March 5, 2014

6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Syracuse University Fisher Center, New York City

The second of three design debates held at the Syracuse University Fisher Center

Understanding and responding to the challenges of resilience necessitates collaboration not just between team members, but with community organizations, civic bodies, experts, and stakeholders at every scale throughout each stage of a design process. However, collaboration often yields a mediocre product that is more of a collage of compromises than it is a hybrid solution. Therefore, Rebuild by Design offer a new model by searching for a different type of talent, not simply the best architect or best ecologist, but the best collaborative thinkers. Such talent has been tasked with agility and intellectual porosity, constantly listening to others concerns and ideas, and constantly evolving their own.

How can leading an assembly of agile thinkers through such a comprehensive model of collaboration fundamentally change the way in which they think and work? Does this significantly change the design results? How does one now understand where challenges and opportunity exist? How does talent work together to forge new territories, both in terms of subject and method? To what extent has this process become a lab for trans-disciplinary practices, for recalibrating the roles in which resilience professionals operate?

Moderator: Mary Rowe

Panelists: Bjarke Ingels, Dilip da Cuhna, Stan Allen, Marilyn Jordan Taylor, and Gena Wirth

Respondents: Georgeen Theodore, Jerome Chou, Nina-Marie Lister, Michael Speaks, and  Julia Czerniak