On Wednesday, February 9, the KPF President and Design Principal presented One Vanderbilt, the firm’s iconic Midtown Manhattan project, before answering questions in a student-led interview.
James headlined a series of presentations with leading architects for the School of Architecture and Design’s Spring 2022 Lectures and Events series, Communities. The string of events, titled Beyond the Envelope, was part of the SoAD Master of Architecture course.
Through work that ranges in scale from a house to a city, James contributes closely to design efforts from conception to completion. His projects create strong symbiotic relationships between program space and the public realm, such as One Vanderbilt, which links Midtown Manhattan’s tallest office tower directly to Grand Central Terminal. In addition to focusing on his own projects, he leads the community of designers within the firm in exploring shared architectural agendas and goals. As President of the firm, he is responsible for leading the staff of 750+ people in 10 offices around the world.
James has lectured at Harvard, Columbia, Tsinghua, Tongji, Seoul National, and Yonsei Universities, the ESA in Paris, AMO in Lyon, and at Yale, where he taught as a Saarinen Visiting Professor. He is currently the Design Principal of a new campus in Vienna for the Central European University on the grounds of Otto Wagner’s Steinhof.
The event was broadcast live on February 9. Read more here.