Join the AIANY Women in Architecture Committee for a special networking architecture cruise focused on a wide range of waterfront projects designed or built by women. AIANY guide Julie Engh, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, will welcome several expert guest speakers (TBA), who collectively will provide lively narration covering architecture and engineering landmarks from all eras of the city’s history, as well as current urban planning and environmental issues impacting urban waterfronts. We’ll cruise the Hudson, East and Harlem Rivers, and explore women’s contributions to the recent transformation of an industrial waterfront to one of booming real estate development, ecologically-driven landscape design, and resilient infrastructure. Tour features include iconic Art Deco spires, historic engineering marvels, adaptive reuse, and progressive waterfront parks.

Featured women-led projects will include the Statute of Liberty Museum, Pier 55 (a dramatic public park and performance space in the Hudson River), Governors Island, Hudson River Park and Long Island City waterfront projects, Pier 42 (a critical missing link of public access along the shoreline), Rockefeller University, the East River Waterfront Esplanade, the new Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport, the Domino Sugar Refinery Development, and American Copper Buildings.

Special guest speakers will include:

Julie Engh, Assoc. AIA: Julie is a project manager at Urban Projects Collaborative, an owner’s representative firm representing mission-driven organizations. As a founding member of the AIANY Architecture Tour Committee, Julie helped develop the AIANY boat and walking tour programs and has guided a variety of tours across both platforms.

 Signe Nielsen, FASLA: Signe is a Principal at Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, and has been practicing as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978. Her body of work has renewed the environmental integrity and transformed the quality of spaces for those who live, work and play in the urban realm. 

Cameron Ringness: Cameron is an architect, artist and poet originally from Cleveland, Ohio, living and working in New York City. She was the lead designer of the new Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island with FXCollaborative Architects and is currently the lead designer for the new Children’s Museum of Manhattan to be completed in 2021.

Hayes Slade: Hayes is the 2019 AIANY Chapter President and a Principal at Slade Architecture, which creates thoughtful and impactful architecture based on a considered examination of program potential, user perspective, and material sensibility. She co-authored Design Guidelines for NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and Slade Architecture has been part of the NYC Design Excellence Program at the NYC Department of Design and Construction for four terms. 

Ayumi Sugiyama: Ayumi is the Director of Cultural Projects at SHoP Architects, and has expertise in the design and delivery of complex urban projects with significant public space programs and complicated stakeholder groups. Ayumi has acted as project director for several of the firm’s most prominent and award-winning projects, including the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn and the American Copper Buildings and the New Academic Building at FIT in New York.

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Statute of Liberty Museum: 

https://www.fxcollaborative.com/projects/175/Statue%2520of%2520Liberty%2520Museum/

Pier 55, Governors Island, Hudson River Park, and Long Island City waterfront projects, Pier 42 and Rockefeller University:  

https://www.mnlandscape.com/projects

East River Waterfront
SHoP’s 14 million sf plan for the East River Waterfront Esplanade and Pier 15 brings an innovative approach to the integration of the city and its post-industrial urban edge, capitalizing on the opportunity to function as a recreational space totally unique to Manhattan. Unable to be rooted in the picturesque tradition prevalent in parks around the city, instead the park seeks to embody the heritage of its long history as a working waterfront and at the same time embrace the many urban anomalies, such as the FDR Drive. The design takes a systematic approach to revitalizing an area once overflowing with waterfront activity by focusing on connecting the city to the water’s edge, activating the waterfront year-round by providing new cultural, community, commercial and recreational nodes along its entire length.

Pier 17
SHoP’s design for the new Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport re-imagines the mall to create a mix of boutique and large restaurant and retail spaces. The new 300,000 sf design echoes the typical New York streetscape, with smaller individual structures housing shops and restaurants, separated by open-air pedestrian thoroughfares. Two large floors stretch out above the small shops as a roof, each measuring 60,000 sf. Enormous glass garage-style doors descend in bad weather to seal in the lower levels of the complex, offering protection from the elements while still opening up previously blocked views of the Brooklyn Bridge. The new Pier 17 will completely transform the existing building into a vibrant destination that builds on Lower Manhattan’s commercial resurgence, continued residential growth, and evolution into a 24/7 live/work/play community.

Domino Sugar Refinery Development / 325 Kent
With Two Trees Management Company, SHoP and Field Operation’s master plan for the Domino Sugar Refinery Development replaces a city-approved 2010 plan with a new proposal that adds 60% more publicly-accessible open space on a new, highly accessible street grid; provides for a new 24/7 mix of office, residential, neighborhood retail, community facilities while retaining original commitments for affordable housing; and a new form of open architecture that connects the existing neighborhood to the new quarter-mile waterfront. The plan envisions a new skyline for Brooklyn—one that relates to the height of the Williamsburg bridge to the south and scales down to meet the neighboring lower buildings. The buildings are porous, featuring large openings that allow light and air to penetrate through the site and into the neighborhood beyond.

325 Kent, or Site E, is the first complete building as part of SHoP’s master plan. Retail storefronts occupy the ground floor perimeter, carefully sized to encourage continuity with the neighborhood’s pattern of smaller, independent businesses. Above, the residential floors step up in terraces from the east, forming a connection to the existing neighborhood. After over a year of on-site testing to study materials that would age gracefully and contribute to the dramatic industrial character of the area, two different sheet metals were chosen for the exterior—copper for the lower floors, and zinc above. The copper panels were installed without a factory produced finish, creating a dynamic building surface that will weather and patina over time, drawing in visitors and engaging the public as it adapts over the course of its lifespan.

American Copper
Previously the location of a razed power plant on First Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets, the American Copper Buildings have become a dynamic landmark on Manhattan’s East Side. Responding to an existing master plan for the block and the constraints of an envelope described by New York City’s zoning code, the two towers, reaching to 48 and 41 stories respectively, take on their characteristic form. The three-story skybridge was then located at the point at which the two towers are closest together. Lounge and amenity spaces for tenants—including the lap pool and gym—are located at the bridge level, while the roof of the north tower houses a second swimming pool and a rooftop bar overlooking the entire city. At grade, a through-block passageway opens to a new public park on the river side of the site. A structure as alive as the city it inhabits, the striking set of towers are already becoming icons on the Manhattan waterfront. The buildings’ façade will patina over time, transforming from the red copper they are today to a mint green that evokes the Statue of Liberty, just down the river from the project’s site. 

AIANY Women in Architecture NYC Boat Tour

Join the AIANY Women in Architecture Committee for a special networking architecture cruise focused on a wide range of waterfront projects designed or built by women. AIANY guide Julie Engh, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, will welcome several expert guest speakers (TBA), who collectively will provide lively narration covering architecture and engineering landmarks from all eras of the city’s history, as well as current urban planning and environmental issues impacting urban waterfronts. We’ll cruise the Hudson, East and Harlem Rivers, and explore women’s contributions to the recent transformation of an industrial waterfront to one of booming real estate development, ecologically-driven landscape design, and resilient infrastructure. Tour features include iconic Art Deco spires, historic engineering marvels, adaptive reuse, and progressive waterfront parks.

  Duration: 2.75 hrs  Boat: Manhattan or Manhattan II  Cost: Adult $86 | Student $68

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Every year during Fleet Week, we partner with Turnstile Tours to offer a memorable boat cruise about the military history of New York Harbor.  We will focus on the activity of the Harbor during World War II.  We will depart from Chelsea Piers, aboard the beautiful motor yacht Manhattan and visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Army Terminal, and USS Intrepid, as well as other historic and military sites along the New Jersey and Brooklyn shores. Along the way, we share the stories of sailors, shipbuilders, longshoremen and merchant mariners who built New York Harbor into the heart of the American war effort. So step aboard and enjoy this educational cruise with us out in the Harbor.