What is the latest thinking about meaningful sustainability? What do truly sustainable workplaces look like? How can architects and designers be leaders when it comes to sustainability? Vitra joined 1014 for a conversation that sought to explore these questions around embodied carbon, material sourcing, and the implications for designing today’s workplaces with Sydney Mainster, Vice President of Sustainability and Design Management at the Durst Organization, and Lindsey Wikstrom, founding partner of Mattaforma. Moderated by Jack Murphy, Executive Editor of The Architect's Newspaper, with insightful perspectives from architecture, sustainability leadership, and design management.
Photos by Sarah Blesener
Biographies
Sydney Mainster serves as Vice President of Sustainability and Design Management at the Durst Organization, one of the oldest family-run commercial and residential real estate companies in New York City. She brings over 17 years of professional and academic sustainability, architecture, design, and construction experience to support Durst’s vision for sustainability in ground-up development projects, existing building renovations, and building operations. She defines and refines design and construction sustainability criteria utilizing data from current green building rating systems, health research and chemical red lists; and sustainability best practices in energy, water, indoor environmental quality, and cradle-to-cradle product manufacturing, use, and disposal. Sydney works closely with design consultants, construction teams, and manufacturers to ensure product selection, procurement, and installation all meet established performance and sustainability criteria—not only to achieve outcomes on current building projects but also to improve environmental standards and innovation in the industry.
In 2023, Sydney was recognized as a Notable Leader in Sustainability by Crain’s New York. Sydney is a current board member of the Building Energy Exchange (BE-Ex), of the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV) and is a past chair of the Advisory Council for the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Art and Design.
Lindsey Wikstrom is the Founding Partner of Mattaforma. She has taught at Columbia GSAPP, Cornell AAP, Syracuse University, and Yale School of Architecture. Wikstrom holds an M.Arch from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Charles McKim Prize, Visualization Award, and Avery 6 Award. Wikstrom is also the recipient of the SOM Prize. Her research on renewable and reclaimed materials has been published in Embodied Energy and Design: Making Architecture between Metrics and Narratives, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, Faktur, Cite, e-flux, Urban Omnibus, and others. Wikstrom is the organizer and moderator of Material Worlds, a speaker series hosted by MoMA's Emilio Ambasz Institute. In 2022, Wikstrom spoke at Prada's Possible Conversation series to launch her book Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures (2023), published by Routledge, with foreword by Kenneth Frampton.
Jack Murphy is Executive Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. Previously he was Editor of Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston and an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design. His writing has appeared in Architectural Record, Dwell, The Architect’s Newspaper, Texas Architect, Places, Cite, PLAT, Paprika!, the SF Gate, the Houston Chronicle, and the New York Review of Architecture, among other publications. Previously Murphy was Co-Editor-in-Chief of PLAT 8.0 Simplicity and the assistant editor for Totalization, edited by Troy Schaum and published by Park Books in 2019. He received an Honorable Mention for the Pierre Vago Journalism Award 2020 from the International Committee of Architecture Critics. He earned degrees in architecture from MIT and Rice University. In addition to his work as an editor, writer, and educator, Murphy has contributed to award-winning architectural practices in Boston, Austin, Houston, and New York. He lives in Brooklyn.
VENUE ACCESSIBILITY
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