2024 Gil Oberfield Memorial Lecture: WORKac

The annual Gil Oberfield Memorial Lecture was founded in honor of Gil Oberfield, AIA, former member and chair of the AIANY Interiors Committee. The lecture brings to the podium speakers whose work excels in the field of interior architecture. This year’s lecture will feature WorkAC.

Co-founded in 2003 by Amale Andraos, AIA, HFRAIC, and Dan Wood, FAIA, LEED AP, WORKac believes in the power of architecture and design to engage environmental and social concerns to create new possibilities for the future. Their work throughout the US and around the world emphasizes a deep engagement with local cultures, climates and histories. Their focus is on public, cultural, and institutional projects that reinvent how we live, work, learn, and experience the world together.

WORKac was the recipient of the 2023 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, was named the #1 design firm in the US by Architect Magazine, and was selected as the AIA New York State “Firm of the Year.” The practice has achieved international acclaim for projects such as the Edible Schoolyards in Brooklyn and Harlem, public libraries in Queens and Brooklyn, the Blaffer Museum Expansion and Renovation at the University of Houston, the Miami Museum Garage, the Student Success Center at the Rhode Island School of Design, and two community centers in Mexico City in collaboration with IUA. Current projects include the Beirut Museum of Art, a new cultural center in Muscat, Oman, the Sibley Dome Renovation at Cornell University, a Public Library for Boulder, Colorado, a strategic plan and series of projects for Vassar College and multiple renovations at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn.

WORKac co-founders and principals Amale Andraos and Dan Wood will present their practice’s recent work in a lecture entitled ‘Buildings, People, Plants.’ Their lecture will focus on a series of projects that re-examine architecture’s capacities to actively reshape social and environmental concerns– building on the practice’s focus on public work across scales and contexts to its focus on innovative approaches to preservation, sustainable systems, and greater integration of architecture and landscape at the scale of buildings, amongst other. The practice has achieved international acclaim for projects such as the Edible Schoolyards in Brooklyn and Harlem, a public library for Kew Gardens Hills, the Miami Museum Garage, the Student Success Center at the Rhode Island School of Design , a new branch for the Brooklyn Public Library in DUMBO, and two community centers in Mexico City in collaboration with Ignacio Urquiza Architects.

Speakers:
Amale Andraos, AIA, HFRAIC, Principal, WORKac
Dan Wood, FAIA, Principal, WORKac

About the Speakers:
Amale Andraos, AIA, HFRAIC, is a Principal of WORKac as well as a Professor and Dean Emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). As the first woman dean of the school (2014-2021), Andraos also served as Architecture Advisor to the President and Special Advisor for the Climate School. Andraos is recognized as a thought leader, contributing widely to the field through her lectures and writings. She was named one of the “25 Most Admired Educators for 2016” by DesignIntelligence, for integrating “real-world problems into the curriculum with a bold vision and strong leadership.”

Andraos’s publications include The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, co-edited with Nora Akawi, as well as We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge, 49 Cities and Above the Pavement the Farm in collaboration with Dan Wood. She has served on numerous juries, advisory and selection committees and currently serves on the Advisory Council for the New Museum’s incubator space New Inc, in New York. Andraos was born in Beirut, Lebanon.

Dan Wood, FAIA, is a Principal of WORKac, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the Former Vice President for Design Excellence of the New York Chapter of the AIA. Wood is a licensed architect in the States of New York, Rhode Island, and Colorado and is LEED certified.

Wood has taught extensively, most recently at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), and as the William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture. He held the 2017 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design at the University of Toronto and the 2013–14 Louis I. Kahn Chair at the Yale School of Architecture. He also held both the Trott and Baumer Visiting Professorships at Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture and
the Friedman Professorship at UC Berkeley. Wood’s publications include We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge, 49 Cities and Above the Pavement the Farm in collaboration with Amale Andraos. Wood is originally from Rhode Island.