AGENCY partners Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller are part of an interdisciplinary team chosen as finalists in Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up!, a nationwide design competition to revitalize urban neighborhoods with green stormwater infrastructure. Finalists were selected by an expert jury representing leaders in architecture and urban design, civil engineering, hydrology, landscape architecture, economic and community development, construction, and sustainability, based on design and policy proposals submitted by the teams in January.

The team will present its proposal for a second expert jury and the public in a ‘rapid-fire’ presentation at the design awards ceremony in Philadelphia on March 7, 2013, where the jury will select a winner from the three finalists in our category. Stay tuned to the AGENCY blog for final results and project details!

The finalists‘ designs serve as prototypes for green stormwater infrastructure throughout Philadelphia and the US, illustrate potential public/private partnerships, and aid property owners in seeing the return on investment. The competition is sponsored by the Community Design Collaborative, the Philadelphia Water Department, and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Project Team:

Architecture + Urban Design
Ersela Kripa, RA, AGENCY

Stephen Mueller, RA, AGENCY

Landscape Architecture + Urban Design

Kees Lokman, Assistant Prof. of Landscape Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis

Ryan Wilson, RLA, LEED-AP, Stormwater Program Manager, Center for Neighborhood Technology

Civil Engineering

Sean Marzolf, PE, LEED-AP, Civil Engineer, KS Engineers

The symposium marks the 50th anniversary of the Master of Urban Design Program in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design at WUSTL.  Architect Thom Mayne will present the keynote lecture, with other speakers throughout the weekend event  including Teddy Cruz, Chris Reed, Ken Greenberg, Felipe Correa, Eric Mumford, John Hoal, Darrick Borowski, and Shawn Rickenbacker.

From the organizer’s website:

‘The intent of the symposium is to discuss and debate the future of urban design education and practice in a rapidly urbanizing world—a world that is increasingly socially complex, economically integrated, and challenged by vast shifts in natural resources’.

For a full schedule of the symposium events, and to RSVP your participation, please see the organizer’s website here.

The organizers of the competition describe the objectives: The Land Art Generator Initiative brings together artists, architects, scientists, landscape architects, engineers, and others in a first of its kind collaboration. The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative is to see to the design and construction of public art installations that uniquely combine aesthetics with utility-scale clean energy generation. The works will serve to inspire and educate while they provide renewable power to thousands of homes around the world.

The project brief asked participants to propose a clean-energy installation and public artwork for Fresh Kills park on Staten Island (NY), as part of a new masterplan to re-imagine the historic landfill as an urban park.

AGENCY’s proposal, entitled “Skyfill” activates the site’s dual character, through the imaginative restoration of the park as an engaging and productive public space, and the conservation of the collective memory of an industrial and wasteful past. Since the end of landfill operations at Fresh Kills , the skies above the land are empty and quiet, voided of their former activity, where circling seagulls were once prescient harbingers of the city’s effort to rid itself of waste.

The project proposes a new occupation of the sky plane, welcoming back the area’s lost avian ecology and restoring visual energy to the local skyline, reconnecting the city to the spaces of consumption and waste increasingly outside its consciousness. An inter-related series of flexible tetrahedral kites transfer every delicate movement into usable energy, powering entire neighborhoods.  The project’s tetrahedral branching geometry simulates natural branching of trees, providing new habitats for migratory birds, and offering bird-watching opportunities for visitors.

The responsive and ever-changing structure provides a dynamic focal point for new activities and gatherings in North Park, paired with unique participatory programming to foster an understanding of contemporary energy needs and urban waste. The project also functions as a repository for publicly-available kites, providing recreational entertainment and technical guidance for kite enthusiasts, craftspeople, and children. On any given day, users may borrow kites to fly, understanding the dynamics of wind patterns while seeing it reflected by the amplified movements of the energy-generating superstructure.

Winners from the competition will be announced at an exhibit in coming weeks.

250 proposals from the competition are viewable at the LAGI 2012 Portfolio page.

Tyler School of Art’s new building (Photo credit: Nick Sherman)

AGENCY partners Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller will present a lecture of their recent work at Tyler School of Architecture at Temple University on February 22, 2012.  The lecture begins at 6pm in the Gallery of the Architecture Building, 2001 N 13th Street.  Stay tuned to the AGENCY blog for more details.

Image Courtesy Changhak Choi

AGENCY partners Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller are contributors to a new publication by editor Changhak Choi.  Their essay, entitled Critical Conditioning | Managing Design in the Crisis Imaginary explores new roles for architects in the realm of crisis response.

From the publication and event organizers:

“[global] Crisis & Design ver.1.0: Living in the Crisis Era is an initiative of the Institute of Multidisciplinarityfor Art, Architecture and Design (IM) and the first of a series of exhibitions focusing on topics in contemporary design, aimed at raising public interest and dialogue. IM is an independent non‐profit organization that promotes advanced interaction in art, architecture, design, technology and other related disciplines in New York City. Founded in 2011, IM is dedicated to the speculative research and presentation of contemporary design practice, socio‐cultural issues, as well as to identify emerging talents in arts and the diverse design disciplines. IM activities include organizing exhibitions, publications andinternational competitions; project research and development; and developing an online project archive…

A book, [global] Crisis & Design ver.1.0, Anxiety and Desire, to be published in conjunction with the exhibition, contains a series of essays addressing the global crisis, as well as full statements from the exhibition contributors to further discuss their work. The publication offers yet another way of looking at the crisis that designers face, and documents the ways in which designers deal with the public concerns.  The book also reframes the question and definition of global crisis in context of various scale and angles of worldview.”

Stay tuned to the AGENCY blog for details on the book’s release and availability.

Photo © AGENCY 2012

View AGENCY’s contribution to the eme3 2011 Exhibition Catalog online here.  An excerpt from the text, entitled “Hackable Infrastructures”, is copied below.

‘Metropolitan Rome is a vibrant and dynamic collision of the pressures of globalization, urbanization, and migration. With the influx of populations escaping recent political conflicts, and the continued development of long-existing communities outside the legitimate power structures of the city, tens of thousands are struggling to find a place in the urban construct. The city is facing an informal housing crisis.

But the form of the city is fluid, and a wide array of informal settlements and structures persist within the formal city fabric. In the periphery, much of the urban form is ‘unplanned’, driven by the ever-changing conditions of the market, speculative development, and ‘abusive’ construction. Informal settlements, once a negligible and overlooked part of the city, are escalating in scale and intensity, and are dictating future development. In this ever-shifting milieu, the planning structures of the municipality must respond to increasingly complex flows of populations, capital, and commerce.

The project considers both the “top-down” formal planning practices of metropolitan Rome, and the abundance of “bottom-up” informal approaches to urban life, to elaborate upon the emerging articulation of the city’s margins, and suggest alternative futures. By extrapolating the successful tactics of existing communities, we find opportunities for inclusion and exchange within an urban fabric seemingly caught in stalemate.’

Photo by Noah Kalina for ARCHITECT Magazine

AGENCY partners Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller are featured in ARCHITECT Magazine’s Emerging Talent.  Mimi Zeiger describes the partners’ project as fellows at the American Academy in Rome:

“It would be wrong to think that 2010 Rome Prize winners Ersela Kripa…and Stephen Mueller…have spent their time at the American Academy in Rome holed up on the historic grounds of the Villa Aurelia. Hoping to use architecture to address humanitarian and economic crises, they took their studies to the streets. Kripa and Mueller, partners in New York–based Agency Architecture, are investigating the marginal and informal settlements that are booming around the city’s urban edge.”

Click here for the full article.

Startt (architects)
Insula (architects)
Ersela Kripa + Stephen Mueller / AGENCY (architects)
Freddy Ventriglia (graphic)
Marta Gargiulo + Mondo Bizzarro “Street art Diary” edizioni Castelvecchia
Allaboutpaula (designers)
Orizzontale (architects, designers)
Aira (motion graphic)
Boudewijn Kaijser + Riccardo Gola (architect + jazz musician)

Entry is free. Presentations begin at 20:20, and will be held at Circolo Degli Artisti, Via Casilina Vecchia 42, Roma. The event is curated by Ottavio Cialone and Francesco Lipari.

For more information from the event organizers, please visit their page on Facebook. To see other PKN presentations, and for details about the Pecha Kucha format and events in your city, go to pecha-kucha.org.

Informal Settlements in Mumbai

AGENCY has been invited to participate in the Frugal Architecture International Symposium this week in Malta.  The event gathers some of the world’s leading architects and creative thinkers to address the scarcity of resources in contemporary urban and rural environments.

Partners Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller will present a lecture entitled “Economies of Informality” on Thursday, June 2, and will participate in other events throughout the week, including an international design workshop.

Other participants in the symposium include:

Elena Barthel | Rural Studio, USA

Austin Camilleri | Artist, Malta

Franco La Cecla | Anthropologist and Architect, Italy

Nina Maritz | Nina Maritz Architects, Namibia

Luca Stasi | CTRL-Zeta Architects, Mexico, and

Sarah Wigglesworth | Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, UK

among others.

The event is organized by Architecture Project (Malta) and Abbate e Vigevano Architects (Italy).  A detailed description of the event is available from the Times of Malta, and an event programme is available for download from KTP.

Stay tuned to the AGENCY blog for updates.

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