 |
Cafe 2 With Michael Singer
March 2007
|
Michael Singer is a very rare breed of designer, artist, environmentalist, architect, and realist – a perfect blend of insight and capability for tackling the tough issues of sustainability, communities, places and the public realm in the 21st century.
Michael has been involved in a variety of landscape and outdoor environment, planning and infrastructure projects in the United States and Europe. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation he lead a multidisciplinary team with the environmental group River Watch Network on the masterplan for Troja Island Basin in Prague, Czech Republic. His design of air and water purification gardens for the Institute for Forestry and Nature (Alterra, IBN) Holland, has been featured in many journals as one of the leading examples of aesthetically outstanding green sustainable design. The Canal Corridor Association and Chicago Parks Department selected Michael to design a new urban park on the Chicago River that interprets the history and impacts of canals on the city, as well as reclaims wildlife habitat and restores a wetland ecosystem.
Michael Singer has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His works are part of public collections in the United States and abroad, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
During his time with us at Providence & Beyond, Michael addressed statements and questions including:
The Ecology of Place
Everything we must think and do is part of an urban eco-sustainability network.
Building is an ecosystem and the landscape forms habitat – how do we blend them to form a whole place.
One element’s waste is another element’s food. (Eg. methane from waste is raw material for cogeneration of energy (Braungart’s law).
What happens to a place over time that you have worked on? Is there circular feedback?
Over time, how do you learn what works? Does not work?
Infrastructure is public art
Infrastructure adds beauty to the public realm.
Connect (and not distancing from) all the other elements of a place.
Community “owned” multiple uses yields results and synergy beyond what any single use can do.
Make visible the dignity of those that make our infrastructures work.
Make it transparent so the inside is brought outside to learn from.
Collaborating with diversity
Integrative design requires diverse practitioners working as a team representing the diversity of the place.
Move beyond "charrette as charade" so the design concept is iterative, shaped by the public and the practitioners.
Good design most often costs less because diverse practitioners work together and not as a ‘relay team’.
Move beyond public art to public artist as conductor? Or true collaboration of equals: public and practitioners?
Michael as sculptor and ecologist
Architects don’t attend to either the public or the realm of place; you do, why and how?
How did you initially get on the team?
In your work, what has changed? What have you learned over the eras: 80’s, 90’s and now?
More details on Michael’s work can be found at www.michaelsinger.com
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Cafe Photo Minutes
|
|
|
|
|
|
