NEWS
June 10, 2020
Nicholas Gervasi prints and accompanying text published for Cliché by Quinta Colonna
“Architecture is an anomaly. Even though forms and patterns are constant, narratives and people yield serendipity. As materials become layered with light and touch, architecture records and reverberates these altered experiences.”
-Excerpt from text - Cliché
May 14, 2020
Alexander Ford & Nicholas Gervasi essay “Remarks on the Digitization of Cultural Materials” published by Plat Journal for issue 8.5 tl;dr
“The architecture of the cloud is bereft of ornament, uninterested in human scale, optimized for the maximization of server units, and is inhabited by artificially intelligent algorithms that scrape endlessly through bottomless servers in search of information adrift in a sea of social noise. The cautious and complete preservation of that noise, while certainly contentious, is the only way to ensure that information is not lost.”
-Excerpt from text - PLAT
January 15, 2020
Artist in the Lab: Terreform ONE: Vivian Kuan and Nicholas Gervasi from Terreform ONE, an architecture and urban-design research group, discuss how their Cricket Shelter and other projects work to design against extinction.
“This talk is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Designs for Different Futures. This event is part of the Wednesday Nights program series in the Futures Therapy Lab. A space for conversation, critique, and creativity for those considering the ideas set forth in the exhibition. In addition to daily drop-in activities, the Lab will host weekly events. Open to visitors of all ages and free with museum admission.”
-Text from Philadelphia Museum of Art
December 12, 2019
On behalf of Terreform ONE, Nicholas Gervasi and Theo Dimitrasopoulos speak at the conference State of Extremes for the opening exhibition at Design Museum Holon
“In 2010, Design Museum Holon was inaugurated with The State of Things, an international exhibition that presented design as a landscape of objects. Ten years later, State of Extremes instead describes a condition - that of a world that has changed, and with it, design and design practice.
State of Extremes aims to show the potential of design to reveal, critique, resist, mitigate (and, yes, sometimes exacerbate) extremes and the mechanisms that drive them. At a time when our technologies, power structures and impact on the planet are engendering ever more extreme scenarios, we hope "State of Extremes" might serve as a call for moderation.”
-Text from Design Museum Holon
December 10, 2019
On behalf of Terreform ONE, Nicholas Gervasi and Theo Dimitrasopoulos lead workshop at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art
“Combining faculties of engineering, design and art is the basis of this institution’s unique multidisciplinary academics, allowing students and professors to combine cutting-edge technologies with contemporary design and artistic concepts. Each faculty has its own character, yet maintains fruitful collaborations with the other faculties, exposing students to a variety of disciplines and different fields of knowledge. “
-Text from Shenkar - Engineering. Design. Art
November 15, 2019
On behalf of Terreform ONE, Nicholas Gervasi and Theo Dimitrasopoulos present Monarch Sanctuary: Design and Fabrication to students of Brooklyn STEAM Center.
“The Brooklyn STEAM Center is an innovative career and technical training hub for 11th and 12th grade students, immersed within a robust industry environment, which prepares a pipeline of talented young adults who will thrive in the rapidly evolving manufacturing, technology, and creative fields. At STEAM, students engage in high quality professional work, develop robust and real industry networks, and explore tangible pathways to economic opportunity, all within the industry ecosystem at the Brooklyn Navy Yard - a 300 acre industrial park that houses over 400 businesses in cutting-edge industries.“
-Text from Brooklyn STEAM Center
October 3, 2019
Nicholas Gervasi represented Terreform ONE in an interview with PBS Peril & Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change.
“While climate change encompasses the potential for devastating consequences, including physical destruction, economic disruption, even an impact on our national security, it also has the potential to foster a new era of scientific innovation, clean energy technologies, and creative policy solutions.
Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change is a public media initiative from WNET in New York reporting on the human impact of climate change, designed to provide context, scientifically sound information, and fact-based journalism to audiences across every platform of public media. It also focuses on stories of exciting new frontiers of scientific innovation in resilience, mitigation, and clean energy.
We are partnering with some of public media’s most prestigious programs to use broadcast television, digital video, social media and public radio to tell these stories to the widest possible audience… locally, regionally, and nationally, on-air and online.”
-Text from https://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/about/
September 25, 2019
Nicholas Gervasi and Liana Grobstein volunteer as mentors for the New Lab x Department of Education HE³AT Program to teach high school students design-thinking principles, applied entrepreneurship and relevant frontier technologies.
“New Lab has partnered with the DOE to serve as a founding industry partner on a new year-long initiative for local high school students called ‘HE3AT.’ The HE3AT program is open to 11th and 12th grade students in Brooklyn school districts 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 22. Students taking part in the year-long HE3AT program will explore the role of technology within the fields of their chosen topic: healthcare, energy, education, environment, and agriculture. Working in cross-school teams, over the course of the school year, students will learn to be true innovators using the design thinking process to research, propose, and develop solutions to current global dilemmas within their chosen topic.”
-Text from New Lab
September 18, 2019
Nicholas Gervasi’s essay “Ecological Preservation is the Overlap between Biodiversity and Culture” is published in Design with Life.
“The work contained inside this massive new volume entitled; "Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities" on Actar chronicles over a decade of urban design research and biological architecture projects created by the good people of Terreform ONE. The Co-Founders, Mitchell Joachim, and Maria Aiolova candidly discuss and unpack years of interdisciplinary research on socio-ecological experimental design for resilient cities everywhere.“
-Text from Terreform ONE Blog
August 12, 2019
Nicholas Gervasi is appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor at the CUNY New York City College of Technology in the Dept. of Architectural Technology to teach Sustainability: History and Practice.
“Sustainability describes an approach to the design, construction and stewardship of products and environments that align human need and ecological resourcefulness. This course focuses on built work of the last 200 years that grew from a new consciousness of ecological limits, living system dynamics and understanding of human well-being. The practice of sustainability has developed numerous and sometimes competing logics. This course explores how sustainable criteria are influenced by outlook (and self-interest) and how the prioritization of health, social agendas, economics, aesthetics, environmental protection or resource efficiency have shaped selected buildings, landscapes and city plans. “
-Text from NYCCT Course Listing
May 22, 2019
On behalf of Terreform ONE, Nicholas Gervasi and Theo Dimitrasopoulos speak about Monarch Sanctuary project at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
“Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum presents Experience Cafe—a night of interactive activities and conversations with designers featured in Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. Guests will rotate through stations spanning the museum and explore the possibilities that lie at the intersection of design and nature. “
-Text from Cooper Hewitt | Experience Cafe
April 6, 2019
On behalf of Terreform ONE, Nicholas Gervasi leads workshop “Design Against Extinction: Architecture Beyond the Sustainable into the Socio-Ecological” at the NYU Sustainability Conference 2019.
“This April EarthMatters is hosting our fifth annual Sustainability Summit. The Summit is a PUBLIC city-wide event focused on advancing the conversation about sustainability, environmentalism, and entrepreneurship. This year, the theme will be Environmental Design in Urban Spaces and will focus on how we engage the public in environmentalism through urban design, and public art and how we rethink and reimagine sustainability in urban spaces. “
-Text from EarthMatters@NYU
December 4, 2018
Savinien Caracostea and Nicholas Gervasi essay “Towards a Communal Afterlife” published in CLOG x Artificial Intelligence.
“Artificial Intelligence—in particular the so-called “narrow” form of AI that has already surpassed human capabilities when it comes to specific tasks—is a ubiquitous, trusted part of our lives. But at the same time, AI is a topic that often elicits more questions than answers. Even defining “Artificial Intelligence” is no simple matter. In practice, AI today takes many forms, ranging from consumer-oriented primary points of interaction (AlphaGo, Alexa, Siri, etc.) to high-profile super-machines (DeepMind and Watson), to unseen scripts and bots operating behind the scenes.
CLOG x ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE will critically examine AI from its earliest speculations to its future...and ours.”
-Text from CLOG
October 4, 2018
Moderated by Briana Ryan of New Lab, Nicholas Gervasi joined Taras Kravtchouk and Catherine Wales on a panel to discuss design as business and vice versa to Peter Ragonetti’s class in the Industrial Design Program at Pratt Institute.
August 26, 2018