Image Credit: Guido Heitkoetter/Flickr CC
Some Thoughts About Public Architecture…….
Public Architects—City Builders. These words, in the title of this year’s Public Architects Workshop, reflect the profound importance of the work we do as public architects. Workshop case studies will focus on New York City, illustrating the wide-ranging role public architects play in shaping the built environment in one of America’s greatest cities. Public architects play these roles throughout the US—in cities large and small, at local, state and federal public agencies, for park districts, utilities, universities and more.
As a public architect and this year’s Chair of the Public Architects Advisory Group, I continue to be amazed at the range and scope of our work. Public architecture is a great, if often unrecognized, career path for architects—this work provides opportunities for visionary city builders and hands-on implementers alike. In fact, our work is often both at once. I tell people that my own work—as a campus planner and architect (at a public university) requires me to make decisions simultaneously effective at 50, 000 feet and “in the weeds.”
I, like many public architects, work with clients, consultants and many stakeholders, teaching, learning and talking about what architecture is and what it can be. We experience the design profession in complex, often changing, ways, providing leadership to groups of people who may never have come together before and whose interests may not align. We know that the result of our work will belong to all of us. It is a great responsibility—challenging, dynamic and meaningful.
I also like to tell people that public architecture is not an alternative career for architects—it is an architectural career. My public architecture colleagues and I provide critical thinking and direction for almost every aspect of the physical environments in which people live, work and play. We set guidelines and establish requirements to address form, function and sustainability. We manage the full-range of construction activities. We try new approaches to program development, technology and project delivery—public architecture is also an important setting for testing new ideas, for civic innovation. And we do all of this—with accountability and transparency-- in highly political public and organizational environments. This, truly, is City Building!
The public architects I have met through the Public Architects Advisory Group have all been city builders--all thoughtful and engaged architects, all committed to public service. My goal, as I have worked with the AIA and this group of outstanding professionals, has been to elevate our career path, to make it—in all its diversity, interest and importance—more visible.
As public architects, we are design professionals engaged in communities, shaping the physical environment. Because we are architects, the knowledge and experience we bring to that work also shapes shared civic vision for the future. I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have discovered this work; and I look forward to encouraging the very best young architects to choose this role for their own.
Emily Marthinsen, AIA
2017 Chair
Public Architects Advisory Group
Assistant Vice Chancellor Marthinsen, UC Berkeley’s Campus Architect, heads the office of Physical and Environmental Planning (PEP) providing comprehensive physical and environmental planning services for the Berkeley campus. Emily works closely with campus clients through early planning phases of projects emphasizing program and project definition, alternative space development and alignment with overall campus plans and planning policy. She is responsible for the campus design review process, coordination with the City of Berkeley related to planning issues and the implementation of the 2020 Long Range Development Plan.
Emily joined Capital Projects in 2000 as Principal Planner responsible for surge (relocation) planning. She became Assistant Vice Chancellor and Campus Planner in 2006 and was appointed Campus Architect in 2014. She worked previously on campus in the Department of Architecture and in the Office of the Dean, College of Environmental Design. She taught undergraduate and graduate studios, worked on departmental accreditation and guided programming and planning for Wurster Hall’s seismic retrofit. Emily has over thirty-five years of relevant work experience at UC Berkeley and with design and planning firms in San Francisco, Washington, DC, Alexandria, Virginia and Berkeley. Her private practice work focused on pre-design planning and programming for community and non-profit clients and for public agencies.
Emily has a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from the University of Chicago and Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley. She is also a member of the Society for Campus and University Planning (SCUP), the Association of University Architects (AUA), and is a frequent presenter and writer on campus planning and design issues.