The Nature-Based Industrial Revolution: Redefining Future-Forward Architecture

There has never been a more important time to elevate the role of the built environment in addressing the climate crises and acting as a catalyst for change. Since the millennia leading up to the First Industrial Revolution, our shared human history has included building in harmony with nature, bioregional ecosystems, and in response to the diverse climatic conditions of the Earth. The paradigm shift affiliated with industrialization and human habitats offers an opportunity to re-think and re-imagine new ways of living and interacting with nature, while acknowledging the wisdom of the past.

This discussion will elaborate on potential future scenarios in the context of the new book Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate (Thames & Hudson, 2024). Given our ecosystem’s increasing frailty, the role of architecture and building in a post-digital era, and the desperate need to record fading cultural traditions, this book is more relevant than ever.

Organized by the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee (DfRR) as part of Climate Week New York City 2024, the event addresses the science-policy brief recommendations of “Nature-Based Industrial Revolution for Inclusive Sustainable Development,” a submission for the Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals (STI Forum 2024) at United Nations Headquarters New York.

Keynote:
Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, DPACSA, President, Lance Jay Brown Architecture + Urban Design; Co-Founder and Past President, Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization; Past President, AIA New York; Founding Co-chair, AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee

Honorary Speaker: 
Martina Donlon, Chief, Climate Section, Department of Global Communications, United Nations

Speakers:
Barry Bergdoll, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
Meta Brunzema, Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt Institute School of Architecture
Jonathan Parfrey, Executive Director, Climate Resolve

Convener:
Dr. Sandra Piesik, AIA, NCARB, Director, 3 ideas; General Editor, Habitat: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate

Moderator:
Gregory Switzer, AIA, NOMA, NCARB, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Principal, Gregory Switzer Architecture, P.C. (GSAPC); 2024 President, AIA New York

About the Speakers:
Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University. Bergdoll’s broad interests center on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on France and Germany since 1750. In exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Museum of Modern Art, where he served as Philip Johnson Chief Curator from 2007 to 2013, Bergdoll has offered a series of exhibitions intended to offer more inclusive visions of subjects from Mies van der Rohe (and his relationship to garden reform and landscape), the Bauhaus, Henri Labrouste, Le Corbusier, Latin American post-war architecture, and most recently Frank Lloyd Wright. Bergdoll’s interests also include the intersections of architecture and new technologies of representations in the modern period, especially photography and film. He has worked on several film productions about architecture, in addition to curating numerous architecture exhibitions. He has written extensively on the history and problematics of exhibiting architecture and the history of museological practices in relationship to architecture.

Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, DPACSA, is an architect, urban designer, educator, and author. His 2014 AIA New York Presidential theme, Civic Vision, Civic Spirit, expressed his lifelong commitment to civic health and the importance of the public realm. He is an ACSA Distinguished Professor for Life and Emeritus Professor at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture of the City College of New York and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Previously he served as the Director of the Design Excellence Program at the Design Arts Program of the National Endowment of the Arts. His professional practice includes roles advising the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s World Trade Center Site 9/11 International Memorial Design Competition and Boston's 9/11 Memorial Competition. His awards include the AIA New York State President’s Award for Excellence in Non‐traditional Architecture and the prestigious AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. He is the Founding Co‐chair of the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee. As a Founding Board Member of the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization, he helped plan and participated in Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador. 

Meta Brunzema is an architect/urban designer and educator who develops cutting-edge approaches to spatial, environmental and socio-political challenges at the scale of buildings, cities, and territories. She is the principal of Meta Brunzema Architect P.C. and a member of the Collective for Community, Culture and Environment LLC, a women-owned consultancy and professional network that focuses on urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, environmental sustainability, economic and community development, public art and placemaking, energy and public health. Brunzema is an Adjunct Assistant Professor and the Departmental Sustainability Coordinator of the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Program at Pratt.

Martina Donlon heads the Climate Section at the United Nations Department of Global Communications in New York, managing campaigns and initiatives focused on climate action. Before that, she led a UN communications team on the Sustainable Development Goals, managed UN human rights campaigns, and headed communications and change management at the UN regional service center in Uganda. Before joining the United Nations, she served as Assistant Director at the Council on Foreign Relations, as Special Assistant to the Swiss Ambassador to the UN, as Deputy Cultural Attaché of Switzerland in New York, and as a news editor at the online Wall Street Journal. She holds a Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Before founding Climate Resolve, Jonathan Parfrey served as a commissioner at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (2008-2013). Parfrey is a member of the LA28 Olympics and Paralympic Games Sustainability Working Group. He is a founder and board member of CicLAvia, the popular street event, as well as a founder of the statewide Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation. He served as director of the GREEN LA Coalition (2007-2011) and as the Los Angeles director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Physicians for Social Responsibility (1994 to 2007). Prior to that, Parfrey founded and directed the Orange County Catholic Worker (1987-1993). He was appointed to Governor Schwarzenegger’s Environmental Policy Team in 2003. Parfrey received the Paul S. Delp Award for Outstanding Service, Peace, and Social Justice, and was awarded a Durfee Foundation Fellowship, and Stanton Fellowship. He is currently an advisory board member at the UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions; a fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities; a member of the State of California Climate Adaptation Technical Advisory Council; a member of the steering committee for the US Climate and Health Alliance and a member of the steering committee of the Tiüac’a’ai Healthy Land Project of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians amongst many other distinguished roles. 

Dr. Sandra Piesik, AIA, NCARB, is an award-winning New York-based architect, author, and scientist specializing in a diverse range of subjects from art and design to the implementation of global sustainable legislation, nature-based solutions, innovation, technology transfer, and contemporary adaptation of traditional knowledge. She is the founder of 3 ideas consultancy, a member of the New European Bauhaus EU initiative, a member of several UN organizations, the SETI Institute AIR Affiliate, and a former senior consultant to UNFCCC, UNCCD, and UN-HABITAT. Her diverse global engagements range from art and design projects, leading research & development initiatives, international lectures, judging competitions, and the nomination of awards. Her published work includes HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Climate (2024, Thames & Hudson and Shufusha), HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet (2017, Thames & Hudson, Abrams Books, Flammarion, Editions Detail and Blume), and Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture (2012, Thames & Hudson). 

Gregory Switzer, AIA, NOMA, NCARB, is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Principal of Gregory Switzer Architecture, P.C. (GSAPC) and 2024 President of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He is the 2021-22 former President of nycoba|NOMA, a professional design association aimed at promoting the work, contributions, and participation of minorities in the fields of design and architecture. Through professional and educational programming nycoba|NOMA hopes to encourage dialogues and policies that will enact a larger move towards greater diversity and inclusion in the profession. Switzer founded Switzer Architecture, P.C., a full-service architectural practice with an emphasis on design and the management of the design process in 2003 as a response to the ever-changing architecture and interiors marketplace, to provide design-conscious projects with the highest level of attention to detail and cost. He is responsible for day-to-day firm-wide operations as Managing Principal and CEO.