WXY Leaders Honored as “Most Creative,” Win New Commissions

Adam Lubinsky and Claire Weisz

Two leaders of WXY architecture + urban design are cited among Fast Company magazine’s “100 Most Creative People In Business” for 2017 in its June issue: architect Claire Weisz, FAIA, and planner Adam Lubinsky, PhD, AICP, respectively WXY founding principal and managing principal.

Weisz and Lubinsky are ranked along with 98 other creative business leaders — including senators, activists, poets and tech leaders — “for building with a purpose,” according to editor Bob Safian. The citations list several projects by the firm now “retooling obsolete or inefficient systems for an equitable, sustainable future,” including:

Kearny Point
A former shipyard near Newark, New Jersey, damaged by Hurricane Sandy, “is being transformed into a climate-proof hub for makers and tech startups,” led by growing developer by Hugo Neu and with WXY and the allied architect Studios as the design team.

The Peninsula
In the South Bronx, Weisz and Lubinsky are working with a blue-ribbon team now “turning a former juvenile detention center into an affordable-housing community with 740 apartments, artist studios, and a health center,” says the article. The associated architect is Body Lawson Associates, working with Gilbane Development Co., Hudson Companies, and Mutual Housing Association of New York for the clients New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Neighborhood groups on the team include the Point CDC, BronxWorks, Casita Maria Center, and Sustainable South Bronx.

Detroit’s Eastern Market
Also mentioned is the master plan commissioned by Detroit Eastern Market Corp. and executed by landscape architect OLIN and WXY architecture + urban design that reimagines the area, with “food-processing facilities adjacent to the historic farmers’ market in order to foster a prepared-food economy and create new job opportunities,” says the Fast Company website.

Other WXY design projects making waves nationally include the new Rockaway Boardwalk, the largest post-Sandy rebuilding project, which will be completed this summer. WXY is also designing new public spaces and access for the Made In New York campus, a new hub for fashion and television production in Brooklyn’s Bush Terminal conceived by the city’s mayor and NYCEDC. Other new projects include the colorful, bright new interiors of the Amber Charter School and modern new cabins for New York’s Wildwood State Park.The June issue of Fast Company hit newsstands this week. A special cocktail party hosted at the United Talent Agency in Los Angeles toasted the 100 Most Creative honorees. The laurels come on the heels of new growth for WXY architecture + urban design, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Firm of the Year in their home state of New York.