The Battery Conservancy Americas Design Competition 2012: Draw Up A Chair, which we published a couple months ago here, has received an impressive number of registrations to-date and continue to receive wonderful design submissions. Due to the impact of SuperStorm Sandy on many of their registered and would-be participants, they recently announced that they have extended the competition submission deadline to Monday, November 19. For more information, please visit here.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, as communities band together to clean up the devastation and utility companies work tirelessly to restore the infrastructure that keeps New York City running, planners and policy makers are debating the next steps to making the city as resilient to natural disaster as we once thought it was. We have at our hands a range of options to debate and design and the political leverage to make some of these solutions a reality. The question now is, which option or combination of options is most suitable for protecting New York City and its boroughs? Follow us after the break for more.
Designed for the Land Art Generator Initiative competition, the ‘NAWT Balloons’ concept, which was recently shortlisted in the competition, aims to couple the image of an oversized helium-filled teardrop with a nuanced application of wind energy technology. While the balloon’s image and subsequent geometry are the primitives to the proposal, the deployment on the Fresh Kills site ignites an interest in the oversized and the attenuated. Designed by Norman Kelley, through its multiplication and reconfiguration, this design may be able to produce new, yet familiar, collections of iconicity. More images and architects’ description after the break.
50 UN Plaza, Foster+Partners' first residential building in the U.S., broke ground this morning. With the Hearst Tower long finished, Tower 2 at Ground Zero near complete, and a new iconic building planned for 425 Park Avenue, 50 UN Plaza will only further solidify Lord Foster's mark on New York City.
The 44-story luxury tower's privileged spot at the United Nations Plaza will give it remarkable views of the UN Building, the East River, and the Manhattan skyline. According to Foster, the building's deep bay windows (which line each of the tower's 3 volumes) will maximize that view and, along with its steel and glass facade, give the tower a distinctive, "jewel-like quality": “The slender proportion of 50 United Nations Plaza is attenuated by the vertical stacks of bay windows, which give it a distinctive identity[...] The polished stainless steel detailing of the facade is in the sprit of earlier historic towers in the city and it reflects the sharp quality of light which is special to New York."
The building, whose construction will incorporate recycled materials, also has a strong environmental agenda, combining active and passive energy strategies.
According to the New York Observer, the tower's 87 units will range in size from 1,100 square feet one-bedrooms; three bedrooms as big as 3,000 square feet; full-floor residences; and a penthouse duplex, measuring about 10,000 square feet. One of the marquee features will also be a private driveway. The tower is expected to cost $500 million and be completed in 2014.
More images and Foster+Partner's description of 50 UN Plaza, after the break...
Designed by Paolo Venturella & MenoMenoPiu Architects, their ‘Solar Loop’ finalist entry for the Land Art Generator Initiative competition aims to expose more surface as possible to the southern solar rays. Sited in FreshKills Park in New York City, the shape comes directly from the solar diagrams, and deals easily with the sun following it with the best angle almost like a frozen artificial sunflower.bThe aesthetic of the sculpture is the result of this dialogue that becomes synthesis between the solar power and the park. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Hurricane Sandy has come and gone, but the destruction she left in her path remains a stark reminder of her strength.
Photographer Amanda Kirkpatrick has shared with us her images of The Rockaways in Queens, an upper-class beach neighborhood that was one of the areas hit hardest by the storm. Kirkpatrick's objective eye documents the twisted boardwalks and unrecognizably distorted homes in an almost "clinical" way, honestly portraying the damage from the perspective of the broken structures themselves.
If you're interested in getting involved with Hurricane Sandy Recovery Efforts, you can get more information here. For more images from Amanda Kirkpatrick, read on after the break...
The Museum of Modern Art in NYC is launching an exhibit called Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, that investigates the transformation of Tokyo from a war-torn nation into an international center for arts, culture and commerce. The exhibition will run from November 18 through February 25, 2012 and includes over 200 works of various media including painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, drawings, graphic design, video and documentary film.
More after the break.
Co-organized, in cooperation with the Architectural League, by Christopher Marcinkoski and Javier Arpa, The City That Never Was symposium is a day-long event that uses the current crisis in Spain as a lens to reconsider patterns of urbanization and development around the world. Taking place November 9th from 9:00am-5:00pm at the Scholastic Building in New York, the event will reconsider how planners, designers, politicians, and financiers conceive of and realize large-scale contemporary urbanization and settlement. This event seeks to better understand the systems that have produced certain imbalances resulting from this urban growth and explore new models and approaches for urbanization and development. For more information, please visit here.
We got in touch with Iwan Baan to ask him how on earth he got that incredible aerial shot of a Sandy-struck New York City for New York Magazine; he told us what it was like to face the frenzy and fly into the storm itself. Read his incredible story, after the break...
Winners of the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative Competition for Freshkills Park in Staten Island, NYC are out. With 4 placed winners and a long list of shortlisted projects, the range of ideas shows how designers are exploring many different options for sustainable energy infrastructure.
The Winners:
Check out the projects after the break!
Jeanne Gang is about to make her New York debut, as the Chicago-based architect just unveiled the latest project planned to border New York City’s beloved High Line. The 180,000 square-foot office tower with ground level retail will replace an existing, disused meatpacking plant along 10th Avenue between 13th and 14th streets. It will feature a “gem-like”, glass facade that is intelligently shaped to avoid the disruption of light, air and views from the High Line.
Dubbed the Solar Carve Tower, the mid-rise structure is currently pending city approval and is planned for completion in 2015.
Continue after the break for the architects’ description.
Wave Dilfert: Wave (moves in wave-form oscillations) + Dilfert (geek-like intelligence, absorbs information like a sponge).
Wave Dilfert is a new kind of space that reads the changes in light and shadow occurring within it, catalogs and calculates them, then pulses, contracts or expands in reaction. The installation was inspired by the work of Ushahidi; a non-profit, crowdsourcing disaster relief, tech innovator. Much how Ushahidi de-mystifies the complexities of war-torn or disaster ridden locales, The Principals developed a system that could de-mystify the complexities of space through sourcing the information of its users and making it accessible through interaction.
Maybe Sandy, the colossal hurricane that has barreled across the East Coast this week, will finally get the message across: "We are all from New Orleans Now."
Thanks to climate change, America's coastal cities, and particularly New York, have become increasingly vulnerable to nature's wrath. Over two years ago, MOMA asked five architects to come up with a redesign of lower Manhattan that would prevent damage in the event of major flooding. Barry Bergdoll, the Curator of the "Rising Currents" exhibit, put it to the architects this way: “Your mission is to come up with images that are so compelling they can’t be forgotten and so realistic that they can’t be dismissed.”
Unfortunately, they were. As the many images from traditional news sources and social media users reveal, Sandy's damage has been extensive - and perhaps, in many ways, preventable.
It often takes tragedy to instigate change. Let's hope that Sandy will finally get the conversation of New York's vulnerable urban landscape on to the table.
More images of Sandy's damage, as well as plans from MOMA's "Rising Currents" Exhibit, after the break...
The New York Time’s Michael Kimmelman described it as an “ennobling experience, a gift,” a lesson on what architecture, at it’s best, can be.
Indeed, entering the Main Concourse of Grand Central Terminal is a pleasure that rivals few others. For me, it took me by surprise: walking, as New Yorkers do, in a determined beeline through an undistinguished tunnel, I was suddenly struck by light. I stopped, as New Yorkers never do, to observe a vaulted, starry ceiling, the changing light, and multitudes of people whipping by.
Grand Central is one of New York’s most beloved icons, one of the few which tourists and natives share alike. Which is not to say, of course, that it isn’t in need of a face-lift.
The Terminal’s upcoming centennial, which corresponds with proposed re-zoning laws that would completely change the face of Midtown, makes now the perfect moment to consider how Grand Central’s grandeur can be preserved and its neighborhood reinvigorated. Last week, the Metropolitan Art Society (MAS) invited three firms to share their visions - and while SOM’s gravity-defying “halo” may have stolen the show, only one truly captured the spirit of Grand Central, and explored the full potential of what it could - and should - one day be.
We showed you grand central plan" href="http://www.archdaily.com/284451/foster-partners-re-imagines-grand-central/" target="_blank" data-mce-href="http://www.archdaily.com/284451/foster-partners-re-imagines-grand-central/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; ">Foster + Partners' vision, then SOM's - now we bring you the third and final re-imagining of New York's iconic Grand Central Station, by WXY Architecture + Urban Design.
All three architects, asked by MAS to present at their 2012 summit in honor of Grand Central's approaching centennial, considered not only how to improve and renovate the aging station (suffering from acute overcrowding) but also how to best adjust the surrounding neighborhood for upcoming changes in New York's zoning laws (which will increase Midtown's population density).
Much like the other two plans, WXY's vision expands access points and public space, making the terminal far more pedestrian-friendly. However, the plan differs in that it focuses on harnessing the "untapped potential" of a few key locations along the station's edge and proposes a tower with "sky parks" (to symbolize New York City's commitment to green and healthy spaces). As Claire Weisz, Principal at WXY, said of the project, it would “make the Grand Central neighborhood a place people enjoy being in [and] not just running through.”
Check out WXY's description of their plan for Grand Central Station, after the break...
If you are considering turning your designs and business practices into a more eco-friendly, deeper shade of green, then we strongly encourage you to attend the ‘Implementing Green Practices in Your Designs’ free event as part of the How to Make it series. Hosted by UncommonGoods, a brooklyn-based online retailer of unique gifts and creative designs, the event includes a panel of design professionals sharing their advice on how to source more eco-friendly materials and how to set up a studio or workspace with little environmental impact. Taking place October 29th from 6:30pm-9:00pm, attendees will also have the opportunity to discuss their product ideas and designs with the buyers and panelists. For more information on the event, please visit here.
Co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union as part of the program put on by the Architectural League, Mike Taylor of Hopkins Architects will be delivering a lecture on his current work at the Cooper Union in New York. Taking place on Tuesday, October 30th, the leader of the design team for the London 2012 Velodrome, and a senior partner at Hopkins Architects is “guided by deeply-rooted architectural, environmental, and social convictions.” Widely lauded for its elegant carefully engineered form, the Velodrome’s sustainable and flexible design has won awards for its architecture and engineering, as well as its civic presence from the RIBA, the Architects Journal, and the BCI, among others. For more information, please visit here.
