I attended an AIA panel discussion tonight:

Infrastructural Systems: Cities Designed for a Changing World
Hillary Brown, FAIA, Paul Lukez, FAIA, and Mason White; moderated by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson

I'll put their bios below, but essentially they are each in their own way trying to bring infrastructure projects into the realm of things that architects feel should be designed by architects. (Architects feel they should design everything, of course.) That's a tall order because traditionally such projects are handled by government agencies, utility companies and/or huge engineering firms - or all three at once. Architects may be called in to design public areas or the utilitarian buildings that house utilities, but the planning - if there is much - is done by ... planners.

So Hillary Brown gravitated to the public sector, writing design guidelines, and now is a principal in a firm, New Civic Works, that writes sustainability guidelines for NYC government. The work of Paul Lukez's firm seems to be traditional urban planning, but with an eye towards sustainability, reuse and suburban transformation. Mason White enters competitions, but says he often actually pays the bills with research grants. White's firm, Lateral Office proposed a tunnel/bridge/ice park to run along the International Date Line and join Alaska and Russia, and a master plan to develop the Salton Sea.  He seems to be trying to become an expert on Arctic infrastructure.

No one really had a answer for where the basic funding for essential maintenance will come from, or what will happen if more and more infrastructure gets privatized.

Hillary Brown, FAIA actively supports her research and design work on sustainable infrastructure through public outreach and direct involvement with government agencies. By founding New York City’s Office of Sustainable Design, she assisted in writing both the High Performance Building Guidelines and High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines for the city, in collaboration with the Design Trust. A graduate of Yale University School of Architecture, she was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2000, and a Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2001.  Most recently, Hillary has been working as principal of New Civic Works in New York City to assist various institutions in developing sustainable guidelines for their building programs. She also teaches courses on sustainable design at Columbia and Princeton University Schools of Architecture and has served on the US Green Building Council board, where she co-authored the State and Local Green Building Toolkit.

Paul Lukez, FAIA has not limited himself to just design work throughout his architectural career, but has also succeeded as a researcher, writer, and professor. His work has taken him across the US, Asia and Europe, and has earned him several honors and awards, including NE/AIA awards, NAHB awards, and the American Perspectivists Jurors’ Prize. Paul graduated from MIT with a Masters in Architecture, and started out working for reputable firms such as S.O.M. Chicago, William Rawn Associates, Arrowstreet Inc., and Wallace Floyd before founding his practice, Paul Lukez Architecture, in 1992. This Boston-based firm receives commissions for residential, commercial, and interior projects. Their non-commissioned work and research primarily aims to provide more sustainable living environments at various scales of construction. As a result of these endeavors, Paul wrote Suburban Transformations, paying special attention to the importance of landscape throughout suburban communities. Paul Lukez Architecture has also won awards from competitions including the MGH Charles Street Competition, “Boston Visions” competition, Seattle’s “Four in One” Housing competition, and the Harlem “Infill Housing” Competition.

Mason White, having graduated from Virginia Tech and then Harvard Graduate School, is now an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, as part of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Design. Beginning his career at the Monacelli Press as an assistant editor of books on Arts and Architecture, he went on to teach or critique at several universities including Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Michigan, OSU, Syracuse, Buffalo, and the Architectural Association in London. Since 2000, he has also served as a Senior Editor of Archinect, an online architecture and design magazine. Mason’s literary expertise in academia, research and journalistic inquisition has translated into his practice, which he co-founded with partner Lola Sheppard in London in 2003. Lateral Architecture, his Toronto-based office, received the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture in 2010 for their research Emergent North, which is an ongoing investigation of the existing landscape and infrastructure found in the Arctic region. The compilation of this research will then be utilized to develop civic design solutions for new northernmost settlements.

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Baltimore’s own architectural journalist/editor, is known for her blog Urban Palimpsest. She is also a contributing editor at Architect, and a monthly columnist for the Metropolis magazine website, Letter From Baltimore. She has also appeared in publications and websites such as The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Architectural Lighting, Baltimore, Style, Next American City, Urbanite, and Conde Nast Traveler.