Ekdahl Lecture History

Lecture Title: “Current Work”

Thomas Phifer is a highly regarded modernistic architect favoring a humanistic standpoint, and has been repeatedly honored by the AIA, a recipient of seven National Honor Awards and a Medal of Honor.

As an executive of his firm, Phifer states “Thomas Phifer and Partners makes innovative use of technology to create architecture with a different spirit: architecture that connects us with nature, rather than separating us from it. We take our instructions from the environment, allowing the elements of nature to inform design. We strive to make architecture that is enriched by the awareness of location and landscape, the movement of the sun, the changes in weather.”

The firm is challenged to create buildings that foster a sense of tradition and culture, that make permeable the boundaries between inside and outside, enabling their inhabitants to experience the passing time of both days and seasons.

For more information about Thomas Phifer and Partners visit his website here: http://www.thomasphifer.com/

Charles Marohn - known as "Chuck" to friends and colleagues - is a Professional Engineer (PE) licensed in the State of Minnesota and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He has a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute.

He is the author of Thoughts on Building Strong Towns (Volume 1), the primary author of the Strong Towns Blog and the host of the Strong Towns Podcast and See it Differently TV.

Chuck grew up on a small farm in Central Minnesota. The oldest of three sons of two elementary school teachers, he graduated from Brainerd High School in 1991. Chuck joined the Minnesota National Guard on his 17th birthday during his junior year of high school and served for nine years. Besides being passionate about planning and small towns, he loves playing music, is an obsessive reader and is a season ticket holder of the Minnesota Twins.

Chuck and his wife live with their two daughters and two Samoyeds just north of Baxter, Minnesota.

About the Curbside Chat:

The Curbside Chat program covers the causes and impacts of the current economic crisis, examines case studies on the finances of America's development pattern, reviews "dead ideas" of the suburban era we need to shed and proposes strategies for adjusting to the new realities we face.

Lecture Title: City Building A New Convergence

Ken Greenberg CM

Ken Greenberg is an urban designer, teacher, writer, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto and Principal of Greenberg Consultants. For over four decades he has played a pivotal role on public and private assignments in urban settings throughout North America and Europe, focusing on the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighborhoods and on campus master planning, regional growth management, and new community planning. His work sits at the intersection of urban design, architecture, landscape, mobility, social and economic development. Cities as diverse as Toronto, Hartford, Amsterdam, New York, Boston, Montréal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, St. Louis, Washington DC, Paris, Detroit, Saint Paul and San Juan Puerto Rico have benefited from his advocacy and passion for restoring the vitality, relevance and sustainability of the public realm in urban life. In each city, with each project, his strategic, consensus-building approach has led to coordinated planning and a renewed focus on urban design. He is the recipient of the 2010 American Institute of Architects Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Design Excellence and the 2014 Sustainable Buildings Canada Lifetime Achievement Award. Involved in many grass roots and community initiatives he has served as a Board Member of Park People, a nonprofit dedicated to the improvement of Toronto's parks, is currently a Director of the Bentway Conservancy Board and President of the Wellington Place Neighbourhood Association, a member of ULI Toronto Chapter Advisory Board and the Myseum Board of Directors. He was a cofounder and Vice Chair of the City Building Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto. A frequent writer for periodicals, he is the author of Walking Home: the Life and Lessons of a City Builder published by Random House and Toronto Reborn; Design Successes and Challenges published by Dundurn. He played a leading role as urban design lead and client representative and now member of its Board for The Bentway, the transformation of a major public space under the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. He is currently serving as a strategic advisor to the city of Brampton. He was selected as a Member of the Order of Canada in 2020 and was awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa from the University of Toronto for his outstanding service for the public good as a tireless advocate for restoring the vitality, relevance and sustainability of the public realm in urban life. In 2023 he was appointed as Vice Chair, Advisory Committee on Planning, Design and Reality, (ACPDR), National Capital Commission, Ottawa.

Lecture Title: The Opposite of White Space

Shannon Nichol is co-founder of GGN. Shannon stewards GGN’s distinct approach to design and collaboration, bringing curiosity, humility, humor, and deep creativity to all of our projects and our studio.

Shannon’s designs – including San Francisco’s India Basin Shoreline Park, the Lurie Garden in Chicago, and the Gates Foundation Campus – are widely recognized as distinct landforms and welcoming places embedded in local history, culture, and native ecologies. Shannon’s recent and current projects include the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center, and the Seattle Residence: Native Gardens.

Shannon is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (Seattle). She and her partners received the Smithsonian’s 2011 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture, and GGN received the 2017 ASLA National Landscape Architecture Firm Award. Shannon’s projects have been recognized with ASLA National Awards of Excellence, ASLA and AIA Honor Awards, Tucker Design Awards, Great Places Awards from the Environmental Design Research Association, and Pacific Horticulture’s inaugural Design Futurist Award.

Her most recent guest lectures have included The Weitzman School of Design at U Penn, Cornell University, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Washington Native Plant Society. Shannon delivered the Sasaki Day Keynote Lecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017, and she and Jennifer Guthrie were the Glimcher Distinguished Visiting Professors at Ohio State’s Knowlton School in 2015.

Shannon has been engaged in a wide range of activities and Board positions around her longtime advocacy for considerate design, hand drawing, native plants, and walkable cities. While Shannon considers nearly everything to be relevant to design and landscape, her “other” interests include car-design history, hill running, illustrative art, and non-fiction books.

Shawn Gehle is a recognized design and thought leader known for cultivating curiosity and collaboration. Committed to a design philosophy that lends equal weight to unexpected ideas and craft, his diverse experience includes award-winning work for technology, creative workplace, education, and mixed-use clients. In addition to project work Shawn is an alum of the TED speaker series; has co-authored a three-year research project with UCLA CityLAB on the Future of Work; is an adviser to Black Spectacles (the online learning platform created entirely for architects); and served on the Board of Directors of A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles through early 2019.

Shawn’s work has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and featured in numerous publications and design journals. Previously, he served as the Founding Principal of BNIM Architects’ Los Angeles design studio, which he later merged to establish OU. Preceding BNIM, Gehle was with Gensler Los Angeles for nearly a decade, where he was a Design Principal and worked closely with fellow OU co-founders Benjamin Anderson and Christian Robert.

“My upbringing in the Midwest with my mother, coupled with regular visits to my father in Los Angeles, instilled in me an appreciation for unwavering work ethic and the art of harnessing boundless creativity.”

Title: Moving Space

Description: Laurie Hawkinson received her Masters in Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley, attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York and received her Professional Degree in Architecture from the Cooper Union. Significant completed projects include the Corning Museum of Glass, the Wall Street Ferry Terminal and “Strategic Open Space” Public Realm Improvement Strategy for Lower Manhattan, the new Land Port of Entry at Massena, New York. She recently lead the design of a new Emergency Medical Services Station for the City of New York. Collaborative projects include the North Carolina Museum of Art Amphitheater and Site Master Plan, the Museum of Women’s History and the NYC 2012 Olympic Village for Hunters Point, New York.

LAURIE HAWKINSON, R.A. | PARTNER

REGISTERED ARCHITECT, New York, NCARB Certified

Laurie Hawkinson received her Masters in Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley, attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York and received her Professional Degree in Architecture from the Cooper Union. Significant completed projects include the Corning Museum of Glass, the Wall Street Ferry Terminal and “Strategic Open Space” Public Realm Improvement Strategy for Lower Manhattan, the new Land Port of Entry at Massena, New York. She recently lead the design of a new Emergency Medical Services Station for the City of New York. Collaborative projects include the North Carolina Museum of Art Amphitheater and Site Master Plan, the Museum of Women’s History and the NYC2012 Olympic Village for Hunters Point, New York.

AFFILIATIONS

The Contemporary Arts Council, The Museum of Modern Art

Member of the Resource Team for at the 29th and 30th meeting of The Mayors’ Institute on City Design

Peer Reviewer, General Services Administration

Board of Directors, The Wooster Group

TEACHING

Director of Advanced Studios, Full Professor of Architecture with tenure, GSAPP Columbia University

SMH+ PROFILE

Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects LLP is a New York City-based architecture and design studio established in 1983. The firm has received numerous awards including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, the NYC AIA Chapter Medal of Honor, and a Special Recognition for Excellence in Design from the New York City Art Commission.

Across the United States and abroad we have designed and built major public and private projects including museums, parks, government facilities, transportation terminals and performing arts centers. Each project is an opportunity for design excellence through which we refine our understanding of practice with each unique set of constraints and conditions. Significant projects include US Land Ports of Entry at Champlain and Massena, New York, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, The Dillon – an 83-unit mixed use building in Midtown Manhattan, a Ferry Terminal at Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, as well as an Emergency Medical Facility in the Bronx, New York.

Sally Augustin, PhD, is a practicing environmental/design psychologist and the principal at Design With Science. She has extensive experience integrating science-based insights to develop recommendations for the design of places, objects, and services that support desired cognitive, emotional, and physical experiences. Her Design With Science clients include manufacturers, service providers, and design firms in North America, Europe, and Asia. They book Design With Science's services again and again—applying neuroscience pays off. More information on clients and past work is available upon request.

Dr. Augustin is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Work completed by Dr. Augustin has been discussed in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Forbes, Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Prevention, Salon, and Self and design publications worldwide. She is an invited contributor to the online version of the Harvard Business Review where she has contributed articles on a range of topics, from engaging workplaces to design and culture. For Metropolis, she has written a series of articles about successful spaces titled "Places that Work." She has discussed using design to enhance lives on mass-market national television and radio programs.

As the editor of Research Design Connections, Dr. Augustin has written widely on science-based design for a broad audience of people interested in the designed world. She speaks frequently to audiences in North America, Europe, and Asia at events such as the annual meeting of the American Institute of Architects, the International Design & Emotion Conference, the bi-annual meeting of the International Positive Psychology Association, the bi-annual meeting of the Association of Neuroscience for Architecture, NeoCon/IIDEX, the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting, the Environmental Design Research Association annual conference, Healthcare Design, Living-Futures, and Applied Brilliance.

Sally Augustin is a graduate of Wellesley College (BA), Northwestern University (MBA), and Claremont Graduate University (PhD). She holds leadership positions in professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association (past-president, environmental psychology division) and the Environmental Design Research Association (chair, work environments network).

Dr. Augustin is the author of Designology (Mango, 2019), Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012).

Contact Dr. Augustin at sallyaugustin _at_ designwithscience.com.