Mark Robbins, Dean of Photography
Mark Robbins.
Syracuse University’s School of Architecture will need a new dean before summer. New York City’s International Center of Photography (ICP) has announced that Mark Robbins the current dean of the school will become its next Executive Director. Robbins worked tirelessly to utilize Syracuse’s intellectual and design resources to bring life and new ideas to the dying college city and will be hard for the school to replace. But perhaps his skill at jump starting building projects will be useful in helping ICP find a new Manhattan gallery space befitting their mission and world class collection. Robbins will move out of his dramatic Syracuse bank townhouse and back to his hometown by July 1.
Kazi Leaving Van Alen
Olympia Kazi. (Lila Sotiriou)
Olympia Kazi has resigned as executive director of the Van Alen Institute one year and a day since the opening of Van Alen Books, possibly her most visible contribution to the 100-year-old organization known for its engagement with pressing urban issues through competitions, exhibitions, research, and public programs.
SHFT+ALT+DEL: April 27
John Gourlay is tapped to be executive publisher of Metropolis magazine. Gourlay’s previous magazine publishing creds include Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, Utne Reader, Audubon, and American Craft.
SB Architects appoints Emilio Perez as head of its Miami office. Specializing in hospitality and mixed-use projects, Perez worked with Gensler, Portman Associates, Cap Cana Resorts, and Royal Caribbean before joining SB.
Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, has been elected to the 2012 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Read More
Princeton Zeroes in on Zaero-Polo as Next Dean (Updated)
Alejandro Zaera-Polo in front of his Yokohama Terminal project in Japan. (Wikipedia and Naoya Fujii/Flickr)
It is now confirmed that the next dean at Princeton University School of Architecture will be Alejandro Zaera-Polo. The last lap of the race to take Stan Allen’s position as dean had narrowed down to three with odds on one of the several female contenders including Sylvia Lavin and Keller Easterling. But when the London-based, Spanish-born architect was called in London on March 18 and asked to fly to Princeton, where he is currently a visiting lecturer, the die seemed cast. And now Dean Allen confirms.
SHFT+ALT+DEL: March 9
Vishan Chakrabarti joins SHoP Architects as a partner, but will remain director of the Columbia Center for Urban Real Estate, a position he’s held since 2009.
Peter Schubert becomes a partner at Ennead Architects, where he’ll be “enhancing international efforts”; Schubert was most recently at RMJM.
Robert Allen Design appoints Kerry Galloway as their new vice president of contract sales. Galloway was formerly vice president, sales and marketing for Contract Décor International.
In office expansion news, Aedas announces it plans to double the size of its London office (currently 80 staffers) in the next two years to keep pace with work in Russia and North Africa.
Have news on movers and shakers in the architecture & design universe for SHFT+ALT+DEL? Send your tips to people@archpaper.com!
Porter Leaving Altoon + Porter for Jerde
Altoon + Porter's Marina City marketplace in Qingdao, China (Altoon + Porter)
After three decades at LA firm Altoon + Porter, founding partner James F. Porter is leaving to become a principal at the Jerde Partnership. Porter, who met business partner Ron Altoon while working at Frank Gehry’s office in the ’70s, co-founded Altoon + Porter in 1984. Hoping to leave more room for young partners, Altoon + Porter included a clause in their partnership specifying that they retire at age 65. “Sixty five came along in a nanosecond,” said Porter, who managed to adjust the agreement to stay on a little longer. But at age 70, it was time to go, he said.
SHFT+ALT+DEL: February 10
Andrew Bernheimer, of Bernheimer Architecture, is taking over as director of the MArch program at Parsons The New School for Design.
Rachel Judlowe, formerly arts and design PR guru at Ruder Finn, is partnering up with architecture and design publicist Elizabeth Kubany of EHK PR.
Gensler appoints two principals as new managing directors at its London office: Ian Mulcahey and Duncan Swinhoe, who joined the firm in 2000 and 2004 respectively.
Michael Algiere departs Jones Lang LaSalle to join Cannon Design as principal and leader of the firm’s corporate/commercial interiors practice for the New York region.
RATIO Architects, with studios in Indianapolis, Champaign, IL and Raleigh, NC is forming a strategic alliance with Chicago-based architects SMDP.
Have news on movers and shakers in the architecture & design universe for our bi-weekly SHFT+ALT+DEL? Send your tips to people@archpaper.com!
SHFT+ALT+DEL: January 27
Stephen Cassell, principal of Architecture Research Office, has been elected Chair of the Van Alen Institute Board of Trustees. Cassell takes the reins from Abby Hamlin, president of the real estate development company Hamlin Ventures.
Gretchen Bank, who currently serves as the Marketing & PR Committee Co-Chair at AIA New York, steps into the position of Director of Business Development & Marketing at Cosentini Associates, effective February 6.
Architect and New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) alumnus Peter J. Romano has joined NYIT’s Board of Trustees. With his wife, Jane, Romano established an endowed scholarship fund for students attending NYIT’s School of Architecture and Design.
The bathroom fixtures company Duravit has appointed Frank Richter to succeed Franz Kook as Management Board Chairman; Kook has retired after 41 years with the company.
Have news on career moves in the architecture & design universe for SHFT+ALT+DEL? Send your tips to people@archpaper.com!
SHFT+ALT+DLT> January 13, 2012
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SOM returns to LA with a new office to be led by Michael Mann, Paul Danna, and Jose Palacios, all coming en masse from AECOM. The new studio will start out with ten to 40 people in a temporary office, with plans to eventually find a permanent home in downtown LA.
The Boston Society of Architects announced the departure of executive director Margaret Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth, who only assumed the ED role in February 2011 and oversaw BSA’s move to a new home, will be returning to the commercial real estate sector.
In Chicago, Crain‘s reports that FGB, an architecture firm based in Oak Brook, has acquired Deerfield-based SRBL, specialists in schools and institutional work, to create a 95-person strong office.
On January 18, John Hatfield will join Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens as executive director. Hatfield leaves the New Museum of Contemporary Art, where he has served as deputy director since 2008.
Fore Solutions, a green building consulting firm, has joined Thorton Thomasetti to create the Thorton Thomsetti Building Sustainability practice area, to be led by Gunnar Hubbard.
FXFOWLE and CO Architects form Bi-Coastal Coalition
FXFOWLE'S SAP Americas Headquarters (David Sundberg/Esto)
They seem hesitant to call it a merger, but architecture biggies FXFOWLE and CO Architects announced today that they are joining forces in a “joint venture.” The New York and Los Angeles firms made the move, they said in a release, “In order to expand each firm’s geographic and expertise reach.” The companies will maintain their individual identities, with the exception of joint projects, under which they’ll be called CO/FXFOWLE.
CO Architects, it should be noted, is known for its institutional and healthcare work, while FXFOWLE’s portfolio, marked by its focus on sustainability, is a little more wide-ranging, from architecture to interior design to planning.
The move actually took place in December, and the firms are emphatic that both will remain on equal footing. The deal, said the announcement, “represents a genuine collaboration between the two firms in all project services, rather than the customary design architect/associate architect relationship.”
SHFT+ALT+DLT: December 23
SHFT+ALT+DLT
Portuguese architect, curator, and writer Pedro Gadanho will join the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Architecture and Design as a curator of contemporary architecture effective January 11. In addition to organizing exhibitions, Gadanho will supervise the annual Young Architect’s Program, which has recently expanded from New York to Rome and Chile. Read more details in AN‘s breaking news story.
In other museum news, James Cuno, the President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, has taken on yet another Getty role: acting director of the Getty Museum. In addition to supervising all of the Getty’s various holdings, Cuno, the former director of the Art Institute of Chicago, will now be back in familiar territory, overseeing the museum following the resignation of acting director David Bomford.
Other West Coast shifts: Behnisch Architekten closes their Venice, CA office, while Oakland, California-based VDK Architects, which specializes in the Science & Technology market sector, has merged with the architecture and engineering practice Harley Ellis Devereaux.
More mergers back East:Electric Lighting Agencies and O’Blaney Rinker Associates are joining forces and combining their lighting and control system specification businesses in New York City.
Dwell magazine regrouped this fall following the departure of editor-in-chief Sam Grawe and also established a New York editorial outpost; executive editor Amanda Dameron was promoted to editor-in-chief and Alejandro Chavetta was bumped up from art director to creative director. Kelsey Keith departed Curbed NY to join Dwell as a New York-based senior editor.
MoMA Taps Pedro Gadanho as Curator of Contemporary Architecture
Pedro Gadanho (David Farran/Courtesy MoMA).
The Museum of Modern Art has confirmed that the Portuguese architect, curator, and writer Pedro Gadanho will join MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design as a curator of contemporary architecture.
According to MoMA’s release: “In his new role, Mr. Gadanho will be responsible for a broad portfolio that reinforces the Museum’s commitment, since 1932, to contemporary architecture. In addition to building the Museum’s holdings of contemporary architecture, he will oversee the annual Young Architects Program (YAP), co-organized with MoMA PS1, and the two-year-old YAP International Program in conjunction with the MAXXI in Rome and Constructo in Santiago, Chile; organize further exhibitions in the Museum’s “Issues in Contemporary Architecture” series; and develop larger scale exhibitions of contemporary architecture, including exhibitions that explore relationships between architecture and other contemporary art practices.”
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