Residential Architecture Now: Brooklyn

This program, co-organized by AIA New York and AIA Brooklyn's Custom Residential Architects Networks (CRAN), will explore the unique experiences of practitioners who live, work, and design homes in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City.

The Brooklyn brownstone is the iconic form of urban residential architecture. The historic brownstone-lined streets of this community are well preserved, treasured by those who live there, command high market values, and are famous backdrops for plays, stories, and scripts. Few communities have so many local architects working with one iconic building typology and the related challenges of historic preservation while addressing the contemporary needs and aspirations of their clients and their neighbors.

What are those challenges? How does an architect reinvent the Brooklyn brownstone to meet the requirements of modern families, multiple governing agencies, ever-changing building codes, and the priorities of their specialized practices, such as Passive House design practices? What design trends, technical innovations, and preservation tools are emerging from the recent work of local practitioners? As practitioners who live in Brooklyn, what architectural, urban planning, and environmental policy are they advocating for? And, what is living and working in such a desirable and notorious community like?

Panelists:
Brendan Coburn, AIA, Founding Principal, CWB Architects. As the firm’s founder, Brendan designed a wide variety of residential projects and, more recently, several significant commercial and institutional projects including the award-winning library addition to the Grace Church School. Brendan established his Brooklyn-based practice with his father in the fall of 1994 and then went out on his own in 1997.
Roy Leone, AIA, CPHD, Founder and Principal, Matter of Architecture. Prior to establishing MOA, a design build studio located in Brooklyn, NY, Roy started Leone Design Studio, which now operates as the construction management arm of the office. In addition to being a licensed architect and licensed contractor, Roy is a Certified Passive House Designer and completed the firm’s first Certified Passive House project in 2019.
Lisa Mann, LEED AP, Co-Founder, TOLA Architecture. Lisa is founding partner of TOLA architecture pllc, a full service architecture and design firm based in Brooklyn, New York, with a satellite outpost in the upstate hamlet of Big Indian, New York. Lisa, a Certified Passive House Designer, is devoted to the creation of environmentally sustainable architecture and good clean design for projects of all scales.
James Garrison, AIA, Principal, Garrison Architects. James founded Garrison Architects in 1991, which is located in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Since its inception, the firm has risen to the forefront of modular building and sustainability innovation. Working across a diverse range of project types, from private residential to large scale public work. Garrison Architects pairs a research-driven approach to design with highly refined modernist aesthetics. 
Alexandra Barker, AIA, LEED AP, Principal, Barker Associates Architecture Office. Barker Associates Architecture Office, a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary architecture firm, employs material research, fabrication technologies and system integration strategies as generative tools in the design process to develop multivalent spatial solutions for public and private clients and to produce speculative research proposals. 

Moderator:
Stephen Zacks is a journalist, architecture critic, urbanist, and arts organizer based in New York City. A graduate of Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research, he founded Flint Public Art Project in 2011 and serves as president of the nonprofit Amplifier Inc., a platform for socially engaged art and design in under-served cities. He has published in the New York Times, Village Voice, Art in America, Abitare, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, the Architectural Review, Oculus, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Architectural Record, the Architect’s Newspaper, Brownstoner, Curbed, Monocle, and Blueprint.

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