• Call for Participants: National Parks Now
• INABA Selected as Winner of Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition
• Reminder: Register and Submit for Future Ground
• Board Spotlight: Andre Kikoski
• Save the Date: Exploring the Archives on October 7
• Behind-the-Scenes Tours with Van Alen Members
• We're Hiring! Join Van Alen as Marketing & Communications Manager
• In the Field: Opportunities for Artists, Designers, and Academics

If you haven't already heard, Van Alen Institute and the National Park Service recently launched National Parks Now, an international competition inviting teams of emerging professionals to reshape the visitor experience at four extraordinary national parks in the Northeast.

National Parks Now is our newest competition launched as part of Van Alen's Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape, a multi-year initiative exploring how both the form and organization of the built environment influence our need for escape.

We're calling on professionals from architecture and landscape architecture, graphic and interactive design, exhibition and film production, history, preservation, communications, and the social and environmental sciences—and we invite you to visit www.vanalen.org/nationalparksnow to learn more, download the Request for Qualifications, and submit with a team.

In November, four teams—one for each park site—will receive $15,000 to participate in a six-month research and design process to propose tools, programs, and other strategies that connect new audiences to the narratives and landscapes at each site. The four teams will be competing for $10,000 to prototype one of their strategies, which will be implemented at their site in summer of 2015.

Visit the National Parks Now website to learn more and participate→

The four park sites are:

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (Oyster Bay, NY), the estate of President Theodore Roosevelt
Steamtown National Historic Site (Scranton, PA), one of the world’s most important monuments to the steam locomotive
Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park (Paterson, NJ), a historic birthplace of American textile manufacturing
Weir Farm National Historic Site (Ridgefield, CT), the summer estate of the artist Julian Alden Weir

This week, Van Alen Institute and the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership announced the winner of the first-ever Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition, in which top designers and architects proposed dynamic structures to be installed in front of the famed Flatiron Building during the 2014 winter holiday season.

New York Light, the winning design by INABA, will illuminate the plaza as a backdrop for public events and provide visitors with a special view of the Flatiron building and the Madison Square skyline during the holiday season. The design is the result of a collaboration between the Brooklyn-based INABA, Tillotson Design Associates, Ben Gal Fierro, and Buro Happold.

The competition finalists were: EFGH Architectural Design Studio, e+i studio, Chris Jordan / Moey, RSVP Architecture Studio, SCAPE / Landscape Architecture, and Stereotank.

The installation will be unveiled in November in the North Public Plaza at Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. We can't wait to see it light up the neighborhood this holiday season!

View the gallery of winning and finalist design proposals→

Register and submit for Future Ground, our competition launched in partnership with the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority inviting multidisciplinary teams to generate flexible design and policy strategies for the reuse of vacant land in New Orleans.

Final RFQ submissions are due online before 11:59pm EST on September 29th. FAQ's have been posted to the competition website, and check back for updates and ideas from our jury and Advisory Committee members as well as New Orleans stakeholders. Contact Competitions Coordinator Stephen Klimek with additional questions at sklimek@vanalen.org.

Visit www.vanalen.org/futureground to learn more and submit!

This month, we hear from Van Alen Trustee and member of the Competitions Committee Andre Kikoski:

The competition format has a long legacy in architecture, but is less frequently used as a tool in other fields. What opportunities and challenges do you see in bringing more disciplines together within the framework of a competition?

I’ve always believed that design is a form of research, and that it is fundamentally collaborative in nature. I think the more that design practice can extend from a functionally-directed inquiry and begin to incorporate multiple disciplines, the more it is able to produce a large amount of knowledge. The reality is that this doesn’t happen enough in the realm of client-sponsored design projects, so I think the competition model provides an opportunity for knowledge creation that is unique and pretty unparalleled.

What issues are you eager to see competitions address in the near future?

I’ve recently been reading articles about Germany’s efforts to generate a large percentage of its power from clean and renewable sources. The net savings for the global economy of adapting to cleaner technology and nonpolluting energy sources are staggering figures, especially when one considers savings in healthcare costs and other areas. There’s a real opportunity to turn around some of the environmental degradation we’ve set in motion, so I’d be very interested in competitions that tackle that challenge. It speaks to the core of Van Alen’s mission, and it’s not only relevant but also essential. I think institutions like Van Alen can provide the critical push, help to align thinkers and doers, government officials and practitioners, to discover things that are well within our grasp but wouldn’t have otherwise been addressed were it not for the unique nature of competitions.

What are you most excited about in Van Alen's current slate of design competitions?

I think the national parks are one of the greatest resources that we have. They’re a window to the wilderness, and so deeply engrained in the American psyche. They are important as a testament to where we’ve been but also as a harbinger of how we’re approaching the future. So I’m personally very excited about the ideas coming from National Parks Now.

To celebrate the Institute's 120th year, we’re presenting a series of public events based on the people, movements, and ideas that make up our rich and varied history—taking us from our founding as the Society of Beaux Arts Architects to the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, the National Institute for Architectural Education, and today's Van Alen Institute.

Our first event is coming up on the evening of Tuesday, October 7 at Grimshaw Architects, 637 W 27th St. Save the date—more details to come!

This week, Van Alen members gathered for a private tour of the Snøhetta-designed pavilion at the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Snøhetta's Project Director Aaron Dorf led us through the space—which serves as a bridge between the new memorial and museum at the World Trade Center site—while sharing insights into how the site has transformed in the last decade. In addition to experiencing the pavilion, memorial, and museum firsthand, we learned about the layers of security, technical, code, and other parameters that ultimately shaped the pavilion's final form on this uniquely complex site.

And on Tuesday, August 26, we got a peek at the fascinating inner workings of our city on a private tour of the newly opened Sims Municipal Recycling Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility in Brooklyn. There was so much to take in—from the Selldorf-designed structure on the Gowanus Bay to the mind-boggling maze of conveyor belts and choreographed dump trucks. One thing we learned: when in doubt, just recycle it! The tour was led Lisa Green of Selldorf Architects, the firm behind the facility’s award-winning sustainable design.

Not yet a member? Join now to attend our upcoming events→

Interesting in joining the Van Alen staff? We're currently seeking a Marketing & Communications Manager to oversee marketing, communications, and multimedia production across all departments as part of a multi-disciplinary team. The Marketing & Communications Manager is responsible for: coordinating outreach, promotion, and materials for concurrent projects; maintaining master schedule for outgoing email, social, web, and print content; and liaising with media contacts and partners of the Institute.

Download the position description to learn more and apply→

On September 26-27, Syracuse Architecture hosts "Speculations on the Real: Graham Harman & the OOO Challenge to Contemporary Architecture," with Mark Gage, Andrew Atwood, Anna Neimark, Tom Wiscombe, Ferda Kolatan, Winka Dubbeldam, and David Ruy. 

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's Artist as Activist grant program provides resources to artists (visual, performing, media, and beyond), designers, and other creative professionals who are addressing important global challenges through their creative practice. The program includes Artist as Activist Fellows, Artist as Activist Travel & Research Grants, and Artist as Activist Organizations. Visit the website to view deadlines for each program.

The Society of Architectural Historians is accepting applications for the 2014 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship, which offers $50,000 to a recent graduate or emerging scholar for one year of travel study. The fellowship is open to a scholar who will earn a PhD or advanced terminal degree in the first half of 2014, or an emerging scholar who was awarded such a degree in 2009-2013, in a field related to the built environment. Apply by October 1.

On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation will present The Accidental Preservationist: Artists, Artisans, Outliers & the Future of Historic Preservation, a day long multi-disciplinary symposium exploring the influence of non-traditional practitioners of historic preservation on architectural revitalization throughout the United States. Purchase tickets to attend on October 17. 

At Van Alen Institute, we believe design can transform cities, landscapes, and regions to improve people’s lives. We collaborate with communities, scholars, policymakers, and professionals on local and global initiatives that rigorously investigate the most pressing social, cultural, and ecological challenges of tomorrow. Building on more than a century of experience, we develop cross-disciplinary research, provocative public programs, and inventive design competitions.

Learn more at www.vanalen.org.

Our ongoing programs are made possible through the generous assistance of our individual contributors and partners, and are supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Van Alen Institute | 30 W. 22nd St., 4th Floor | New York, NY 10010 | 212–924–7000 | www.vanalen.org