2017 - 9th AnnualArchitecture & Design Film Festival:New York
18 Film Programs 33 Films 10 Countries 5 Days
All screenings at: Cinepolis Cinema in Chelsea 260 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011 |
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Program 1 Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place |
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Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place Director: Catherine Hunter 2017 / 59 min / Australia
screening with: the premiere of the winning short film from the People’s Choice Award from American Institute of Architects’ I Look Up Film Challenge 2017
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Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place explores the life and art of Australia’s most famous living architect. Murcutt’s extraordinary international reputation rests on the beauty and integrity of his work. With a swag of international awards (including the prestigious Pritzker Prize) Murcutt has literally put Australian architecture on the world map. And yet, by choice, he has never built outside his own country. Murcutt’s focus instead has been the creation of energy-efficient masterpieces perfectly suited to their environment, and his breakthrough designs have influenced architects around the world. This documentary follows Glenn Murcutt, now 80 years old, as he designs his most ambitious project to date—a mosque for an Islamic community in Melbourne. |
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Program 2 Building Hope: The Maggies's Centres |
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Building Hope: The Maggies's Centres Directed: Sarah Howitt 2016 / 59 min / UK – US Premiere
Screening with Community by Design: Skid Row Housing Trust Director: Myles Kramer 2017 / 4 min / USA
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This fascinating story of Maggie's, a unique cancer charity, began life in Edinburgh in 1996. In 1993, Maggie Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was told she had three months to live. On hearing this devastating news she was left to sit on a plastic chair in a hospital corridor. The only place she could find to cry was a toilet cubicle. Her husband and co-founder Charles Jencks, said:
“I think that initial shock was certainly the moment when Maggie thought we can do better than this. You don’t have to suffer in a corridor on death row having just been told that you are going to die. That was the moment architecture and medicine met in our minds.” In the the last year of her life, Maggie spent her time working on an idea for a cancer centre which she hoped would change the lives of other cancer sufferers. Since her death the most prominent names in architecture from Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and others have designed astonishing landmark buildings bearing her name.
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Program 3 The Neue Nationalgalerie Nov 2 @ 7:30 Q&A with Director Ina Weisse and Producer Felix von Boehm Purchase Tickets |
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The Neue Nationalgalerie
Director: Ina Weisse 2017 / 49 min / Germany – NY Premiere
Screening with Starship Chicago Director: Nathan Eddy 2017 / 16 min / USA
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The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is an epoch-defining structure by the architect Mies van der Rohe. It was opened in 1968, shortly after his death. Nearly 50 years later, the director Ina Weisse sets out to examine the period during which this unique edifice was constructed. She is the daughter of the architect Rolf Weisse, who once worked in the offices of Mies van der Rohe in Chicago. In numerous interviews with her father and Mies van der Rohe's grandchild Dirk Lohan, along with the architect David Chipperfield – who is commissioned with renovating the building – and others, Ina Weisse explores the question of how the Neue Nationalgalerie came into existence, and what sort of World view is brought to expression by Mies van der Rohe's building.
Photo: Mies van der Rohe © Rolf Weisse
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Program 4 The Diplomat, the Artist & the Suit Nov 2 @ 9:45 Purchase Tickets Nov 5 @ 4:45 Purchase Tickets |
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The Diplomat, the Artist & the Suit Director: Paul Goldman 2016 / 57 min / Australia – US Premiere
Screening with DeLightFuL – Design, Light, Future, Living Director: Matteo Garrone 2016 / 9 min / Italy
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We are invited into the extraordinary minds of Bill Corker, Barrie Marshall and John Denton, three intriguing and very different characters who have been friends since university. We learn how the trio formed Denton Corker Marshall and how their unique personalities and distinctive skills have coalesced into a unique working relationship that has created visionary buildings, not only in Australia but worldwide. Denton Corker Marshall has produced distinct, innovative and memorable architecture and urban designs such as the Stonehenge Visitors' Centre, Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Melbourne Museum as well as Australian embassies in Beijing, Tokyo and Jakarta, demonstrating the significant contribution of their practice to the global architectural scene.
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Program 5 Getting Frank Gehry Nov 2 @ 9:30 Purchase Tickets |
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Getting Frank Gehry Director: Sally Aitken 59 min / 2015 / Australia
Screening with Drone Cities Director: Oliver Manzi 2017 / 15 min / UK
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The University of Technology, Sydney’s new business school, is Frank Gehry’s daring ‘Treehouse project’, otherwise known as the 'crumpled brown paper bag’ to its critics. At first sight, the school will almost certainly shock anyone not already familiar with Gehry’s work elsewhere around the world. Designed to be radical inside and out, the building is sure to provoke conflicts for decades, and yet is highly likely to be hailed as a masterpiece of early 21st century architecture, just as so many of his other creations have already been. The film follows the drama as Gehry’s vision for this commission is realized. Through the construction of this building, we examine his challenging work over a period of 40 years. Four key phases of creativity, epitomized by four great buildings, The Gehry House, The Vitra Museum, The Guggenheim Bilbao and MIT’s Stata Centre, chart the evolution of ideas over a lifetime of controversy to play out on the downtown Sydney construction site. Drawing on a life's work defined by controversial and ground-breaking ideas, the world's greatest architect has inaugurated his first Australian building - and debate still rages over whether it is eyesore or icon.
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Program 6 Citizen Jane: Battle for the City Nov 2 @ 9:15 Purchase Tickets |
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Citizen Jane: Battle for the City Director: Matt Tyrnauer 92 min / 2016 / USA
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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” – Jane Jacobs The film highlights Jane Jacobs’ magisterial 1961 treatise The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she single-handedly undercuts her era’s orthodox model of city planning, exemplified by the massive urban renewal projects of New York’s “Master Builder,” Robert Moses. Jacobs and Moses figure centrally in our story as archetypes of the “bottom up” and the “top down,” respectively. They also figure as two larger-than-life personalities: Jacobs, a journalist with provincial origins, no formal training in city planning, and scarce institutional authority seems at first glance to share little in common with Robert Moses, a high prince of government and urban theory fully ensconced in New York’s halls of power and privilege. Yet both reveal themselves to be master tacticians who, in the middle of the 20th century, became locked in an epic struggle over the fate of the city. In three suspenseful acts, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City gives audiences a front row seat to this battle, and shows how two opposing visions of urban greatness continue to ripple across the world stage, with unexpectedly high stakes.
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Program 7 REM Nov 3 @ 6:45 Conversation w Cathleen McGuigan and Nicolai Ouroussoff Purchase Tickets
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REM Director: Tomas Koolhaas 2016 / 75 min / USA
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Architecture is usually filmed from the outside, as an inanimate object. The few depictions of interiors are usually limited to still or static images of an empty building, reducing it to no more than an icon or sculpture. REM, the documentary by Rem Koolhaas's son, uses an unconventional approach by combining the human stories and experience of both the architect and the users of his architecture. The film explores Rem’s life, working methods, philosophy and internal landscape, from a never seen perspective of intimacy and immediacy. The result is having the feeling of being ‘inside’ his head. This perspective allows the viewer to understand Rem’s ideas in a way they couldn’t otherwise. These ideas are not merely explained as intellectual concepts but the viewer also sees these ideas in practice -the reality on the ground. They see how these ideas come to fruition in concrete and metal. The film shows how these structures, some massive and some small - dotted all around the globe - affect every aspect of the lives of the people that build them, use them and live inside them.
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Integral Man Director: Joseph Clement 2016 / 62 min / Canada – US Premiere
Screening with Cabin at the River Director: Silvia Zeitlinger 2017 / 8 min / Italy
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After Euclid, Toronto’s Jim Stewart is the most published mathematician in the world. Stewart spent a decade and a small fortune building the home of his dreams to reflect his two obsessions: curves and music. The completed home, called Integral House, provides him with both.
A stunning architectural gem of subtly curved wood and vast, evocative spaces, the house stands in Toronto’s Rosedale neighborhood and is considered by many one of the city’s best performance spaces. Stewart took joy in hosting his trademark musical evenings with world-class guests, including the likes of Grammy–nominated Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman, featured in the film.
This debut film by landscape designer and artist Joseph Clement is an impressive work of art with its masterful combination of beautiful soundscapes and gorgeous architectural details. It ultimately delivers a finely crafted portrait of Stewart and his beloved home.
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Program 9 Made in IlimaNov 3 @ 9:00 Q&A with Architects Michael Murphy, Alan Ricks and Director Thatcher Bean Purchase Tickets |
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Made in Ilima Director: Thatcher Bean 2017/ 65 min / USA / Program 9 / World Premiere
Screening with Pisces Director: Brad Deal 2017 / 3 min / USA
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In the center of Equator Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ilima community remains one of the most isolated in the world. They have coexisted with endangered wildlife in their surrounding forest for generations, but as the pace of development has increased, this fragile ecosystem has suffered. In 2012 they partnered with the African Wildlife Foundation and the architecture firm, MASS Design Group to create a new conservation focused primary school and community center. This film documents the collective building process - one aimed at leveraging local craft and ecological knowledge towards education, preservation, and beauty.
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Dries Director: Reiner Holzemer 2017 / 90 min / Belgium, Germany – NY Premiere
Screening with EX of In House Director: Spirit of Space 2017 / 6 min / USA
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For the first time fashion designer Dries Van Noten allows a filmmaker to accompany him in his creative process and rich home life. For an entire year Reiner Holzemer documents the precise steps that Dries takes to conceive of four collections - the rich fabrics, embroidery and prints exclusive to his designs … as well as the emblematic fashion shows that bring his collections to the world and have become cult “must sees” at Paris Fashion Week.
This film offers an insight into the life, mind and creative heart of a master fashion designer who, for more than 25 years, has remained independent in a landscape of fashion consolidation and globalization. Original music by Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, and Matthew Herbert and Sam Petts-Davies.
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Program 11 Zaha: An Architectural Legacy Nov 4 @ 2:00 Purchase Tickets |
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Zaha: An Architectural Legacy Directors: Jim Stephenson & Laura Mark 2017 / 27 min / UK
Screening with Jean Nouvel: Reflections Director: Matt Tyrnauer 2016 / 15 min / USA
Queen of Asbury Park Director: Jillian Buckley 2017 / 10 min / USA
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A year after Zaha Hadid died, this film takes a look at Zaha’s career and legacy through five chapters and buildings which signalled significant progressions in her work. The film takes us from her initial drawings and paintings while at the Architectural Association to her first built project at Vitra, then on to the Stirling Prize-winning MAXXI which secured her place in the architectural canon, then to the London Aquatics Centre – a building which made her known among the public – and finally finishing with the Maths Gallery at the Science Museum, completed just months after her death.
Featuring interviews with those who knew her including long-time collaborator Patrik Schumacher, architects Eva Jiricna and Nigel Coates, urbanist Ricky Burdett and engineer Hanif Kara, the film gives thoughtful insight into the impact Zaha had on the architectural profession.
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Program 12 Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect Nov 4 @ 4:15 Q&A with Architect Kevin Roche and Director Mark Noonan Purchase Tickets |
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Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect Director: Mark Noonan 2017 / 81 min / Ireland / US Premiere
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Still working at age 95, Pritzker Prize-winning, Irish-American architect Kevin Roche is an enigma. He’s reached the top of his profession, but has little interest in celebrity and eschews the label “Starchitect”. Despite a lifetime of acclaimed work that includes the Ford Foundation, Oakland Museum of California and 40 years designing new galleries for The Metropolitan Museum in New York, he has no intention of ever retiring and keeps looking forward. Roche's architectural philosophy focuses on creating “a community for a modern society” and he has been credited with creating green buildings before they became part of the public consciousness.
Panel discussion with Kevin Kennon from Kevin Kennon Architects, PC will take after the screening.
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Program 13 Designing Life: The Modernist Architecture of Albert C. Ledner Nov 4 @ 3:30 Q&A with co-directors Catherine Ledner and Roy Beeson Purchase Tickets
Nov 5 @ 3:00 Q&A with co-directors Catherine Ledner and Roy Beeson Purchase Tickets |
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Designing Life: The Modernist Architecture of Albert C. Ledner Director: Catherine Ledner & Roy Beeson 2017 / 47 min / US
Screening with Isay Weinfeld Director: Jillian Buckley 2016 / 9 min / USA
A Choice to Make Director: Eric Reinholdt & Trent Bell 2017 / 8 min / USA
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This documentary is an in-depth exploration of an influential New Orleans modernist architect, whose buildings for the National Maritime Union in the 1960s are now iconic figures in the NYC landscape. The film follows Albert Ledner’s journey from post WWII student of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin to the present day where Ledner continues to work and innovate at the age of 93. With interviews and on-site tours of his buildings, Albert details his thoughts and personal inspirations for his varied and experimental designs.
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Program 14 Aires Mateus: Matter in Reverse Nov 4 @ 4:45 Q&A with Director Henrique Pina and Producers Maria Joao and Joao Miguel Purchase Tickets
Nov 5 @ 5:00 Q&A with Director Henrique Pina and Producers Maria Joao and Joao Miguel Purchase Tickets |
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Aires Mateus: Matter in Reverse Director: Henrique Pina 2017 / 65 min / Portugal - US Premiere
Screening with Ghost Story Director: Sarah Elgart 2017 / 7 min / USA
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The work of the architects at Aires Mateus clearly shows contemporaneity - in its complexity and contradiction - a difficult condition to express in the realm of architecture. The extent of the work that they've been developing for many years confirms this. Their proposals develop a language with a strong universal impact. From this universality emerges an adaptation to the territory rooted in a clear Portuguese tradition. One finds in the interpretation of the work of Aires Mateus architects an appetite - almost a desire - for a cinematographic appropriation: by the invention of a place; by the confrontation between body and matter; for the clarity of games of shadow; for the search of a silence of its own. The matter is found in reverse.
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Columbus Director: Kogonada 2017 / 104 min / USA
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Columbus is the first feature length fiction film screened by ADFF. With its naturalistic rhythms, its focus on architecture and empathy for the complexities of families, debut director Kogonada's Columbus unfolds as a gently drifting, deeply absorbing conversation. With strong supporting turns from Parker Posey, Rory Culkin and Michelle Forbes, Columbus is also a showcase for the director's striking eye for the way physical space can affect emotions.
When a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin (John Cho) finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana - a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many significant modernist buildings. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a young architecture enthusiast who works at the local library. As their intimacy develops, Jin and Casey explore both the town and their conflicted emotions: Jin's estranged relationship with his father, and Casey's reluctance to leave Columbus and her mother.
Kogonada will be present at the screening.
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Program 16 Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World's Fair? Nov 3 @ 8:30 Q&A with Architect Michael Sorkin, Director Mina Chow Purchase Tickets
Nov 4 @ 2:45 Q&A with Architect Michael Sorkin, Director Mina Chow Purchase Tickets |
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Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World's Fair? Director: Mina Chow 2017 / 57 min / USA / World Premiere
Screening with The Future of Cities Director: Oscar Boyson 2016 / 18 min / USA
A Little Alcove: San Francisco Navigation Center Director: Julian Pham 2017 / 4 min / USA
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Daughter of immigrants, an idealistic architect struggles to keep her dream alive as she journeys to discover why America abandoned World’s Fairs. For generations of Americans, World’s Fairs captured visions of hope for the future as part of their collective memory. Mina Chow became fascinated with World’s Fairs when she saw pictures of her parents at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Beginning with their stories, Mina shares this legacy and the American values that inspired her to become an architect. She is excited to go to the 1st World's Fair in China. With over 73 million visitors, the Shanghai World Expo breaks all attendance records for any event in human history. But what she discovers there not only destroys her confidence as an American architect; it is symptomatic of a country that has lost its way. With her dream destroyed, Mina begins a search for answers … to find out what happened to the vision of World’s Fairs ... and what happened to America.
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Program 17 SUPERDESIGN Nov 5 @ 4:30 Conversation with Director Francesa Molteni and co-curator Maria Cristine Didero Purchase Tickets |
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SUPERDESIGN Director: Francesca Molteni 2017 / 62 min / Italy
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SUPERDESIGN is a film about the Italian Radical Movement in architecture & design in the 1960’s and 70’s. Through the words and stories of people who were part of that movement, we retrace the history and the heritage of the movement. They take us back to that time when everything seemed possible.
The mid-1960s represented a revolutionary time when the need for change has spread everywhere in the Western world and has pervaded all the aspects of life. Some beautiful archival historical images recreate the atmosphere of the period. It was a time of ‘positive turbulence’ also on an artistic level. And even today we can definitely catch a glimpse of this radical viruses in our interviewees!
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Program 18 The Gamble House Nov 4 @ 1:30 Q&A with Producer Lori Korngiebel and Ted Bosley Purchase Tickets
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The Gamble House Director: Don Hahn 2017 / 58 min / USA
Screening with Before Design: Classic Directed by Matteo Garrone 2016 / 7 min / Italy
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The Gamble House is the incredible story of brothers Charles and Henry Greene who were pushed by their forceful father into a career in architecture only to design and build the most seminal and stunning Arts & Crafts house in America. The house, however, did not come without its price, both personally and professionally, for the Greene brothers, and for David and Mary Gamble who commissioned it. It’s a tale of American craftsmanship, international influence, artistic frustration, loss and triumph, which led to the completion of one of the shining examples of American architecture, known to fans of Back to the Future as Doc Brown’s house, and fans of architecture simply as The Gamble House.
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Panel 1 Van Alen Sessions: Infrastructure on Film Nov 2 @ 6:00 Purchase Tickets
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Join Van Alen Institute for the world premiere of Season Three of the short documentary series Van Alen Sessions, exploring the capacity and limits of rapidly changing technology in cities at a time of increasingly automated infrastructure, illuminated through the expert insight of designers and engineers and the stories of everyday people. These new episodes give viewers an up-close examination of how revolutionary robotic maintenance systems and retrofitted underground waterways are making our cities more productive and environmentally efficient.
Following the screening of the 2 short films, join us for a fast-paced conversation that digs deeper into how some cities are changing the narrative of our nation's crumbling infrastructure while engaging local citizens, including Nicole Flatow, editor, CityLab; Molly Heintz, chair, School of Visual Arts MFA Design Research, Writing and Criticism; and Lucy Wells, director, Van Alen Sessions, moderated by Steven Thomson, managing producer, Van Alen Sessions and programs and communications manager, Van Alen Institute.
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Panel 1 What to do With 520 Miles of Coastline? Nov 2 @ 6:00 Purchase Tickets |
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With 520 miles of coastline, New York is a city of islands and water. When local manufacturing declined in the mid-twentieth century, much of the city's shoreline fell into disuse and disrepair. Recently, New York has begun to reclaim this vital asset, cleaning up its waterways, reopening shoreline access, and building waterfront parks across the five boroughs. The work is part of an important larger trend in social awareness and a focus on public space in urban design.
Join Arup and ADFF for a screening of the short film “From Pier to Pier: New York City’s new backyard” followed by a panel discussion with leading members of the city's waterfront and public space communities.
Moderator Francesca Birks: Leader of Foresight + Research + Innovation for Arup Americas
Panal Captain Jonathan Boulware: Executive Director of South Street Seaport Museum Archie Lee Coates IV: co-founder and partner at PLAYLAB, INC Rob Holbrook: Director of Planning at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. NYCEDC
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