have been created without the hard work and thoughtful programming of the community; Riverside Park South offers 21st century design, telling references to the past, and private financing; and Freshkills Park, at two and a half times the size of Central Park, was a beautiful wetland that became a despised landfill, and is now being transformed into a place for play and pleasure.

Urban Parks in the Twenty-First Century: Creating a New Model

Wednesday, May 27, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., at the Municipal Art Society MAP
Tickets are $15, $10 MAS members. Purchase tickets online or call 212-935-2075.
Moderator: Vin Cipolla, president, Municipal Art Society; vice chairman, National Park Foundation. Panelists: Eloise Hirsh, administrator, Freshkills Park, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation; Thomas Balsley, FASLA, founder and principal designer, Thomas Balsley Associates; Linda Cox, executive director, Bronx River Alliance; and Peter Harnik, director, Center for City Park Excellence, Trust for Public Land.

Travel back in time on Tuesday night to 1609 when Manhattan was home to thousands of species, over fifty-five ecosystems, and the Lenape, who called the island “Mannahatta,” meaning “island of many hills.” Coinciding with this year’s quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s arrival on the shores of Manhattan, the new book Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, reconstructs, in words and images, the wild island as it existed 400 years ago.

Join landscape ecologist and author Eric Sanderson and illustrator Markley Boyer as they discuss the decade of work that is behind this astounding work, offering readers a unique window into the ecological history of New York and inspiration for green cities and wild places of the future.

Book Launch with Eric Sanderson, author, and Markley Boyer, illustrator
Tuesday, May 5, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., at the Municipal Art Society
FREE, but reservations required. RSVP online or call 212-935-2075

Ahead of the panel discussion City of Art: New York’s Hidden Treasures Revealed which MAS is hosting on Thursday, April 16, at 6:30 pm., leading environmental artist George Trakas talked to Elizabeth Werbe of MAS about his recent public art work in New York City.

Widely acclaimed for numerous projects in North America and Western Europe over the past thirty years, Trakas has recently completed a major piece of work for the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn. Commissioned by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program, his creation makes approximately 1,000 feet of shoreline accessible to the public. Continue Reading>>

In this podcast, architectural historian John Kriskiewicz talks to Tamara Coombs of MAS about his April 2 lecture, The 100th Birthday of Two Great Bridges: The Queensborough & The Manhattan, celebrating the centennial of the Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges, and explains why their construction marks New York’s metamorphosis from an island city to a modern metropolis.

Join MAS as we celebrate the centennial of two of the eras great bridges with a lecture and two walks across the neighborhoods they transformed. $15, $10 MAS members. Purchase tickets online or call 212-935-2075.

The Urbanists — the MAS membership group of young New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s —  joined advocacy staff on Wednesday night for an informal, insider’s presentation of the advocacy campaigns MAS is championing this year.

Over drinks, Urbanist members learned about the critical role that historic preservation plays in the future of a sustainable city (“the greenest building is the one that is already built”); saving the irreplaceable 19th century buildings of Admiral’s Row, adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and adapting them to new uses; and, the new vision and plan for Coney Island, one of America’s most iconic neighborhoods. Continue Reading>>

MAS is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition, By Way of Broadway: New York Photographs by Cervin Robinson, next Thursday, March 26. One of the most widely-published architectural photographers working today, Cervin Robinson began taking photographs at the encouragement of his father, an architect, when he was twelve, and this collection explores New York’s visual landscape comprising thirty views of the 17-mile length of Manhattan’s main street taken over the course of three decades.

The exhibition opens with a reception at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, at MAS. The event is free but reservations are required. RSVP online or call 212-935-2075. By Way of Broadway will be on display at MAS galleries through Wednesday, May 6, and the galleries are open to the public Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., and closed at all other times. Continue Reading>>

The City may be changing the way the Department of Buildings does business. Under a potential new rule, the agency would post on their web site diagrams of proposed new buildings or major enlargements. The diagrams will depict the size and scale of new building projects. The new rule will also institute a 30-day period in which the public can review and challenge the development approval. According to the city, this new time period is intended to “prevent confusion and unnecessary or unintended costs for development in New York City.”

The city is holding a public hearing on Friday, March 6 at 3:00 p.m., at 280 Broadway, 3rd  Floor Conference Room. The proposal is scheduled to take effect only three days later — Monday, March 9.

We invite you to join the Municipal Art Society of New York for a briefing on the rule, on Tuesday, March 3 at 8:30 a.m. David Schnakenberg, Menapace Legal Fellow and Eve Baron, Director of the MAS Planning Center, will present an outline of the rule, discuss some of the consequences and invite the community to share concerns, comments and ask questions. Continue Reading>>

Architect and author Adam Kalkin will present his recent book Quik Build: Adam Kalkin’s ABC of Container Architecture on Tuesday, March 3 at 7:00 p.m., hosted by the Municipal Art Society’s bookstore Urban Center Books. His presentation will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Alastair Gordon, and featuring Barry Bergdoll, K. Michael Hayes and Mr. Kalkin, on the evolving identity of the architect through periods of crisis and confidence.

Kalkin’s iconic Quik House is one of the most viable pre-fabricated systems available today, providing  spacious dwelling and customized elements with the most efficient reduction of both energy waste and cost. Projects include his Refugee Village and FEMA housing concepts.

Quik Build: Adam Kalkin’s ABC of Container Architecture will be sold exclusively through Urban Center Books the night of the lecture. A special “scented” edition will be available in limited quantities. Continue Reading>>

Join architectural historian Anthony Robins for the first of four weekly sessions on how to unearth detailed information about New York City buildings this Wednesday, February 25. Each week in his short course If Walls Could Talk: Researching the History of Buildings in New York City, Mr. Robins tackles a different angle, teaching course-takers how to successfully conduct research on: the building, the client, the architect, and miscellaneous sources, before wrapping it all up with a field trip to the Manhattan Department of Buildings, New York City Conveyance Records, the Municipal Archives and the Municipal Reference Library.

8.0 CES credits (6.0 CES credits/lectures; 2.0 CES credits/field trip). Lectures and field trip cannot be purchased singly, only as short course. Location: The Municipal Art Society, 457 Madison Avenue, at E.51st St. Cost: $250, $200 MAS members/students. Purchase tickets online or call 212-935-2075.

What an excellent class! It was thorough, comprehensive and entertaining — a must for anyone interested in the history of buildings in NYC.” – Ms. P. Esposito, 2008

Please join us for the final ImagineConey program this Tuesday, February 17, at 6.30 p.m. at MAS to see presentations of submissions to the ImagineConey initiative by members of the public and design professionals. Presenters will include Frederick Schwartz, Philip Tusa, Henry Jones and others. MAS staff will also present the results of the design workshop (charrette) held last November in which an international team of designers, economists and creative producers participated. The event is free, but reservations are strongly recommended. Click here to RSVP or call 212-935-2075.

Imagining Coney: Bold Ideas, Technicolor Dreams, and Fanciful Concepts
Tuesday, February 17, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., at the Municipal Art Society
A review of over 350 ideas submitted from around the world by the general public and professional designers.

What is the role of the amusement business in a recession-era urban economy? Does Coney Island have the potential to become a true economic engine for New York?

Please join us at MAS for a panel discussion of these issues tonight at 6:30 p.m. Panelists will include: former Disney executive and Managing Director at real estate advisory firm RCLCo David Malmuth; former Six Flags executive and Senior Vice-President of PARC Management Dan Aylward; President of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) Seth Pinsky; and owner of Astroland Amusement Park Carol Albert.

Wednesday, February 11, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
A Serious Business: The Future of Amusements in an Urban Economy
A panel of experts discuss the future of urban amusement parks in New York’s recession-era economy. $15, $12 MAS members.To purchase tickets, click here or call 212-935-2075.

Visit the MAS exhibit ImagineConey: Bold Ideas for the Future of Coney Island, now on display through Wednesday, March 11. Gallery hours>>.