Join us Thursday, October 19th for a conversation between Phil Cannata, David Rifkind and Marsha McDonald, moderated by Clare Vickery at Neushop Downtown Miami. The three design practitioners will discuss ways of understanding the tag word sustainability at different scales and from diverse perspectives.

Phil Cannata and Clare Vickery will discuss their experience designing durable furniture out of corrugated cardboard and the ways they have taken this into the educational context. David Rifkind will talk about sustainability in the built environment and net zero architecture, sharing the understanding acquired from building his own home in correspondence to these concepts. Marsha McDonald will then discuss how vernacular principles of sustainability have been essential to the development of Caribbean aesthetics, and how that has had an influence beyond the region.

The exchange between the designers will be followed by informal conversation over light fare and refreshments at the space.

To attend, please RSVP here. Attendance is limited.

About Phil Cannata

Phil has worked full-time as a landscape designer, artist, and furniture designer, since graduation from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1994. He has exhibited a variety of furniture pieces at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and other conventions, was published and received design awards from journals in the furniture and interior design fields in the late 1990‘s and early 2000‘s. He worked out of studio space in Boston’s Fort Point Arts District until 2003, when he moved to the Fort Lauderdale area to pursue new challenges in landscape design. Until now, he has worked in landscape design creating upscale installations in South Florida as a small business and creative professional. Cardboard is inexpensive, plentiful, lightweight, and easy to cut, ‘corrugated’ material is recycled wood fiber product. Phil’s furniture designs, including the Halcyon table with Vickery of Grace Arts FL, address a career of sustainable problem solving through landscape design, architecture, and sculpture from his graduate work at Harvard’s Landscape Architecture program, and work experience from the last twenty-five years. An avid ‘naturalist,’ Phil’s attention to materials and detail treatments, minimizing unsustainable elements as much as possible to create and install parts and veneers of the highest quality, is the current focus of the Halcyon project.

About Marsha McDonald

Marsha McDonald is an architectural designer and the owner of Seacrest Designs, a luxury design studio with a specialty in residential design, interiors and architectural millwork. Marsha’s passions include researching, developing a refined Caribbean aesthetic and highlighting their cultural influences and contributions in design and sustainable environments. She also enjoys sharing her love for culture, sustainability and design arts through writing, speaking and design arts programming. Marsha has completed both her professional Masters of Architecture (MArch)  and Masters of Arts in Architecture (pre-doctoral) degrees from Florida International University, along with a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica.

About David Rifkind

David Rifkind is Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental and Urban Design at Florida International University, where he teaches courses in architectural history, theory and design. David’s current research deals with urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia from the late nineteenth century to the present, and is the first component in a long-term study of modern architecture and urban planning throughout Africa. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Battle for Modernism: Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy, which was published in 2012 by the CISA Palladio and Marsilio Editori. He has published articles on architecture and urbanism in Italy and Ethiopia, and curated the 2012 exhibition, Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy, at the Frost Art Museum. In 2014, Ashgate published A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture, which David co-edited with Elie G. Haddad. David earned a PhD at Columbia University, an MArch at McGill University, and a BArch at the Boston Architectural Center.

About Clare Vickery

Clare has 25+ years of experience in public-private partnerships developing real estate, regional planning, cultural arts programming and retail. Grace Arts FL is a cultural marketplace model comprised of a 12 year retail art gallery business and a separate Florida licensed 501.c3 public charity since 2011 supporting innovations and applications of the arts to benefit the community at large. She’s sponsored the 2007 ‘Art Miami Director’s Choice Exhibition for Miami Artist, Purvis Young,’ founded several arts festivals and after school arts programs, supervised installations at museums in the tri-county area, curated convention spaces and introduced new artists to the market successfully. She’s currently writing, directing and presenting multidisciplinary projects with artists and scholars in the humanities and sciences from New York to Florida for release in 2018. She serves on several boards and community organizations and has been married since 2012.

Thursday, October 19th 2017
Arrival and Reception: 6:30 PM
Panel Presentation and Discussion: 7:00 PM
Neushop
Downtown Miami
15 SE 2nd Avenue
33131

Validated Parking

College Station Garage 190 NE 3rd St
Convention Center Garage 100 SE 2nd St
$1 up to 3 hours