Rethinking Museum Architecture

Founder and President of Dovetail Design Strategists Susanna Sirefman, Spanish architect Juan Herreros (Columbia University), and urban designer Daniel Lobo (Urban Land Institute) discuss the challenges faced by institutions and architects in new museum design.

This program is presented as part of AIA/DC Architecture Month, which features EXPORT: Spanish Architecture Abroad and ALTERNATIVAS/ALTERNATIVES: The Thirteenth Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, on show from April 6 through June 4 at the Former Residence of the Ambassadors of Spain in Washington, D.C.

Susanna Sirefman

Susanna Sirefman specializes in finding the right architect for complex building programs. Her firm, Dovetail Design Strategists, the leading independent architect selection firm in the United States, draws from a deep knowledge of the field to compile stellar architect shortlists, custom-designed selection processes, build consensus, and help organizations prepare for programmatic growth and enhanced visibility. Dovetail provides a comprehensive range of services to educate client teams on the options, risks and opportunities inherent in a given program and to implement strategy, whether it be by developing an international architecture competition, request for proposal, interview-based search or design concept commission.

Trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, Sirefman has written five books on contemporary architecture and regularly contributes to The Wall Street Journal. In 2015, her essay, “Design Combat: American Competitions and Decision-Making,” was featured in Architecture Competitions and the Production of Culture, Quality and Knowledge: An International Inquiry.

Sirefman has taught at Parsons School of Design and City College New York School of Architecture in New York City and serves as a visiting critic at architecture and urban design programs. She speaks widely in both professional and academic settings, most recently at the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago as part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, at the Design Competition Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the 5th International Conference on Competitions in Delft, the Netherlands.

Juan Herreros

Juan Herreros is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia GSAPP. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) in 1984, being immediately recruited at the Construction Department, where he taught until 1988 before moving to the Design Department. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1994, and was appointed Tenure Professor in 1995 and Chair Professor in 2010. He has lectured at other American universities such as Princeton and IIT, and at several European institutions, such as the Architectural Association in London, the EPFL in Lausanne, the Faculty of Architecture of Ljubljana (ULFA) and the University of Alicante.

Herreros founded Abalos&Herreros in 1984, the LMI (Liga Multimedia Internacional) in 1999, Herreros Arquitectos in 2006 and estudio Herreros in 2014. Abalos&Herreros achieved international acclaim and contributed to the recognition of Spanish architecture of the 1980s and 90s. The office of Herreros Arquitectos won several important international competitions including the design and construction of the Munch Museum and its adjacent area in Oslo, the International Conference Centre in Bogotá, the Euromed Project in Marseille and the ANFA District in Casablanca among others, and building his first projects outside Spain including the Bank of Panama Tower, the Coastal Parks in Panama City, the access facilities to the city of Colon or the Communication Hut in Gwangju, in South Korea. He also carried out major projects in Spain.

Daniel Lobo

Daniel Lobo is the Senior Director of Awards, Education and Advisory Group, for the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit education and research institute that focuses on issues of land use, real estate and urban development. The mission of the Institute is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide. Since 1947, ULI has been conducting panels that provide strategic advice to communities and organizations on a wide variety of real estate, planning, and urban design and public policy subjects.

Lobo is an urban planning and design professional with over twelve years of experience dedicated to built environment initiatives, an extensive track record in project management, community participation, sustainable neighborhood development, disaster preparedness and response, cultural engagement, freelance reporting, and art proposals.

Prior to joining ULI, Lobo was an independent consultant working as project manager for a variety of urban and research initiatives, in particular facilitating open cultural urban interventions internationally, and new media research. Earlier he worked extensively as project manager for the Center for Communities by Design at the American Institute of Architects, and as Urban Designer at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill LLP. He holds a MSc City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics, and a BA (Honors) from the School of Architecture and Interior Design at London Metropolitan University.