Cocktails & Conversations
September 11, 2015 Center for Architecture, New York City
The Pairing:
Eric Owen Moss, Eric Owen Moss Architects
Tom Kundig, Olson Kundig
Jim Russell, NYC Department of Design and Construction
Cocktail designed by:
Eben Klemm, Bartender + Author
Toby Cecchini, Bartender + Author
Eric Owen Moss, FAIA, Principal, Eric Owen Moss Architects
Eric Owen Moss, FAIA, Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds Masters Degrees in Architecture from both the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Moss was honored with the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. He received the AIA/LA Gold Medal in 2001, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2007, he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognizing a distinguished history of architectural design. In 2011 he was awarded the Jencks Award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In 2014 Moss was featured as a “Game Changer” in Metropolis Magazine, inducted into the National Academy, and received a PA Award for a master plan to revitalize an abandoned rail yard in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2016, Moss received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art. Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Moss has been a longtime professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and served as its director from 2002-2015. He received the AIA|LA Educator of the Year in 2006, and the Most Admired Educator Award from the Design Futures Council in 2013.
Tom Kundig, FAIAPrincipal, Olson Kundig
Tom Kundig, comes from a craft-based design culture rooted in the area’s industrial and timber heritage. As an accomplished alpine climber, Kundig is familiar with the rugged outdoors of tall trees, rocks, lakes, big sky, as well as with ropes and other mountaineering equipment, all of which have influenced his architectural practice. His early work as a sculptor’s assistant, fabricating large-scale welded steel sculptures, has encouraged his fascination with jerry-rigged machines and apparatuses to move and balance heavy pieces. And, as a devotee of low-tech solutions and experimentation, he enjoys collaboration with engineers and craftspeople as well as with his clients, whose goals and desires actively shape his projects.
Kundig, a partner in the Seattle firm, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, was a National Design Award winner in 2008 for his Rolling Huts in Mazama, Washington. Kundig was also a National Design Award finalist in 2005.
Jim Russell, Director Department of Design and Construction
Jim Russell is the Director of NYC Department of Design and Construction. As the Director, Design Strategic Initiatives at the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) James led a team that advanced the agency’s capacity in low-energy buildings, climate-change adaptation, and resiliency. His team created a series of handbooks showing the role of architectural design in aiding equitable access to City resources and nurturing well-being. The handbooks tailor recommendations to nine building types ranging from police precincts and libraries to street design, homeless shelters, and juvenile-detention facilities.
He wrote guidelines for DDC and the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection of the design of natural-system stormwater-management tactics—an urgent need as rainfall intensifies, sea levels rise, and storms intensify coastal damage. His work applied the latest knowledge on climate trends, and showed examples at large urban and watershed scale.
He has also done strategic consulting work for clients that include the City of Philadelphia, American Forests, nine Hudson River counties, and the State of New Jersey.
He grounds his work in 10 years as a practicing architect and brings an insatiable curiosity from journalism, where he published more than 1,000 articles as an award-winning editor at Architectural Record magazine, and as the architecture critic for Bloomberg News. James has written architecture and city stories for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among many other publications.
His book, The Agile City: Building Well Being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change (2011) documents the low-tech and low-cost strategies for buildings and communities that can achieve dramatic reductions now in America’s global-warming effects.
Mr. Russell teaches at Stanford University and has taught at Columbia University, the City College of New York, and the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a Masters of Architecture degree from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design from the University of Washington. He also attended The Evergreen State College.
He was born in Seattle. He is a registered architect, elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2010, and resides in New York City.
Eben Klemm, Bartender & Author
Eben Klemm, a former research biologist, is especially interested in encouraging knowledge among bartenders concerning the basic chemical and physics principals that affect the materials they use in order to better understand the techniques they use. Klemm and his cocktails have been featured in such diverse local and national publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Food and Wine, Time Out New York, Popular Science, and Playboy. He has also made televised appearances include The Today Show, CBS’s Early Show and ABC 20/20. His cocktail book for beginners, The Cocktail Primer, was published in December by Andrews McNeel.
Toby Cecchini, Bartender & Author
Toby Cecchini is a writer and bartender based in New York City. He has written on food, wine and spirits for GQ, Food and Wine, and The New York Times. His first book, Cosmopolitan: A Bartender's Life, was published in 2003. He is currently at work on his second book, a travelogue of spirits based on his travels for The New York Times' Living and travel magazines. He began bartending at the Odeon in 1987, where he is credited with creating the internationally recognized version of the Cosmopolitan cocktail in New York. He followed that with stints in several bars including Passersby, which he owned until 2008. In 2013 he reopened the shuttered Long Island Bar in Cobble Hill Brooklyn.
Stir together In a mixing glass full of ice:
Eric Owen Moss, Eric Owen Moss Architects
Tom Kundig, Olson Kundig
Jim Russell, NYC Department of Design and Construction
Cocktail designed by:
Eben Klemm, Bartender + Author
Toby Cecchini, Bartender + Author
Eric Owen Moss, FAIA, Principal, Eric Owen Moss Architects
Eric Owen Moss, FAIA, Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds Masters Degrees in Architecture from both the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Moss was honored with the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. He received the AIA/LA Gold Medal in 2001, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2007, he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognizing a distinguished history of architectural design. In 2011 he was awarded the Jencks Award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In 2014 Moss was featured as a “Game Changer” in Metropolis Magazine, inducted into the National Academy, and received a PA Award for a master plan to revitalize an abandoned rail yard in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2016, Moss received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art. Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Moss has been a longtime professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and served as its director from 2002-2015. He received the AIA|LA Educator of the Year in 2006, and the Most Admired Educator Award from the Design Futures Council in 2013.
Tom Kundig, FAIAPrincipal, Olson Kundig
Tom Kundig, comes from a craft-based design culture rooted in the area’s industrial and timber heritage. As an accomplished alpine climber, Kundig is familiar with the rugged outdoors of tall trees, rocks, lakes, big sky, as well as with ropes and other mountaineering equipment, all of which have influenced his architectural practice. His early work as a sculptor’s assistant, fabricating large-scale welded steel sculptures, has encouraged his fascination with jerry-rigged machines and apparatuses to move and balance heavy pieces. And, as a devotee of low-tech solutions and experimentation, he enjoys collaboration with engineers and craftspeople as well as with his clients, whose goals and desires actively shape his projects.
Kundig, a partner in the Seattle firm, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, was a National Design Award winner in 2008 for his Rolling Huts in Mazama, Washington. Kundig was also a National Design Award finalist in 2005.
Jim Russell, Director Department of Design and Construction
Jim Russell is the Director of NYC Department of Design and Construction. As the Director, Design Strategic Initiatives at the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) James led a team that advanced the agency’s capacity in low-energy buildings, climate-change adaptation, and resiliency. His team created a series of handbooks showing the role of architectural design in aiding equitable access to City resources and nurturing well-being. The handbooks tailor recommendations to nine building types ranging from police precincts and libraries to street design, homeless shelters, and juvenile-detention facilities.
He wrote guidelines for DDC and the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection of the design of natural-system stormwater-management tactics—an urgent need as rainfall intensifies, sea levels rise, and storms intensify coastal damage. His work applied the latest knowledge on climate trends, and showed examples at large urban and watershed scale.
He has also done strategic consulting work for clients that include the City of Philadelphia, American Forests, nine Hudson River counties, and the State of New Jersey.
He grounds his work in 10 years as a practicing architect and brings an insatiable curiosity from journalism, where he published more than 1,000 articles as an award-winning editor at Architectural Record magazine, and as the architecture critic for Bloomberg News. James has written architecture and city stories for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among many other publications.
His book, The Agile City: Building Well Being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change (2011) documents the low-tech and low-cost strategies for buildings and communities that can achieve dramatic reductions now in America’s global-warming effects.
Mr. Russell teaches at Stanford University and has taught at Columbia University, the City College of New York, and the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a Masters of Architecture degree from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design from the University of Washington. He also attended The Evergreen State College.
He was born in Seattle. He is a registered architect, elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2010, and resides in New York City.
Eben Klemm, Bartender & Author
Eben Klemm, a former research biologist, is especially interested in encouraging knowledge among bartenders concerning the basic chemical and physics principals that affect the materials they use in order to better understand the techniques they use. Klemm and his cocktails have been featured in such diverse local and national publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Food and Wine, Time Out New York, Popular Science, and Playboy. He has also made televised appearances include The Today Show, CBS’s Early Show and ABC 20/20. His cocktail book for beginners, The Cocktail Primer, was published in December by Andrews McNeel.
Toby Cecchini, Bartender & Author
Toby Cecchini is a writer and bartender based in New York City. He has written on food, wine and spirits for GQ, Food and Wine, and The New York Times. His first book, Cosmopolitan: A Bartender's Life, was published in 2003. He is currently at work on his second book, a travelogue of spirits based on his travels for The New York Times' Living and travel magazines. He began bartending at the Odeon in 1987, where he is credited with creating the internationally recognized version of the Cosmopolitan cocktail in New York. He followed that with stints in several bars including Passersby, which he owned until 2008. In 2013 he reopened the shuttered Long Island Bar in Cobble Hill Brooklyn.
- 2 oz. London dry gin
- 1/2 oz. Kummel liqueur
Stir ingredients over ice 20 times. Pour over large 1 1/2 ice cube into a rocks glass. Garnish with large grapefruit peel cut into a triangle, orange peel cut into a rectangle, lime peel twisted into a curl.
1 1/2 Ice cube: Cut large ice cube in half with ice pick. Place pinch of salt on corner of another cube and press half cube together with second cube.
