Month: April 2016

AIANY, AIANJ & AIANYS Work with PANYNJ to Improve Bus Terminal Competition Brief to Benefit Architects and the Public

On 03.11.16, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) announced its Bus Terminal International Design + Deliverability Competition. Initially, AIANY was pleased to learn that the Port Authority Bus Terminal was slated for improvement and that design ideas would be generated as a result of a public competition.

After thoroughly reviewing the Competition Conditions, however, AIANY, AIA New York State, and AIA New Jersey found that certain requirements were at odds with best practices for design competitions, as outlined in AIA National’s Handbook of Architectural Design Competitions. As a coalition, we drafted a letter to PANYNJ that outlined our concerns. This letter was taken seriously by the PANYNJ officials and resulted in a productive discussion that led to several improvements to the competition brief. Continue reading “AIANY, AIANJ & AIANYS Work with PANYNJ to Improve Bus Terminal Competition Brief to Benefit Architects and the Public”

#PromoteTheVote

Unfortunately, New York has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country, but we can help change that. Not only is it important for you to vote, but employers are also obligated to properly inform their employees.

New York’s Primary is on 04.19.16. New York State Election Law 3-110 requires that employers notify employees that they may be eligible for up to two hours of paid time if they do not have enough time to vote. The Association for a Better New York (ABNY) and the Partnership for New York City launched #PromoteTheVote to raise awareness about this law and encourage employees to take advantage of it. Employers can join the effort at PromoteTheVote.nyc. Continue reading “#PromoteTheVote”

Call for Buildings of the Day

This Archtober, share your firm’s New York City-based works with architecture enthusiasts! Archtober is accepting nominations for projects to be included in the festival’s Building of the Day series. Each day in October 2016, Archtober will feature a building as a noon-time, architect-led tour. In addition to publication in the Archtober print guide and website, the tour will be featured on the Archtober blog and as a podcast on cultureNOW’s app, Museum Without Walls. Continue reading “Call for Buildings of the Day”

The Raucous Rows and Ecstatic Stacks of MVRDV

The Dutch, said Fernando Villa, AIA, of the AIANY Housing Committee in introducing MVRDV’s Jacob van Rijs, have been innovating in our city since the 17th century, when it was New Amsterdam. Housing, van Rijs noted, “was our first love when we started our office in 1991.” Yet residential design, he suggested provocatively, is a sector where innovation doesn’t always come automatically. “How much innovation do you need?” he asked: a serious question, not a rhetorical one, and one that can be answered in degrees, depending on a project’s scale and on who will live there. There are obvious practical reasons for conservatism in many housing forms, yet van Rijs and his colleagues Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries have repeatedly struck an eye-catching, often playful balance between standardization and idealism. Continue reading “The Raucous Rows and Ecstatic Stacks of MVRDV”

Hindsight Plus Foresight for a Future Requiring Insight

Klaus Jacob understands flooding on a personal level. He lives near the Hudson River in Piermont, NY, in what he calls “a nuisance flooding zone. I live it day by day…. I put boots in my car, because I don’t know that, when I come back from a movie, I can come back to my house. I’m the living example of living with risk.” Having studied the likely extent of sea-level rise (SLR) over the coming decades, he foresees increasingly drastic adaptations affecting not just structures, but daily life: “Do we drive amphibian cars, or what?… Maybe we want to know whether we all learn to swim 20, 40, 50 generations down the line.” Continue reading “Hindsight Plus Foresight for a Future Requiring Insight”

Our Visual Language of Architecture

The Center for Architecture hosts StudentDay@theCenter workshops where K-12 audiences explore the built environment and its past, present, and future. Each year, we reach close to 3,000 students and teachers through these hands-on workshops introducing students to key topics in architecture. In “The Language of Architecture” workshop, kindergarten to 2nd-grade students acquire the tools they need to explore the built world around them. Continue reading “Our Visual Language of Architecture”

New Deadlines

2016 Oculus Editorial Calendar
The Oculus 2016 Editorial Calendar has been set. If you are an architect in practice or by training, or see yourself as an astute observer of New York’s architectural and planning scene, Oculus wants to hear from you! You may submit projects/topics from anywhere, but architects must be New York-based. Please submit story ideas/projects by the deadlines indicated below to Kristen Richards, Hon. AIA, Hon. ASLA: kristen@ArchNewsNow.com

Fall: Accidental Preservation:
Why cutting-edge businesses love older buildings, and how they are transforming older buildings, neighborhoods, and the city at large. Adaptive reuse & interiors.
Deadline for story ideas: 05.16.16 Continue reading “New Deadlines”