Presidential Lecture: Dagmar Richter and Marc Norman on Cooperative Housing

*This event is occurring as a live webinar. Registrants will be emailed a link to access the program.*

As part of the Center for Architecture Presidential Lecture Series, Dagmar Richter will discuss cooperative housing in Berlin.

Since 2007, the city of Berlin has supported groups interested in building new housing based on shared decision making, shared resources, and substantially shared common spaces. The goals of these projects are to fill the remaining gaps in the inner city, increase density in the center, and support families and seniors so they can remain in the city by providing appropriate shared spaces and well planned alternatives.

A number of architecture offices are now working with these groups. Lately, these offices have started to actively initiate new groups by finding appropriate building sites and working closely with the city. These architects have become specialists in alternative financing with coop banks, in finding and negotiating inner city sites, in working with the city to change planning and zoning rules to allow more shared resources and spaces, and in leading the client groups through the complex design and decision-making process. Architecturally, those new housing projects are demonstrating that inner-city shared housing does allow for high-quality, mixed-use and affordable alternatives.

Richter will be joined in conversation by Marc Norman. 

Speakers:
Dagmar Richter, Professor, Undergraduate Architecture, Pratt Institute; Principal, DR_D
Marc Norman, Associate Professor of Practice, the University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Moderator:
Barry Bergdoll, Hon AIANY, Board President, Center for Architecture

Dagmar Richter was awarded second prize for the design of the National Library of Denmark in Copenhagen and first prize for an office park design for the Shinkenshiku Membrane competition in Japan. Her work is the subject of two monographs: XYZ: The Architecture of Dagmar Richter (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001) and Armed Surfaces: Architecture and Urbanisms 5 (Black Dog Press, 2003).

Marc Norman is the founder of Ideas and Action and Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Teaching courses in real estate finance and economic development, he also advises municipal, private and non-profit clients on housing and development. With more than 20 years of experience in the field of housing finance, he has held leadership positions at Lehman Brothers, Duvernay + Brooks and Deutsche Bank. A 2015 Harvard Loeb Fellow, Norman’s most recently coordinated the conference, Building Better Futures, Innovations in Equitable development. He curated “Designing Affordability,” an exhibition of best practices in policy, finance and architecture which ran in the U.S., Australia and Shenzhen. His most recent article is, “Demapping Automotive Landscapes,” Earlier publications include, “Projecting Rust Belt Futures: Underwriting Icicles and Leveraging Sidewalks” He serves as a board member for MASS Design Group, the Design Futures Leadership Forum abd is Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve’s Community Advisory Committee.

Barry Bergdoll, currently President of the Board of Directors of the Center for Architecture, is a historian and curator of modern and contemporary architecture. He is Professor of Art History at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985, and served from 2007 to 2014 as Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. At MoMA he pioneered a format of interdisciplinary design workshops leading to exhibitions on central issues of contemporary practice of architecture and urban planning. The 2009-10 exhibition, “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront,” which addressed sea level rise and climate change, is the model for the RFP that will be relaunched in the wake of this inaugural Presidential Lecture Series.

About the Center for Architecture Presidential Lecture Series:
This summer the Center for Architecture is launching its inaugural Presidential Lecture Series. Spearheaded by Barry Bergdoll, Center for Architecture Board President, the series is tied to an exhibition that will display responses to an RFP on new modes of conceiving inclusive environments, from dwelling to workplace to the public realm. The RFP will be relaunched in early autumn with the exhibition to follow by the end of 2021. The lecture series and the RFP explore design’s role in envisioning new dynamics of living and community.

The series will be organized as multi-disciplinary conversations between an architect and a practitioner from another field, moderated by Bergdoll. The conversations are intended to inform work to be commissioned for the exhibition next fall. The basic hypothesis is that contemporary American culture and society have long been, and are increasingly disconnected—fractured even—with people divided by needs, generations, and beliefs, as well by race and income level. In the face of social isolation, the exhibition will explore how environments that foster cooperation, interaction, and mutual assistance can be an antidote to the intense divisions in American life. Issues of equity, health, aging, and racial disparities are among the vital issues at stake.

Other Lectures in the Series:
Presidential Lecture: Mindy Fullilove and Ron Shiffman on Main Streets, Monday, July 24, 2 PM  
Presidential Lecture: Sarah Wigglesworth and Karen Kubey on Building for Aging, Monday, August 3, 2 PM 
Presidential Lecture: Victor Pineda and Kat Holmes on Capabilities and Mismatch,  Monday, August 17, 2 PM 
Presidential Lecture: Peter Robinson on the Work of BlackSpace, Monday, August 24, 2 PM