Event Pass Information Event Pass TypePriceQuantity In-Person - Student with Valid IDFREE 0 1 2 3 4 In-Person - General Public$15.00 USD 0 1 2 3 4 AIA Member (not AIANY)$15.00 USD 0 1 2 3 4 Event Details In the opening conversation of the series Designing for Public Life: The Dialogues, Benjamin Gilmartin, AIA, of Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Ivi Diamantopoulou, AIA, and Jaffer Kolb of New Affiliates will reflect broadly on the question “what era of public space are we in now?” Following Hurricane Sandy and the pandemic, new large-scale forms of public realm are emerging. There is a pressing need to reconstruct New York City’s perimeter, and we’re seeing new public programs interwoven with coastal resilience. Across the city, pedestrian public places are appearing among open streets newly interlinking communities. Overgrown railway easements are being recaptured as extensive urban trails. And seasonally appropriated streetside parking spaces host vast and distributed networks of outdoor dining. Alongside many other prototypes, these diverse infrastructures for public life connect across neighborhoods, originating under a non-traditional variety of city authorities. They are often catalyzed and maintained with community activism. Diamantopoulou, Gilmartin, and Kolb, who are collaborating on the upcoming fall exhibition Searching for Superpublics at the Center for Architecture, are passionate and deeply curious about how public spaces are gathering and collecting across the city right now, how designers are participating in their creation, and how these new forms of connective space are refiguring the nature our shared civic, social, and cultural life. Speakers: Ivi Diamantopoulou, AIA, Co-founder, New Affiliates Benjamin Gilmartin, AIA, Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; 2025 President, AIA New York Jaffer Kolb, Co-founder, New Affiliates About the Speakers: Ivi Diamantopoulou, AIA, and Jaffer Kolb are Co-founders of New Affiliates, and among their many architectural, installation, and exhibition works, possess a sustained interest in intervening into the public realm through partnerships with city agencies including NYC Parks and the Department of Sanitation. Their project “Testbeds” was included in the MoMA’s New York: New Publics exhibition in 2023. Benjamin Gilmartin, AIA, is a Partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) in New York, and led public space projects for the Lincoln Center Redevelopment, and collaborated on the design of the High Line in New York and Zaryade Park in Moscow, among many other public space projects. Gilmartin is the 2025 AIA New York President. About the Series: Organized by the AIANY Cultural Facilities, Global Dialogues, and Planning and Urban Design Committees, Designing for Public Life: The Dialogues is a series of six Spring-Fall 2025 programs expanding on the forum established by 2024’s series Belonging and Beyond: The Future of Public Space and Art. The 2025 conversation series examines the forces reshaping both our contemporary public life and the physical spaces being designed to support it. New York City has always had a unique energy and tempo to its public life—a dynamic, human pulse visible in our streets, parks, subways, squares, and waterfronts. This vitality is the resilient force of our shared creative, cultural, social, and civic lives. Historically, the city has built its large public spaces— from Central and Prospect Parks (Olmsted) to Jones Beach (Moses) and Lincoln Center—as places that express the abundant human energy of New York public life. The late 20th century initiated an era of conversion of former industrial waterfronts and infrastructure into new forms of public space that in the 21st century prompt renewed, creative solutions for public life. As in the past, our shared life today in public space intersects with and reveals our most urgent collective challenges. Hurricane Sandy made visible the climate crisis. Black Lives Matter demonstrations exposed the crisis of structural racism. Homelessness in the five boroughs divulges a deepening housing affordability crisis. Cross-disciplinary collaborations can help us identify these blind spots and think holistically about the interconnected issues of our shared environment. In our role as citizens, we can advocate for greater equity, health, and justice within the common spaces of our communities. In our professional capacity as designers, we listen carefully and articulate strong artistic visions that serve the greater good. We must conjure vibrant in between spaces that embody the principles of inclusivity and connection—distinctly urban settings that promote joy, active lifestyles, and peaceful assembly. In this pivotal moment, we can reimagine New York’s public spaces—the theaters of our public life—to be places of belonging that are lively, distinctive, engaging, and welcoming to all. The five additional programs in this series will be announced in the coming months, exploring the following broad themes with distinguished speakers. What forces are creating new large-scale public spaces across the five boroughs, and who are its current champions? How are these spaces addressing questions of health, safety, equity and inclusiveness among New York City’s many communities? How are public spaces becoming our infrastructures for both climate and social resiliency? Learn more and consider donating to the 2025 President’s Circle, which supports programming related to Gimartin’s theme, “See You IRL: Designing for Public Life.”