Dan Kaplan (B.Arch. ’84) is a senior partner at FXCollaborative. He serves in a design and leadership capacity for many of the firm’s complex, award-winning urban buildings, and plays an instrumental role in a variety of projects spanning the office, residential, mixed-use, and healthcare sectors. Adept at creating large-scale, high-performance buildings and urban designs, Kaplan approaches each project — from individual buildings to large-scale urban plans — with the viewpoint that it must contribute to a larger totality. Significant projects currently under his direction include One Willoughby Square, a mixed-use tower uniquely positioned as the north anchor to Manhattan’s Hudson Yards District; and the Crossing at Jamaica Station, a mixed-use, mixed-income development anchoring downtown Jamaica, Queens. In addition to these monumental projects, he has designed more than 25 residential buildings in New York City — each is a unique essay on how a building both contributes to the larger context and also maintains a compelling individual presence. Kaplan has been recognized both nationally and internationally for his design excellence by numerous organizations, including the American Institute of Architects, the Boston Society of Architects, the Urban Land Institute, and the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, among others. Kaplan has served on the AAP Advisory Council since 2009.
Imagination, intelligence, and memory are essential to both heal and elevate the larger urban condition through individual works of architecture. Without imagination, we are regulated to accepting the status quo and looking backwards in nostalgia. Without intelligence, we do not have the technical ability and clarity of approach required to successfully develop a plan to create a better future. Without memory — the understanding of interconnection between all the pieces — we have no sense of the environmental, cultural, political, and economic forces that shape our city.
Three recent FXCollaborative projects embodying this perspective will be presented.
