ART
ARCHITECTURE
& HISTORY
in the Public Realm
Cocktails & Conversations


January 29, 2016 Center for Architecture, New York City

The Pairing:
Thomas Balsley, Thomas Balsley Associates
Matt Shaw, The Architects Newspaper

Cocktail designed by:
Eben Klemm, Bartender + Author







Thomas Balsley, FASLA Principal, Thomas Balsley Associates

Thomas Balsley is the lead designer of Thomas Balsley Associates, a NYC-based urban landscape architecture firm whose work has had a profound impact on the built environment and the quality of life in cities across the US. His unique fusion of creativity and innovation with public process has produced extraordinary spaces large and small, provocative and sublime. His firm’s portfolio of award-winning projects and competitions include Dallas’ Main Street Garden, Cleveland’s Perk Park, Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Park, Tokyo’s Gate City, and Seoul’s Leeum Samsung Museum of Art. Closer to home, his highly acclaimed parks such as Riverside Park South, Gantry Plaza Park, Hunter’s Point South, Rockefeller Plaza, and Capitol Plaza have helped reshape NYC’s public realm. In an unprecedented acknowledgement of that contribution, a park on 57th Street was renamed in his honor as Balsley Park. His teaching and speaking engagements at Harvard GSD, University of Pennsylvania, the National Building Museum, Seoul National University, among others, together with a wealth of publications and TV appearances, such as BBC’s “Around the World in 80 Gardens,” have exposed his work to a broader international audience. In the Spacemaker Press monograph Thomas Balsley: The Urban Landscape, New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp’s foreword states, "Balsley inscribes places with a dual portrait of nature and culture in modern dress." He is the subject of the recently released monograph Thomas Balsley Uncommon Ground, published by ORO with foreword by James Corner and essay by Ian Volner. He is also the 13th recipient of the ASLA’s highest honor, The Design Medal, for body of exceptional design work.


Matt Shaw The Architect's Newspaper

Matt Shaw is the Senior Editor of The Architect's Newspaper. He is also the founder and co-editor of Mockitecture, a half-manifesto/half-satire collection of architectural debauchery. He has worked for the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting (C-Lab), Storefront for Art and Architecture, Architizer, and has been published in The Architectural Review, Beyond, Domus, and Icon. He wrote and researched two editions of the guidebook Europe’s Top 100 Architecture and Design Schools for Domus. Shaw leads the experimental research group the Critical Method Unit (CMU) at Syracuse University NYC Architecture Program and has been an invited critic at numerous schools including Yale University, Columbia University, and UCLA


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.




In an ice filled rocks glass:
  • 1 1/2 ounces Silver Tequila
  • 1/2 ounce cassis juice
  • 1/2 ounce ginger malt syrup
  • 1/2 ounce lime juice
  • Top with soda and stir.

Garnish with lime wheel.

Ginger malt syrup:
Mix 12 oz NA malted beverage with 1/4 cup ginger juice.
Warm and dissolve in equal parts sugar.




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