AIA New York invites friends and family across the country to join in a citywide celebration of architecture. The week-long festivities, October 7–12, will include a design-in marathon, symposia, dinners, parties, and tours of places usually closed to the public. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council plan to issue proclamations to commemorate the event.

For AIA New York, the festivities will begin with a ribbon-cutting marking the opening of its new Center for Architecture home at 538 LaGuardia Place (between Bleecker and West Third Streets, two blocks south of Washington Square Park).The program will continue with a day-long “design-in” marathon during which 80 top professionals, talented amateurs, and emerging voices in the design community will wax poetic about trends in architecture. The third day will focus on children, or the next generation of architects, and the following evening will allow the adults to have their fun with dinner and dancing at Chelsea Piers.

Center for Architecture
AIA New York intends for its new offices to be a public resource for information and dialogue about architecture, design, construction, and planning. Designed by Andrew Berman Architect and built by IBEX Construction, the Center contains an auditorium and three floors of exhibition spaces and meeting rooms. This fall, for example, the Center becomes an Off-Broadway venue for Private Jokes, Public Places, a play satirizing architecture school studio by Oren Safdie (former architecture student and, yes, Moshe Safdie’s son). The three-level space also includes a workshop for the New York Foundation for Architecture’s Learning by Design youth education program.

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