New Clients

WXY is an award-winning architecture and urban planning firm in New York City working primarily in the public realm. Recent projects include the Salt Shed, the Astor Place and Cooper Square urban design plan, and the Brooklyn Strand. WXY uniquely integrates architecture, urban planning and design to solve complex challenges facing today’s cities. The National Development Council is the oldest and most comprehensive non-profit community development corporation in the country. NDC works across all sectors to revitalize communities: small business lending, affordable housing and urban redevelopment. Projects from Seattle to Ithaca have become models for public-private partnerships. The historic renovation …

Teaching at GSAPP

More than a decade after studying urban planning at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, I will be teaching a class starting Fall 2015 titled, “Communications For the Built Environment” (PLA6608) — or as I like to call it, “Write Like You Give A Damn.” Architects, urban designers and planners spend much of their time on graphics and mapping, statistical analysis and other forms of information. But few recognize the importance of writing and storytelling for winning clients, responding to RFPs, positioning a firm’s brand, creating presentations, etc. So that’s what students will learn to do in a multi-disciplinary …

DesBrisay & Smith

I’m excited to be working with DesBrisay & Smith Architects. Lloyd DesBrisay and Chad Smith — previously of Polshek and Rogers Marvel architecture firms respectively — have established themselves as leaders in cutting-edge fitness design and branding. This multidisciplinary boutique firm also has deep experience designing cultural institutions, high-end retail, art galleries and commercial space. Recently shortlisted with dlandstudio to design Miami’s Underline, DesBrisay & Smith is known for creating a superior end-user experience by staying highly attuned to the fine-grain details. In other words, big-firm experience with boutique-firm service.  

Starchitecture is Disruptive

In June, 2014 The New Yorker published a widely-debated critique of a trendy business theory titled, “The Disruption Machine.” As the article pointed out, since the publication of The Innovator’s Dilemma – which popularized the theory that technology is disruptive to traditional businesses – disruption conferences, consultants, and seminars have proliferated. But the theory is no longer contained to merely explaining the effects of technology on business. Proponents advocate disruption as a desirable end in itself, and extrapolate that to higher education, health care, journalism, the arts and politics – even donuts. (The 2014 Annual Disruptive Innovation award was given …

Vertical Farming Grows Up

More than ten years ago I learned about a professor at Columbia University who was developing an idea with his students to grow crops in urban buildings. Every futuristic idea needs a cool name, and Dr. Dickson Despommier and his students came up with “Vertical Farming” and created a website. It was one of those thought experiments that only a cranky professor and his ingenuous students could seriously consider – plus one excitable freelance journalist. I pitched the story for a couple of years – one publication rejected it saying, “we already covered green roofs” – until it landed in …

Chelsea Hotel circa 2006

Back in 2006, I wrote about a party hosted by Living With Legends, a blog that (still) chronicles daily life at the Chelsea Hotel. At the time no one had any idea this would be near the end of Stanley Bard’s 45-year tenure as the manager of the hotel, which has since gone through almost a decade of upheaval and destruction as a result of ownership changes. The piece I wrote for the Times is like a little time capsule, as it took place in the apartment where Thomas Wolfe once lived and where he wrote, appropriately enough, You Can’t …