Sean Ruthen

“To redesign the environment we really have to redesign our whole value system – question the sacred cows – and ask ourselves what we really want, what has priority. For each project in my office we define our goals and set up a priority system. As we work with the client and begin to absorb the pressures to compromise we have a yardstick to measure our changing course.

The much-anticipated final volume in the critically acclaimed series, New York 2020 explores the planning and politics of building the city in the first decades of the 21st century. More than 2,000 buildings are described and illustrated, giving details of their planning and design, and the critical reception.

Located at the east end of the SFU mountaintop campus and sitting beside a mature stand of trees lining its central promenade, visitors can appreciate how the new Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum sits so unassumingly in its surroundings. It’s as though it had been there all this time, and has only recently been unearthed by the joint venture of Hariri Pontarini and Iredale Architecture.