Top image designed by Freepik.
Panelists:
Chris Baribeau, Modus Studio
Colin Koop & Preetam Biswas, SOM
Kate Mann, ZGF Architects
William Sharples, SHoP Architects
Moderators:
Justin Davidson, New York/Curbed
Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum
The final program in The Skyscraper Museum's TALL TIMBER series – which can be viewed in videos on our website – turned the attention to New York City. The free in-person event on Wednesday, January 8 at 6pm was held at the architectural office of SOM and brought together the four teams of architects invited by New York magazine critic JUSTIN DAVIDSON for his feature article on possible futures for Mass Timber in New York. Davidson's piece appeared online the week of the program and in print the following week, so this panel discussion was both a preview of that project and the culminating event of the series conceived around the Museum's exhibition, TALL TIMBER: The Future of Cities in Wood, which will close on Saturday, January 11th.
As Justin Davidson writes: The mass timber revolution has been a slow and quiet one in New York City. While CLT towers and wooden tech headquarters pop up in other parts of the country and around the world, the most visible timber structure in Manhattan is a pedestrian bridge over Tenth Avenue. With reality lagging behind ambition, New York magazine and its urbanism website Curbed asked four firms to produce timber-based conceptual designs for public-facing projects: a Major League Soccer stadium in Long Island City (SOM), an airport terminal at JFK (SHoP), a public school in Red Hook (Modus Studio), and a community health clinic in Harlem (ZGF). The brief was to show readers what a timber-loving city might look like—to introduce designs that must be built out of wood rather than just what can be.
In a discussion moderated by Carol Willis, curator for the Museum's exhibition TALL TIMBER: The Future of Cities in Wood, and by Davidson, the architects discussed their projects and the forms of expressive design that can flow from the new structural system of Mass Timber.
The Museum thanks SOM for the generous donation of their event space for this program.
You can watch the program on our YouTube channel.
The program begins with a brief introduction by Skyscraper Museum Director Carol Willis, followed by architecture critic Justin Davidson, who introduces the goals of the project. Architects of the four teams present their designs, then join Davidson in a Q&A.