Ray Gastil, Director of the Remaking Cities Institute, will introduce Mary Miss at the Institute for Public Architecture’s 7th annual Fall Fête on Wednesday 13 November. Miss will receive the Artist for Public Architecture Award during the event. Miss will be joined by Deputy Mayor Vicki Been who will receive the Public Service Award, and Toni Griffin will receive Social Justice Design Award.
Miss has reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design, and installation art by articulating a vision of the public sphere where it is possible for an artist to address the issues of our time. She has developed the “City as Living Lab,” a framework for making issues of sustainability tangible through collaboration and the arts. Trained as a sculptor, her work creates situations emphasizing a site’s history, its ecology, or aspects of the environment that have gone unnoticed. Miss has been redefining how art is integrated into the public realm since the early 1970s.
The Institute for Public Architecture uses design to challenge social and physical inequities in New York City. IPA addresses urgent issues of design and policy by mobilizing its network of activists, professionals, government officials, and community stakeholders. The IPA's collaborative process involves a focused design residency and related programs. IPA believes in a future in which design is used as a tool for facilitating social justice and the public has a voice in all decisions that shape our built environment.