THANK YOU FOR EXPLORING ELSEWHERE WITH US

We want to thank everyone who joined us last month for an inspiring start to Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape, a new initiative exploring escape in the urban environment. It was a dense and fast-paced week of festival-style events, and we’ve posted photos and video clips to highlight some of the exciting conversations we shared on the role of escape in the cities that we live in.

We've moved to YouTube! Click here to subscribe and watch clips from our fall series →

On Tuesday, November 12, we launched with Elsewhere: An Evening of Escape, a celebratory series of presentations hosted at ISSUE Project Room on the meaning of escape, featuring Architizer co-founder Marc Kushner, singer and artist Joseph Keckler, Professor of Architecture Keller Easterling, city planner Ron Shiffman, and more.

We continued on Friday with We Live with Animals, a night hosted with Performa 13 full of wild stories of animal encounters in the city, from tales of dating and house pets in the city to extreme animal rescues. 

And on Saturday we got started with Debt, Design, and Displacement in the City, approaching escape and the city through the lens of escalating housing costs and the resulting patterns of debt and displacement affecting urban dwellers. Click here to take the trivia survey assembled by workshop organizers and Cohabitation Strategies co-founders Miguel Robles-Durán and Gabriela Rendón.

Then on Saturday evening, we headed uptown for Let There Be Night, a conversation co-hosted with Columbia University’s Astronomy Outreach and the Columbia School of the Arts that brought together diverse perspectives from government, design, advocacy, and medicine to discuss the impact of urban lighting on human well-being and ecological systems.

Finally, on Sunday, we gathered at Van Alen Institute for The Footprint of Escape, an excursion into the Flatiron neighborhood followed by a conversation exploring the past, present, and future of escape in the city. We concluded our fall 2013 series in the evening with Cities, Not Nations?, a panel discussion moderated by sociologist Saskia Sassen on the potential of cities as sites of pragmatism, problem-solving, and innovation. 

Watch the videos →

We can’t wait to continue our exploration of Elsewhere with new competitions, research, and our Spring 2014 Events—stay tuned!

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: 120TH ANNIVERSARY RESEARCHER

Van Alen Institute seeks a Researcher to manage a multifaceted initiative celebrating the Institute’s 120th anniversary in 2014. This part-time, ten-month position will be responsible for executing all aspects of the Institute’s 120th-anniversary research initiative, which will illuminate and clarify Van Alen’s history as a catalyst for design innovation. Download the position description for more information. Please submit by Wednesday, January 8.

INTERNSHIPS AT VAN ALEN INSTITUTE

If you're interested in getting involved with our work, we have multiple internship opportunities coming up for winter/spring 2014! We're seeking four interns to join the Van Alen Institute team and support our work across communications, development, operations, public programs, research, and competitions. Download the position description for more information.

VOTE FOR VAN ALEN! DESIGN WITH BENEFITS

This month, Van Alen Institute is featured on Design With Benefits, a site offering products made with social and environmental benefits in mind. Each month, the site features three organizations or projects involved in design activism, and the recipient of the most votes receives their monthly donation. Visit the Design With Benefits website, and show your support for Van Alen by casting your vote by December 31!

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES FOR VAN ALEN MEMBERS

Van Alen's recent member events have offered a behind-the-scenes look at a number of exciting architecture and planning projects. We visited Governors Island's new park and public space in June, and this month, we toured the recently restored, Scandinavian-designed UN Council Chambers with Kathy Farbod, Project Architect and Manager of the UN Capital Master Plan.

Coming up in February: members are invited on a tour of 101 Spring Street, the newly restored 19th century cast-iron building and SoHo home and studio of artist Donald Judd.

Become a member to join us for exclusive tours and events →

FRIENDS OF VAN ALEN ESCAPE TO THE SKYLINE

On Tuesday, October 22, Van Alen Institute Trustee Sharon Davis hosted an intimate celebration for donors and friends of the Institute. Guests "escaped to the skyline" of Paul Rudolph's spectacular penthouse overlooking the East River to hear performances by Justin Vivian Bond, enjoyed DJ set and installation by sound artist Maria Chavez, and experienced the whisperings of Niegel Smith. View the photos on Facebook.

BE A PART OF WHAT'S NEXT AT VAN ALEN INSTITUTE

It’s been an exciting 2013 at Van Alen Institute! We kicked off our major move to the street level with the Ground/Work competition; introduced new partnerships and competitions such as Rebuild by Design, Changing Course, and the Valentine Heart Competition with Times Square Arts; hosted a dynamic series of readings, discussions, and celebrations at Van Alen Books; and launched our fall season of events introducing Elsewhere, our new multi-year investigation of how and why we escape the city.

We’re just getting started—and we hope you’ll join us as we move forward with new competitions, public programs, and research projects that foster innovative visions for our urban environment.

Support Van Alen Institute by becoming a member today →

COMPETITIONS AND RESOURCES FOR DESIGNERS

DredgeFest Louisiana is a symposium, field expedition, and speculative design workshop about the human manipulation of sediments, investigating topics such as dredging methods, sea-level rise, the beneficial uses of dredged material, habitat restoration, barrier island reconstruction, advanced geotextiles, and more. DredgeFest Louisiana will take place January 11-17, 2014. Students and practitioners are encouraged to attend the speculative design workshops on January 13-15, which will be led by designers including Smout Allen (Bartlett School of Architecture), Case Brown (P-REX), Alexander Robinson (University of Southern California), and more. Read more and purchase tickets to attend.

Unsitely! Leveraging Design to Improve Urban Construction Sites is a colloquium bringing together presentations, case studies and networking opportunities to explore innovative solutions that leverage design to improve our experience of urban worksites. The colloquium will take place in Montréal at the Canadian Centre for Architecture on October 8-9, 2014. Submit to the call for project and case studies by December 17.

New Practices New York is a biennial juried portfolio competition sponsored by the New Practices Committee of the AIA New York Chapter to recognize and promote new and innovative architecture and design firms. The competition invites New York City architecture and design firms founded since 2004 to submit a practice narrative and a portfolio of built, un-built, or theoretical work. Register by January 6.

Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League invite emerging designers to apply for Folly, a call for proposals seeking large-scale projects and installations that explore the intersection of architecture and sculpture through the architectural folly: structures that often have no discernible purpose and are placed within a garden or landscape. Apply by January 7.

The 2nd Istanbul Design Biennial, titled "The Future is Not What it Used to Be," has launched a call for ideas inviting submissions for projects that revisit and rethink the manifesto for the 21st century. Individuals from any field or background related to design are invited to contribute concepts for manifestos in all forms, including, but not limited to, images, animations, videos, graphics, diagrams, and/or texts. Submit by February 1. 

Design and Violence is an online curatorial project by the Museum of Modern Art that examines the topic of design and violence in the format of a moderated and invited dialogue, using design objects—from product design and graphic design to interface, fashion, and web design—as prompts for wider questions and reflections. Experts from fields as diverse as science, philosophy, literature, music, film, journalism, and politics have been invited to contribute their perspective to this conversation by responding to a design project, and the public is invited to join the conversation at http://designandviolence.moma.org/.