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James Sanders (architect)

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Name
  
James Sanders

Role
  
Architect

Shows
  
American Masters


James Sanders (architect) graphics8nytimescomimages20070917nyregion1

Movies
  
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film

Education
  
Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York

Awards
  
Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada

Books
  
Celluloid skyline, The Downing of TWA Flig, The Blue Jay Factor: A Thorou, Self Portrait in Plants

Similar People
  
Ric Burns, Judy Crichton, Susan Lacy, Donald Rosenfeld, Henry Hampton

James Sanders (born 11 June 1955) is an architect, author, and filmmaker in New York City, whose work has garnered him a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Emmy Award, among other honors.

Contents

James Sanders (architect) About the Author James Sanders

Biography

James Sanders, AIA, is a graduate of Columbia College (where he received the 1976 Chanler Prize in Urban History) and Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and attended the MIT School of Architecture + Planning. Since 1985 he has been principal of James Sanders + Associates, an architecture, design and research studio located in New York City. He received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (Fellows Page, 2006) in 2006 for research on the experience of cities, and grants and fellowships from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, and Furthermore, a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. In 2013 he was appointed Senior Fellow at the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE.), in Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, to direct a joint research and conference initiative called Building the Digital City: Tech and the Transformation of New York. He is a member of the American Institute of Architects, a Fellow at the Forum for Urban Design, and sits on the board of trustees of the Skyscraper Museum. Since 2016 he has served as consulting Chair of the Global Design Council at the architecture firm, Woods Bagot.

Architecture and Urban Design

Mr. Sanders' architecture, urban design, and development strategy projects include the Seaport Culture District, a coordinated program of seven installations in re-imagined indoor and outdoor spaces stretching across the upland blocks of the South Street Seaport area of lower Manhattan, sponsored by The Howard Hughes Corporation and activated by ten New York cultural partners and collaborators including the AIA/NY Center for Architecture, Guggenheim Museum, American Institute of Graphic Arts/NY Chapter, Eyebeam, HarperCollins, Parsons School of Design, Arup, No Longer Empty, and Art Start; NYU Open House, a public event space and cultural center in Greenwich Village for New York University, "Seaport Past & Future" for General Growth Properties, and projects for the Related Companies, André Balazs Properties, South Street Seaport Museum, Ian Schrager Company, Marriott International, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, the Pershing Square Management Association in Los Angeles, and the Parks Council, where he co-designed and co-developed the coordinated series of amenities—including bookmarket, flower market, and cafes—that initiated the revitalization of Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, described by MIT's Susan Silberberg as “one of the most dramatic examples of successful place-making in the last half century.” His residential and commercial work has been featured in Interiors, Oculus, The Architect's Newspaper, The New Yorker, House Beautiful, The New York Times, and Architectural Digest. In May 2013 he served as a senior consultant to SHoP Architects on their submission to the Municipal Art Society's invited challenge for visionary proposals for a new Pennsylvania Station.

Celluloid Skyline

In 2001, Sanders published a landmark study on the relationship of the city and film, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (Knopf, 2001, Bloomsbury UK, 2002), which received an award from the Theatre Library Association in 2002 and was called a "marvellous -- miraculous -- book" by the urbanist Jane Jacobs. In 2007, the book became the basis for a large-scale multimedia exhibit in Grand Central Terminal, co-designed by Sanders with Pentagram, and sponsored by Turner Classic Movies and Time Warner Cable.

Sanders’ book, Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in New York, produced with the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, with contributions by Martin Scorsese and Nora Ephron, was originally published by Rizzoli in 2006; a revised and expanded edition was published in Spring 2014.

Documentary Films

Sanders co-conceived and co-wrote (with Ric Burns) the award-winning PBS series, New York: A Documentary Film, and its companion volume, New York: An Illustrated History(Knopf, 1999). Described by Variety as “nothing short of gripping…a monumental documentary series that raises the bar for this kind of work,” the eight-part, 17½-hour film series chronicles the city's rise from tiny Dutch trading post down through its continuing preeminence as the economic and cultural capital of the world. The series won several Emmy Awards and a Columbia-Dupont award.

With Burns, Sanders co-wrote Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, for which he received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction Writing in 2007.

Exhibits and Multimedia Projects

Mr. Sanders has created the content and design for several exhibit and multimedia installations, including "Timescapes," the permanent orientation installation at the Museum of the City of New York (created with Local Projects, and narrated by Stanley Tucci), "An American Synagogue" (produced by Picture Projects, and narrated by Leonard Nimoy) at Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, PA, "Seaport Past and Future," at the South Street Seaport, and the "Celluloid Skyline" website, which was called "the most beautiful website about New York" by Manhattan Users Guide (MUG.com).

Articles

Sanders is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and has written articles and essays for The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Record, and co-wrote the introduction for New York City’s official bid book for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Filmography

  • New York: A Documentary Film (1999; expanded 2003)
  • Columbia: A Celebration (2004)
  • Timescapes (2005)
  • Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006)
  • An American Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright, Mortimer J. Cohen and the Making of Beth Sholom (2009)
  • References

    James Sanders (architect) Wikipedia