Cocktails & Conversations: The FAIA and The Skyscraper Museum

Join a conversation between architect William Pedersen FAIA (Partner, Kohn Pedersen Fox) and Carol Willis, director of The Skyscraper Museum, with cocktails by bartender Toby Cecchini as part of the center’s new series Cocktails & Conversations.

The new series pairs an architect and a critic, journalist or curator for a lively discussion–and a suitable drink inspired by the architect’s work created especially for the occasion.

William Pedersen is the founding design partner of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), which he started with A. Eugene Kohn and Sheldon Fox in 1976.

During his career with KPF, Bill has received seven National Design Awards for work he has directed. Among them are a wide variety of building types: 333 Wacker Drive in Chicago; the Procter and Gamble Headquarters in Cincinnati; the DG Bank in Frankfurt, Germany; the World Bank in Washington, D.C.: the Gannett Headquarters in McLean, Virginia; the Baruch College in Manhattan, New York; and One Jackson Square in Manhattan, New York.

In addition to numerous state and local AIA awards, he received recognition from the Council for Tall buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) for the Shanghai World Financial Center as the “Best Tall Building in the World” in 2009. In addition to his architectural work, Bill has designed a series of award-winning lighting fixtures for Ivalo and holds ten design patents for furniture. His most recent “Loop de Loop” series will be coming out this year.

Personal honors which Bill has received include the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1965, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the University of Minnesota’s Alumni Achievement Award, the Gold Medal from the national architectural fraternity, Tau Sigma, the Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award from the CTBUH and the Medal of Honor from the AIA of New York. He was also recently elected as a member of the National Academy.

Carol Willis is the founder, director and curator of The Skyscraper Museum. An architectural and urban historian, she has researched, taught and written about the history of American city building.

She is the author of Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago (Princeton Architectural Press, 1995: 2008), which received an AIA book award and was named “Best Book on North American Urbanism, 1995” by the Urban History Association.

Critic Herbert Muschamp has praised Ms. Willis in The New York Times as “the brilliant and energetic woman who created the Skyscraper Museum in 1996 from nothing but her imagination, her passion for New York architecture, and her belief in the importance of history and the value of the public realm.”

Before establishing The Skyscraper Museum, Willis was guest curator for exhibits on the architects Raymond Hood and Hugh Ferriss.

Toby Cecchini, Bartender and Author
Toby 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’s 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.