Metropolis’ Susan Szenasy Presents Metropolis LIVE! In conversation with Frances Bronet
Szenasy, appointed Publisher of Metropolis, engaged in a series of national conversations during the spring of 2014 exploring issues of design advocacy and ethics while celebrating the release of Szenasy, Design Advocate – a collection of writings and talks from the past 30 years. Szenasy participated in a conversation with UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts Dean Frances Bronet, in Portland on May 22, 2014 at the University of Oregon in Portland.
The event was live broadcast to an audience at the UO campus in Eugene (177 Lawrence Hall). Szenasy was available for book signing after the talk. Key phrases and ideas from the conversation between Szenasy and Bronet were live tweeted by @johnhenrytweets.
At work tweeting broadsides made in real time. @johnhenrytweets with @tschlapp at Metropolis LIVE! With Susan Szenasy.
The following is the press release issued by Metropolis magazine to announce Szenasy’s new post and her book launch.
This April 2014, Metropolis magazine announced the appointment of Susan S. Szenasy as publisher of the magazine, sharing a dual role with her long-standing position as editor-in-chief. The appointment, made by the founder, Horace Havemeyer III, one month prior to his passing from complications associated with CIDP, a chronic neurological disorder, sets in motion a new chapter in the life of this celebrated magazine of architecture, culture and design.
Concurrent to this appointment is the release of Szenasy, Design Advocate, a collection of writings and talks from the past 30 years, released by Metropolis Books and distributed by ARTBOOK | D.A.P. This volume – the first published collection of Szenasy’s writings – brings together editorials, reviews, stories, profiles, industry event presentations, classroom lectures, commencement addresses and more.
Szenasy’s honest, thought-provoking and often-challenging opinions are present in all of these pieces. So, too, is her ongoing commitment to informed dialogue, which has influenced and guided generations of design professionals, architects, journalists, retailers, manufacturers, legislators, educators and the next generation of designers.
Through this collection of writings, the organic development of a social activist is revealed. Szenasy’s capacity to anchor her inquisitive nature and her reflective reasoning in a foundational belief in human and civil right established her as a pioneer in the advocacy of sustainable design.
In celebration of the launch of the book and her recent appointment, Szenasy has embarked on a series of national conversations exploring issues of design advocacy and ethics. From New York to Los Angeles, Boston to Grand Rapids, Atlanta to Chicago, Providence to Seattle and cities in between Szenasy will be engaging with members of the design community to gain a broad understanding of the issues and topics pertinent to the built environment and design in today’s culture.
According to Szenasy, “Metropolis offers us the freedom to really explore design, culture, talent, people, creativity, materials, policy, everything. It really is a conversation. And when I am on the road engaging with the design community, I don’t give talks anymore. It’s a two-way conversation. A dialogue.”Susan’s active involvement with all of the design community has become legendary. Her tough, but constructive criticism has created an indispensible dialogue in an industry that, like every other area of society, is redefining itself to meet the needs of growing populations in our tech-rich, environmentally compromised, global-local world.
“The two of us were in agreement about our vision for Metropolis” stated Horace Havemeyer III in his announcement of Szenasy to publisher. “From the beginning, we have felt that architecture and design are essential to a humane and progressive society. We have championed, when no one else did, the design community’s obligation to serve all of society’s needs, not just the upper two percent. And now, the growing interest in socially and environmentally relevant design–by a new generation of young professionals – is just one more validation of our long-held vision.”
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Metropolis, founded in 1981, Metropolis, the magazine of architecture, culture and design, has earned itself a reputation as a publication of distinction. It has led the conversation on sustainability, technology and accessibility as these issues relate to and reshape the built environment. Long considered a significant voice in the fields of architecture, interior design, graphic design, product design, urban planning and historic preservation, the magazine and its electronic content is recognized as being in the vanguard of the discourse of architecture and design to a dedicated following.
Susan S. Szenasy is publisher/editor in chief of Metropolis, the award-winning New York City–based magazine of architecture, design and culture. Since 1986, she has led the magazine in landmark design journalism, achieving international recognition. A respected authority on sustainability and design, she served two terms on the boards of the Council for Interior Design Accreditation and the Landscape Architecture Foundation, the FIT Interior Design board, and the NYC Center for Architecture Advisory Board.
She has received two IIDA Presidential Commendations, is an honorary member of the ASLA and AIA NYC, and the 2008 recipient of the ASID Patron’s Prize and Presidential Commendation. Along with Metropolis magazine founding publisher Horace Havemeyer III, Szenasy received the 2007 Civitas August Heckscher Award for Community Service and Excellence. She holds an MA from Rutgers University and honorary doctorates from the Art Center College of Design, Kendall College of Art and Design, the New York School of Interior Design, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Michael Graves Live: A Conversation About Recent Designs, Change, and the Future of the Portland Building
Alessi teapots, Target clocks, Disney Dolphin Hotels and the Washington Monument restoration—Michael Graves has influenced a generation of American design with a breadth few architects in history have matched. But it was the cream, salmon and blue-colored Portland Building, published on a 1982 cover of Time magazine, that first introduced Graves and the architectural movement of postmodernism to the wider world.
Arguably Portland’s most demonstrative contribution to architectural history, the Portland Building also has been an equally notorious problem: long-loathed by city employees who work inside and plagued with structural problems and leaks. The City of Portland is pondering the landmark’s future. Who better to ask what should happen than its designer?
The University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center and the Portland Art Museum collaborated to present, “Michael Graves Live” on Thursday, October 9 at the museum’s Fields Ballroom. This event was organized in conjunction with Design Week Portland 2014.
In a live, sold-out, on-stage chat with journalist and Yeon Center director Randy Gragg, Graves explored two topics: 1) his career’s evolution since the Portland Building, and, in particular, since an infection rendered him a paraplegic in 2003 inspiring a turn to designing everything from wheelchairs to housing for disabled veterans; and 2) what of the Portland Building should be preserved and what might change during its upcoming renovation. The lecture is available to view on the Portland Art Museum online recording.
Completed in 1981, the Portland Building became an instant icon of the Postmodernist break from the cookie-cutter corporate modernism that had come to dominate architecture, particularly in public buildings. It was successfully listed on the National Historic Register in 2012. Yet built for less than a common commercial office building of the era, the cut-rate budget led to dreary interiors and devastating leaks. After considering several options for the Portland Building—among them demolishing it, the City of Portland will soon solicit proposals from developers, architects and contractors for a remodel.
Few architects might understand the need for adaption better than Graves, now 80, winner of the Presidential Medal of the Arts in 1999 and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2001. Ignoring what he thought to be a minor sinus problem in 2003, he woke up to find himself paralyzed from the chest down by an infection that had invaded his brain and spine. But soon after, Graves turned to designing different tools and surroundings for those living with disabilities, from the Prime TC, a replacement for the traditional hospital wheelchair, to the “Michael Graves Active Living Collection,” which includes showerheads, collapsible canes, walkers, and bath seats.
With an introduction by the John Yeon Center’s executive director, Randy Gragg, Graves also held an exclusive discussion at the University of Oregon in Portland on October 8 at the White Stag Block’s Event Room. Speaking to alumni from the University’s Product Design Program and currently enrolled UO students in Portland, Graves discussed current projects and answered questions about his career. Available online to listen here.
My goal for the future is to develop my existing skills and to improve immature talents. I know that only a new experience, an outstanding one is able to push me to the limits in terms of achievement and commitment. –Grace Aaraj, UO current graduate student in architecture, Fulbright scholar; M. Arch candidate 2014, University of Oregon, Portland; B. Arch 2011, Institut des Beaux Arts II, Beirut
In 2011, when Grace Aaraj, a 21 year old student from Beirut, Lebanon, wrote those words as part of her autobiographical essay included in both her Fulbright scholarship application and her application for graduate studies with the Department of Architecture at the UO, she had little idea just how many new and richly diverse experiences would unfold for her in the United States. Like many international exchange students, she came to the United States with an empathic idealism enthusiastic to meet new friends, and connect across cultural lines challenging any divides and stereotypes by sharing stories, tastes, conversation and advocating cooperation and collaboration. Her gregarious nature and generous spirit were met with varying degrees of acceptance—here was a young female of Middle Eastern in descent in an environment traditionally dominated by masculine presence and Western expectations. Not daunted by possible perceptions of her background and culture, Aaraj’s experience at the University of Oregon has illuminated and enhanced an outlook where she was able to expand her frame of reference and gain invaluable academic and professional-related experience. As she is quick to point out, coming to the United States to study and immerse herself in graduate studies, she had divergent paths to chose from: adopt and adapt to the new and unusual or withdraw into a secluded course of study and academia. One path would give her experience in-the-field of architecture and design and invaluable networking opportunities; the other, a quiet yet dedicated focus on study and research. In the nurturing and experience-driven environment of the University, she says, she was encouraged her to explore possibility in both the classroom and the community—the paths of solitary academic study brilliantly enhanced by internships with architectural firms and presentations to professional conferences. Into this atmosphere of connection and opportunity, Aaraj has been able to blend a background rooted in Middle Eastern tradition and embrace the professional opportunity she has been afforded while a student at the UO. As she so proudly asserts, her parents raised her to respect all people, not only those just like her, and to appreciate and create opportunity. And, Aaraj points out, it has been her egalitarian outlook that has blossomed at the University of Oregon.
Her enthusiasm and desire to seek connections with people while in Portland at the UO White Stag location led her to opportunities where she could explore her cultural background, gain a sense of learning from the experiences of others, and network with established professionals in her field of academic study. To meet and talk with this young woman is to connect with a truly vibrant and enthusiastic individual eager to interact with opportunity, her community, and to find possibility in a great variety of pursuits. Perhaps her openness to listen, to learn from and to recognize the potential in cross-cultural interaction has led to a pattern of academic learning blended with an interest in humanitarian objectives. The influence most felt and positively effected her time here has been the academic environment she has immersed herself in with studio courses offered within Portland UO’s urban architecture focus –studios ranging from Professor Hajo Neis’ regenerative architecture to Philip Speranza’s Bridging project. The projects she became engaged in echoed her desire for “human interactions and pride….and [celebrated] common humanities and respected commonalities.”
Grace Aaraj, with the Bridging Project. Photo by Tim Niou
Having received her undergraduate degree in architecture from Institut des Beaux-Arts, Beirut, Aaraj was a volunteer for two years for a campaign to enhance urban public spaces in Beirut with the focus on the health and well-being of children. Based on her accomplishments in Beirut, she subsequently received the Fulbright fellowship in architecture, funded by the United States Department of State. Coming to the United States for studies at the UO Department of Architecture—she comments that in addition to the globally-immersed and urban architecture-focused faculty of the UO in Portland Department of Architecture, she selected the UO for her graduate studies because of the “sustainability focus and the community oriented projects.”
Since being a UO student, her work has been represented as part of the University of Oregon Department of Architecture at the Construction Specifications Institute Forum 2013. She has obtained the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) scholarship and participated in an international urban design workshop; as well as presented at the Architecture for Humanity national conference in San Francisco. Working with fellow students, Annie Ledbury, Jackie Davis, and Beth Lavelle, Aaraj and her team won a student-organized charrette to design a clinic in Haiti, (REvive Jacmel), and then developed construction drawings with Waterleaf Architecture, along with other student partners. In December, 2013 she was part of a design-build project in Haiti, with Sergio Palleroni and students from the Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University. She is currently working on a model of housing and work opportunities for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, with the focus of repurposing the campus to an ecotourism hub, after the end of the crisis. Her active involvement in the field and her intent to stay focused on humanitarian objectives mirrors her opinion that her “world is a world where global change starts from a local action.” As the repertoire of experience in the field for Aaraj expanded these past two years, so seemed to be a consistent interest in empathic design and architecture built with a humanitarian focus in mind.
With Grace Aaraj, Winter 2014
Due to her work in humanitarian design and her interest in language viewed not as a barrier but as an opportunity, in the winter of 2014, Aaraj was approached by the Portland Public School system and asked to be a guest presenter at the International Youth Leadership Conference.
[IYLC provides highly engaging, culturally competent workshops appropriate for Emergent Bilinguals (students of English as a Second Language) and addresses leadership and communication, college and career choices, and culture and community issues promoting intercultural communication, community activism, teamwork and self-esteem. The conference, organized by the English as a Second Language Department of Portland Public Schools, is an opportunity for EB’s to learn and network with fellow students, educators and language minority leaders in the Portland area.]
The UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts had partnered with IYLC program by hosting the IYLC students’ Mercy Corps-led workshops at the UO White Stag location during the winter months.
High School Students With Grace Aaraj's workshop--discovering geographic location
Aaraj comments
“The event [was] tailored to empower high school students who have English as their second language. I was excited and knew immediately this [was] an educational aspect I want[ed] to be part of. [When asked to be a part of the conference], I remember thinking ‘I hope I still qualify to be part of the English as Second Language workshops.’ You see, English is my third language.”
Grace Aaraj with high school students
Aaraj is fluent in Arabic as well as French. She is currently learning Spanish. Aaraj was pleased to be offered to interact with high school and middle school age students and quickly formulated an idea to work with them focusing on the topic of language.
Aaraj’s IYLC workshops, titled “Languages and Traditions: Bringing Us Closer Together” involved inviting the high school students to approach a large map of the world mounted on the classroom wall—students placed a colored pin on the country of their birth and then had an opportunity to discuss and share stories from their homeland about cultural traditions, language challenges they faced upon coming to the United States and ways of communicating in their new environment.
High School Students With Grace Aaraj's workshop--discovering geographic location and proximity
Aaraj comments that she “wanted everyone to understand that geographical boundaries should not limit what [they] know or what [they] understand.”
More importantly, Aaraj’s participation in the conference was, as she describes,
“an enriching experience, as I get to discover a topic I am interested in outside my comfort zone. As a student in architecture, I am not trained to teach. Being at the workshop with high school students from different backgrounds and having different languages spoken was beautiful.”
She continues,
“The workshop was like a big living room, a discussion among friends. It started with exchanging names in native languages, writing them and ended with stories and personal participation from everyone.
A lot of good moments followed by laughing were the highlight of the workshop. I never believed you can teach diversity from a book; it just takes few minutes and talking among strangers. It is also important to visualize information, like calligraphy in a certain language or location of different countries on a map. This is how lessons are learnt. The look on these students’ faces when I wrote my name in Arabic from right to left, their surprise, were precious. I myself, like everyone else, learned a lot about them.”
Grace Aaraj is continuing her exploration of language, limits and communication with her submission of an essay for the Many Languages One World United Nations competition where she will present her research and personal reflections on the requirements for the One World essay, “the ideas of global citizenship and understanding and the role that multilingual ability can play in fostering these.”
Aaraj’s openness and acceptance of all those around her, her willingness to listen to and empathize with the personal stories of the people she encounters speaks volumes to what she asks for from all, “tell me your own history, share your personal story and ask for mine. I keep asking, I keep listening: you can do the same….for that brief fulfilling moment, we are ‘citizens of the world’.”
If Grace Aaraj continues with her generosity of character and her willingness to try and “understand the world as a way to understand a region’s history and its people’s traditions,” she will certainly surround herself with her goal of establishing (as she describes it) a “a big living room of discussion among friends.” Aaraj’s story is only one of many of the diverse student body at the UO in Portland Department of Architecture urban architecture studies program. But, like the rest of her cohorts, she reflects a key aspect of the program: that of bottom up design, creating for people, and perhaps, most of all, a testimony to the influence of Portland director of the architecture program and professor, Hajo Neis and his research regarding the Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth , recently presented publicly in his collaborative book of the same title.
It is Professor Neis’ contention, along with collaborator and co-author Christopher Alexander, that:
“The purpose of all architecture… is to encourage and support life-giving activity, dreams, and playfulness. But in recent decades, while our buildings are technically better–more sturdy, more waterproof, more energy efficient– they have also became progressively more sterile, rarely providing the kind of environment in which people are emotionally nourished, genuinely happy, and deeply contented.”
Resourceful, observant, up-and-coming students in the UO architecture program, like Aaraj seem to be part of this philosophy encouraged and fostered by the expertise and guidance of professors like Neis:
Namely the creation of environments that “genuinely support the emotional, whole-making side of human life” and architects and designers who have the capability “to build places of human energy and beauty.”
With, as Neis points out, wholeness and in humane ways.
The future of architecture and the built environment in the hands of these sensitive and mindful individuals would appear to offer empathy, understanding and unprecedented levels of responsibility to all people. And, as Aaraj vividly states, “it is not related to redrawing boundaries, forcing languages into places, nor erasing history or fitting into one category.” The important part, she says, is the willingness to “communicate, understand and assimilate.”
While the world might be a vast and complicated place tangled in technology and bursting forth with unbridled innovation, those who have the courage to see it as a tightknit collaboration of real people (as opposed to merely pixels) open to cooperation and kind regard, both in relating to one another and in creating for the built environment could prove to be the “big living room” approach that might benefit us all.
See more work by Grace Aaraj on her website, Grace Aaraj.
Grace Aaraj (middle) with UO fellow graduate students, Jackie Davis (left) and Annie Ledbury (right) share a picnic on the Bridging Project in the North Park Blocks. All are in the M. Arch Portland Department of Architecture UO.
(Note: Socrates said, “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. There is no difference between learning and living.”)
