Street Design Manual 360°: The Next Edition for Designing NYC Streets

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

Street Design Manual 360° spotlights the latest edition of the Street Design Manual (SDM), New York City’s comprehensive resource for street design standards, guidelines,  and policies. Reflective of the continually evolving practice of designing NYC’s public right of way, the third edition of the manual—published for the first time as a web version—reinforces its role as a living document and critical resource for all those involved in designing streets and the public realm. The interdisciplinary panel will engage in a dialogue about the SDM’s origin, components, applications, and future aspirations and introduce a number of important additions, including a new chapter on public programming in streets and public spaces and updates to the chapters on landscape and management.

Panelists:
Wendy Feuer, Assistant Commissioner, Urban Design+Art+Wayfinding, NYC Department of Transportation
Claire Weisz, AIA, LEED AP, Founding Principal, WXY architecture + urban design
Mike Flynn, AICP, LEED AP, Principal + Director of City Strategies, Sam Schwartz

Moderator:
Bryony Roberts, Founder, Bryony Roberts Studio

Wendy Feuer has been the Assistant Commissioner for Urban Design+Art+Wayfinding at the NYC Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) since 2007. She manages an office that helps realize the goal of creating streets that are re-balanced and attractive to welcome all users. Feuer leads the team that published the NYCDOT Street Design Manual, a comprehensive document that provides guidance for City agencies, design consultants and community groups on street designs. Feuer was the founding director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit office and served as Director of Art and Design for eleven years (1985-1996). In 1995, she updated the Federal Transit Administration’s policy on Design and Art in federally-funded transit projects. As a consultant (1996-2007), Feuer worked on public art and planning projects for institutions including, Columbia University, the Hudson River Park Trust, Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, Brown University and The Cathedral St. John the Divine.

Claire Weisz, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect and urbanist, and a founding principal of WXY architecture + urban design, an award-winning practice based in New York City. With her partners Mark Yoes, Layng Pew, and Adam Lubinsky, Weisz focuses on innovative approaches to public space, structures, and cities. WXY has received the League Prize from the Architectural League of New York, as well as being selected as one of the League’s Emerging Voices practices in 2011, in addition to numerous awards from AIA National, AIANY, and the APA. Recent and ongoing work in New York City includes the redesign of Astor Place, the Spring Street Sanitation Garage, the redesign of the Rockaway Boardwalks, Battery Park’s SeaGlass Carousel, a design to better accommodate both pedestrians and elevated trains in Harlem, a study of Brooklyn’s growing commercial tech sector (The Brooklyn Tech Triangle), The East River Blueway Plan, and a pilot project for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild by Design initiative. With Andrea Woodner, Weisz co-founded The Design Trust for Public Space, and is currently on faculty as a Visiting Critic of Urban Design at Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning in NYC. Weisz received her professional degree from The University of Toronto with Honors and her Master’s in Architecture from Yale University.

Mike Flynn, AICP, LEED AP, leads Sam Schwartz’s urban planning practice and directs a range of innovative planning, design, policy, and strategy projects to help cities and towns achieve economic, environmental, and equity goals through a high-quality transportation system and public realm. Flynn draws on over 15 years of public, private, and nonprofit sector experience that has spanned city, neighborhood, and corridor-level transportation plans; strategic and action planning; design, funding, and implementation of multi-modal safety, complete street and public space projects; policy development and design guidelines; and stakeholder engagement. Prior to joining Sam Schwartz, Flynn served for ten years at the New York City Department of Transportation, where his award-winning work helped the city make a shift towards sustainable mobility and improved project delivery. He is a faculty member at the City and Regional Planning program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Bryony Roberts is a designer and scholar. Having earned her B.A. from Yale University and her M.Arch from the Princeton School of Architecture, Roberts leads her own practice and teaches architecture and historic preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York. She has been awarded the Miller Prize of 2018, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome for 2015-2016, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship in Architecture for Summer 2018, and was a finalist for the Wheelwright Prize from Harvard GSD in 2020. She recently edited the volume Log 48: Expanding Modes of Practice, and previously edited the book Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation, published by Lars Müller Publishers. She also co-guest edited the volume Log 31: New Ancients. She has also published her research in the Harvard Design Magazine, Log, Future Anterior, and Architectural Record.