New York: The Latest Architecture and News

Oppenheim Architecture + Design recently won the international competition to design a new hotel in Brooklyn, NY. A third pillar of the Williamsburg Bridge to emerge after 108 years. Their design of the Williamsburg hotel attempts to capture the essence of this vibrant neighborhood. Adjacent to both the Williamsburg Bridge and the historic Williamsburg Savings Bank, the building expresses itself as three dramatically proportioned, rectilinear volumes of varied height and materiality. Soaring high above the neighborhood, the hotel becomes the third pillar of the bridge, while serving as an archetypical tower to the domed basilica of the historical bank.

Sustainability was once again an important issue for Oppenheim Architecture + Design. The hotel will have geothermal, wind, and solar power generation, along with other resource saving strategies, for which they achieved Platinum LEED rating. More images and architects’ description after the break.

New Practices New York, a biennial competition since 2006, serves as the preeminent platform in New York City to recognize and promote new and innovative architecture and design firms. The juried portfolio competition is sponsored by the New Practices Committee of the AIA New York Chapter and honors firms that have utilized unique and innovative strategies, both for the projects they undertake and for the practices they have established. Participants must register by January 15th. To register and for more detailed information, please visit their website here.

A new not-for-profit art and architecture organization called ASAP (Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis), founded by former MoMA Curator Tina di Carlo, launches Monday, December 12 at the top of The Standard, New York with Bjarke Ingels, Alex Schweder La and Jerszy Seymour. More information on the event after the break.

As the Highline has everyone looking up, James Ramsey and Dan Barasch are asking people to start looking down. James Ramsey’s vision to transform the abandoned Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal into a subterranean park filled with sunlight and lush vegetation is gaining international attention and support. The satellite engineer turned architect has developed a skylight using fiber-optic technology that will naturally light and bring life to this forgotten, graffiti-covered cavity below the streets of New York City.

Continue reading for more information, video and exclusive statements from Ramsey and Barasch.

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SHoP Architects has shared with us the B2 Bklyn building which will be the first of the residential developments for Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, New York to break ground, scheduled for 2012. Standing at 32 storeys, it will be the world’s tallest pre-fab building, saving both on cost and waste.

More after the break.

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The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 has announced the 2012 finalists competing in the 12th annual competition under the Young Architects Program. Each year a group of emerging architects compete for the opportunity to design and construct a summer installation within MoMA PS1’s courtyard.

Just recently, the author of architectural videos blog shared with us a video on OMA’s founding partner Rem Koolhaas‘ lecture which he gave at Cornell University on October 20th. His lecture was given on the occasion of opening Milstein Hall, the new extension to the faculty of Architecture, Art and Planning designed by OMA.

On November 9th at the World Financial Center, all are invited to watch twenty-six of New York City’s top architecture, engineering and design firms will spend one adrenaline-filled evening configuring over 100,000 cans of food into gravity-defying sculptures for Canstruction, an exhibition, design competition and canned food drive to help feed hungry New Yorkers in need during the Thanksgiving season. While admission is free, visitors to the exhibit are encouraged to support the cause by contributing high-quality non-perishable foods, such as tuna, beans, and canned vegetables.

An annual art show, design competition, and food drive all rolled into one, Canstruction® raises hunger awareness by challenging teams of architects and engineers to create larger-than-life pop art masterpieces made entirely out of unopened cans of food. The eye-popping results will be displayed from November 10 through 21 before being donated to City Harvest for delivery to local community food programs. More information on the exhibit and images of last year’s winners after the break.

To honor the 50th anniversary of Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Municipal Art Society of New York is hosting the Jane Jacobs Forum focusing on Women as Public Intellectuals. The forum will discuss three prominent female writers: Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) and Betty Friedan (The Female Mystique) all of whom challenged the status quo. Their voices contributed to discussions about urban planning, environmental responsibility and the role of women in society. The forum will be moderated by Robin Pogrebin with five other panelists who will address the circumstances of these women’s successes and the role of women engaged in public critique today.

The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art announces a two-day conference on November 11-12 dedicated to a rigorous examination of Postmodernism both as expressed in theory and as put into practice in the fourth quarter of the 20th century in America and abroad. The conference’s goal is to bring together top architects, scholars, and critics to discuss why and how Postmodernism occurred, why and how it was soon largely eclipsed, and why and how it has nonetheless continued to influence the field and broader culture – including its lasting impact on the theory and application of urban planning and design. More information on the conference after the break.

Parsons The New School for Design has announced new graduate programs including a Master of Science in Design and Urban Ecologies and a Master of Arts in Theories of Urban Practice. What makes these programs unique is their focus on urban designers and planners as agents of social change: What kind of deep knowledge do urbanists need to be able to design cities in a much more effectively manner? And how do urbanists use their creative training and visionary skills to engage with the deeper structures of society?The programs represent a wider initiative at Parsons, one of the world’s leading schools of art and design, to offer graduate programs that define the next phase of global design. The programs will launch in Fall 2012. More information on the programs after the break.

The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life — from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age — has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work opening November 18th at the IFC Center in New York City.

Since it’s opening on September 16th, the Jean Nouvel acrylic encasement and historic Jane’s Carousel has become a landmark in the heart of Brooklyn Bridge Park for New York families. The welcoming public pavilion offers spectacular views of the East River, the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, and the Manhattan skyline.

Continue reading for more detailed information and images.

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art ‘New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia’ with Achva Stein on its opening day. Stein, a principal of an ASLA award-winning landscape architecture and design firm Benzinberg Stein Associates and the founding Director of the Graduate program in Landscape Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, was asked to join the MET’s endeavors after her noted publication, Morocco: Courtyards and Gardens, showcased her passion for and understanding of the country’s varied garden types found in regions such as Marrakech and Fez. For the new wing, Stein has created a fantastic 14th century Maghrebi-Andalusian-style courtyard that goes beyond a mere representation, and truly infuses the spirit and essence of a Moroccan court into a small interior space of the MET.

More about our trip to the MET after the break.

Studio Mode/modeLab is pleased to announce the first installment of the modeFab workshop series: Strip Morphologies II. As a continuation of the Strip Morphologies workshop held in June 2010, Strip Morphologies II is a two-day intensive design, prototyping, and fabrication workshop to be held in New York City during the weekend of November 12-13, 2011.

d3 and Transportation Alternatives are pleased to announce the winners of the “Close The Gap” design competition, which invited architects, landscape architects, urban designers, engineers and students worldwide to envision the completion of the East River Greenway. Submissions from pla.net Architects and the design team of James and Madeline Stokoe were selected by the jurors for their outstanding work. The competition called for proposals that fundamentally transform how people move through Manhattan by filling in a 22-block gap along the East River. More information on the competition awards after the break.

Forget stairs, elevators and escalators, Carsten Höller is bringing a new method of circulation through the New Museum in New York City. It will take visitors down a three-storey, 102-foot tunnel, and may require helmets and elbow pads. What is this innovative invention? None other than the age-old, kid-friendly slide. This insallation is part of a survey exhibition of Höller ‘s work over the past twenty years in which he has explored “such themes as childhood, safety, love, the future, and doubt” in with an attitude towards his work that is “equal parts laboratory and test site.” [New Museum.org] Höller’s pieces explore human sensory experience and perception by creating environments and experiences that over-stimulate or deprive us of our senses. Read on for a preview of what to expect at the New Museum.