New York: The Latest Architecture and News

David Hotson (b. 1959) founded his New York City-based practice David Hotson Architect in 1991. His projects – houses, loft residences, penthouse apartments, and galleries – are known for their remarkable spatial and visual complexity. His Church of Saint Sarkis in Carrollton, Texas is especially distinguished for the luminous and sculptural qualities of its interior space as well as the exterior grade high-resolution digital printing on its west façade. Earlier this year this appealing work won the US Building of the Year award by World-Architects.com. Hotson obtained his Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and earned his Master of Architecture in 1987 at Yale.

In the following interview with David Hotson, we discussed the architect’s design process, focusing on making concave spatial voids legible and primary, being inspired by Byzantine architecture and his favorite building ever built, what structure he considers the most important work of contemporary architecture, what makes his award-winning Church of Saint Sarkis special, and the use of space and light as the essential tools in creating architecture as a figural void and ultimately an art form.

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On January 31^st, construction scaffolding and barriers were disassembled from the site at 56 Leonard Street, revealing Anish Kapoor’s first permanent artwork in New York City. The 48-foot-long, 19-foot-tall, 40-ton sculpture is nestled partially beneath the Herzog & de Meuron-designed residential building in the Tribeca neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. The mirrored sculpture is reminiscent of Kapoor;’s work called Cloud Gate, also known as “The Bean,” in Chicago, US.

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Sir David Adjaye unveils new plans for the new Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Central Brooklyn. This center is the first-ever community development institution in the country, established in 1967. The scheme envisions a space that accelerates wealth creation and closes the racial wealth gap that has affected the United States.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

This week, the Museum of Modern Art officially launches a new series of exhibitions entitled Architecture Now. According to MoMA, “The first iteration of the series, New York, New Publics, will explore the ways in which New York City–based practices have been actively expanding the relationship of metropolitan architecture to different publics through 12 recently completed projects.”

The exhibition will showcase public-facing work, such as parks, community gardens, and pools, by Adjaye Associates, Agency—Agency and Chris Woebken, CO Adaptive, James Corner Field Operations, Kinfolk Foundation, nArchitects, New Affiliates and Samuel Stewart-Halevy, Olalekan Jeyifous, Only If, PetersonRich Office, SO – IL, and SWA/Balsley and Weiss/Manfredi.

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The Zambian Government through the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zambia to the United Nations invites eligible consulting firms (consultants) to indicate their interest in providing consulting services for the proposed rehabilitation works of the official residence situated in Scarsdale, New York.

New York-based studio Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) has been selected to lead the design for the Niagara Falls Heritage Gateway project. This reimagined public gateway aims to reinvigorate the site, attract new visitors, and stimulate the local economy. As part of the “Downtown Niagara Falls Development Strategy,” the project also aims to strengthen the connections between downtown Niagara Falls and the Niagara Falls State Park. The project is expected to be completed in 2024.

Biennales, exhibitions, and architecture focused festivals provide a platform for opening debates, conducting research, and driving innovation, but they can also contribute to the incremental changes that shape the image and the character of a city. Through temporary installations and experiments, this type of events have the opportunity to open lines on inquiry into the quality of urban spaces, inviting visitors and residents to slow down, break away from their daily routine and interrogate their local environments. The effects might not be immediate, but by cumulating these impressions and moments of contemplation, architecture and design festivals can have a long-lasting impact on the cities that welcome them.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

While approaching Wainscott Beach on Long Island’s South Fork in early December, one could see the most tangible aspect of offshore wind’s New York progress even before hearing the crash of waves: three pillars, each about as tall as the Statue of Liberty, jutting up from the ocean. They were the legs of the Jill, a liftboat from the Gulf of Mexico stationed about a third of a mile off the coast of Long Island’s South Fork.

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The scene is almost identical, no matter which borough of New York City you’re in. Narrow sidewalks are lined by mountains of trash bags and other large objects, waiting for their turn to be taken away by the fleet of sanitary workers and trucks who will dispose of them. Large rodents seek shelter in their temporary plastic homes, feeding on discarded scraps, becoming a regular sighting for New York City residents. The City That Never Sleeps has a bigger problem than the flashing lights and noisy streets- it’s all of the trash that’s left to sit out on the sidewalks.

Snøhetta, the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC), and the New York Public Library (NYPL) unveiled designs for a new 12,000-square-foot branch library in the Westchester Square neighborhood of The Bronx, NYC. Inspired by the surrounding greenery, the energy-efficient building will be wrapped in pastoral print fritted glass, defining the new structure as an important economic and educational node within the neighborhood. Construction on the new Library is anticipated to start during mid-to-late 2023.

If street culture is the glue that holds together an urban environment, what happens when its denizens no longer need to go outside? This is one of the fundamental questions faced by architects today, decades after the New Urbanist movement first popularized, or rather brought back, the concept of mixed-use streetscapes—and more than sixty years since Jane Jacobs famously championed walkable streets as essential to building vibrant urban communities.

Long gone, of course, are the days when city streets were our only outlet or option for access to retail and other services. Now, the internet gives us all that and more: remote shopping, banking, education, and even healthcare. Meanwhile, social media has transformed the way we communicate with friends and neighbors. All of which is to say: we no longer need to go out for social interaction or to procure services, we choose to.

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New York City Council has approved Innovation QNS, a neighborhood-focused initiative in Western Queens, designed by ODA. The five-block master plan generates two acres of open space, community health & wellness facilities, hundreds of affordable apartments, and thousands of jobs. The project was initiated in 2020 as part of New York's effort to recover from the impact of the COvid-19 pandemic, and it aimed to revitalize a largely dormant block area in Astoria, Queens, and transform it into a vibrant, walkable, and diverse creative district.

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“Seneca Village was an important community. It was 40 acres, two-thirds African American, and had a church and school,” explained Sara Zewde, ASLA, founder of Studio Zewde and assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, during a session at the ASLA 2022 Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Francisco.

The 225 residents of Seneca Village were displaced by the New York City government in the mid 1800s to make way for Central Park, which is considered one of the masterpieces of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and architect Calvert Vaux.

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