Festival of Ideas: The Reconfigured City Panel Discussion

The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East 7th St., New York, NY 10003

START: 2:00 PM May 6, 2011

END: 4:30 PM May 6, 2011

DESCRIPTION

Join experts as they discuss New York as “The Reconfigured City,” one of the four main themes of the Festival of Ideas. The reconfigured city is the adaptable city, one that can continually rethink and remake itself without destroying its fundamental character. In this series of presentations two architects, an artist trained as an architect, and an entrepreneur talk about how we can adapt, hack, amplify, and more productively use what we have; how we can tap into the unused excess capacity of our workspaces and transportation systems; and radically re-envision existing buildings and social practices to keep our cities useful long into the future.

Panelists include:

Robin Chase
Founder and CEO of GoLoco, an online ride-sharing community, Chase also founded and is the former CEO of Zipcar. Currently she leads Meadow Networks, a consulting firm that advises city, state, and federal government agencies on wireless applications in the transportation sector.

Elizabeth Diller
Founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Liz Diller is a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. She and her partner Ricardo Scofidio were the first architects to be awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, and their practice is currently leading the design of the High Line and the redesign of Lincoln Center.

Frank Duffy
Founder of DEGW, an architectural firm devoted to strategic consultancy that helps businesses create social-scientifically informed workspaces, Duffy is also the author of Work and the City, which tracks the symbiotic relationship between modern architecture and office design.

Pedro Reyes
Architect and artist Reyes’s work is part shelter and part sculpture focusing on the interplay between physical and social space. He is (with Joseph Grima) the co-founder of the Urban Genome Project which is assembling an index of tools for improving the urban environment.

Moderator: Rogan Kersh
Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at NYU Wagner, Kersh has been a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities and Luce Scholar. He is the author of Dreams of a More Perfect Union and works on a continuing basis with Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online or in person at New Museum visitors desk during museum hours.

Purchase Festival Conference Pass (guarantees entry to all events May 4–6).