Winners of Governors Island design competition lecture at The Warehouse

Winners of Governors Island design competition lecture at The WarehouseJanuary 30, 2008Mary Kate O’Brienmcobrien@syr.edu

Architects Robert Rogers and Jonathan Marvel of New York-based firm Rogers Marvel Architects (RMA) will speak at the Syracuse University School of Architecture on Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 4:30 p.m. in the main auditorium at The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St. The lecture, “Public Space,” is free and open to the public. Rogers Marvel is part of the winning team for the Governors Island international design competition that was announced at the end of 2007 by Governor Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to design the island’s future open space, including a new park and promenade.

Rogers and Marvel founded RMA in 1992. RMA is a multidisciplinary practice of architects, landscape architects, urban designers, preservationists and product designers, working on a wide range of projects including museums, schools and public spaces. A small satellite office in Cody, Wyo., focuses on houses and land planning. Rogers and Marvel have also co-founded TRUCK Product Architecture and Rock12 Security Architecture. TRUCK designs furniture and home wares for modern living; Rock12 brings design to streetscape elements. Rogers Marvel’s NOGO streetscape elements were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 2007. In conjunction with BKLYN Designs and ICFF Connected events in May 2006, Marvel co-curated “blockparty,” an installation that featured Brooklyn-based designers, artists, furniture makers and craftspeople and completely inhabited one of the 14 State Street Townhouses designed by RMA.

Recent projects include numerous rooftop residences, streetscapes, security around the New York Stock Exchange and the World Financial Center; headquarters and worldwide retail stores for Kate Spade and Theory; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Stephen Gaynor School; Ballet Hispanico on the Upper West Side; the South Fork Museum of Natural History on Long Island; and a New York Public Library in Soho. A 50-story tower in lower Manhattan, a nine-acre waterfront park in the Bronx, and a school/museum for the Pfizer Corp. in the original Charles Pfizer laboratory in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn are in the planning stages.

In December 2007, the design team led by West 8 and RMA was unanimously chosen as the winning team of the international design competition for Governors Island located in New York Harbor. The team, composed of landscape architects West 8 and Quennell Rothschild & Partners, architects Rogers Marvel and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and planners SMWM, proposed a hybrid of landscape and architecture based around a sinuous set of new watercourses and paths. The proposal includes snack bars, exhibits, a funicular and caves for spelunking as well as active recreational, cultural and educational opportunities. The plan would also supply 3,000 free wooden bicycles to travel around leafy paths that will surround the island.