Author: Jessica Sheridan Assoc. AIA LEED AP

07.24.07

As Midtown stitches the seams from last week’s steam pipe explosion, let’s hope the city’s infrastructure survives the heat waves and severe weather August will bring. My Editor’s Soapbox, It Was a Pipe to Remember, discusses my experience working a couple of blocks away from the incident.
– Jessica Sheridan, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP

A comment on Bill Millard’s article (“We’ll Hopefully Never Know How Well This Place Works,” e-Oculus, 07.10.07) about the new NYC OEM: It is unfortunate they didn’t put it on higher ground than the old Red Cross building at Cadman Plaza. If a big hurricane hits NYC, that new location will be under water at just the time it is needed.

Oh well!

Sidney L. Delson, FAIA
Architect, East Hampton, NY

The lights flickered and then a loud, thundering sound reverberated through the building. When the sound didn’t stop, my coworkers and I went to the window where we saw people running on Third Avenue and a smoke cloud behind the Chrysler Building. My office is located on the 17th floor of a building on 43rd Street; the floor was vibrating, the windows were rattling. When we decided to leave the premises, we came across a hysterical woman sitting on the floor of the lobby surrounded by security guards ushering us to move on. One guard said there had been an explosion. We left the building and joined the crowd moving away from the smoke. “The Steam Pipe Building exploded.” “Something happened at Grand Central.” No one knew what was happening, but we all knew we needed to get away from the growing cloud.

Although last Wednesday’s steam pipe explosion, thankfully, turned out not to be the next 9/11, my experience made me realize that its impact on my psyche has not subsided. Since 2001, the city has beefed up security, adding cameras and bollards on and near potential terrorist targets. The bag searches continue in the subways. The biggest, strongest buildings engineering can permit are filling the gap at Ground Zero. All to create a sense of stability.

What this infrastructural eruption brought to my awareness, though, was that these initiatives have not succeeded in making me feel safe. When my office building shook, I feared it would collapse. When I saw that there was a large crater in the street spewing steam (and who knows what else), I feared that a sink hole would expand possibly swallowing up surrounding buildings, including Grand Central and the Chrysler Building. Once I discovered the explosion was not a terrorist attack, I did not think that everything was going to be o.k.

I don’t have an answer for how to fix the problem, but I think that this is an issue pertinent to planners and architects working in the city. Barriers and blockades do not necessarily make someone feel safe. Buildings are supposed to provide shelter and protection. City infrastructure is supposed to run well enough that people do not question its reliability. The design profession may not be able to solve the socio-cultural and psychological issues that have yet to subside since 9/11. It is, however, the industry’s responsibility to at least consider integrating new measures into design.

2008 marks the anniversary of classical architect Andrea Palladio’s 500th birthday. In preparation for this occasion, The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America is putting together a comprehensive website devoted to Palladio. The website will be launched this fall and be available at least through 2008. The site will include information on Palladio’s life and work, a calendar of related events, quotes about Palladio’s influence, and several essays on Palladio and Palladianism. If you would like to contribute a brief paragraph on how Palladio has influenced you, please contact Emma Kronman.

(left) The Liquid Sky entry proposed by Ball-Nogues for the 2007 Young Architects Program, and (right) Liquid Sky on opening day.

©2007 The Museum of Modern Art (left); Jessica Sheridan (right)

I have mixed feelings about this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program installation, Liquid Sky by Los Angeles-based Ball-Nogues. While it engages the senses and alludes to the sea — appropriate for a “beach” — the piece as a whole feels unfinished.

Dispersed throughout the main courtyard, six “towers” constructed from untreated utility poles act as supports for “community hammocks” while providing an armature for red-tinted Mylar “petals.” Water shoots out of the top of the towers sprinkling visitors below. Two platforms are situated on opposite ends of the adjacent outdoor gallery with a Mylar-netted Droopscape stretched between. Above the platforms are troughs of water that periodically tip over and drench bystanders.

While the elements of water and sand are included every year (this is the eighth year for the program), Liquid Sky amplifies the beach-like experience. The wood of the utility poles, ropes used for the hammocks, and even the existing gravel in the courtyard remind me of boat docks. As the Mylar blows in the wind, the sound references kites and sails in the wind. When the water hits the Mylar and the troughs douse the platforms with water, I think of ocean waves.

The Mylar petals are supposed to form “a tensioned surface that reconfigures the horizon, cresting above the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard,” according to the Liquid Sky press release, and this is where I feel the work falls short. The petals at the towers are in tension, but they do not reach the perimeter walls, nor do they reach the center of the courtyard to complete a canopy. It seems as if the design team ran out of material. The bottom-most petals wilt with the weight of the water that has been sprinkled on them. There is little shelter from the sun where there could have been a fully shaded field of color.

In 2005, Ball-Nogues designed a summer-long installation in a courtyard in Los Angeles called Maximilian’s Schell Installation. A yellow Mylar canopy stretched over a plaza with a central “vortex” reaching down in the center. From the photographs online, Liquid Sky appears to have very similar goals (and a similar description). I feel that my criticism of the work was resolved in a previous iteration of a similar project. This leads me to think that perhaps the design team did not have enough time to finish, and maybe they will add more material over the next few days. As the installation is on view through September 28, I hope to return later in the summer to a more complete project.

Changing Room

The Changing Room photo/installation/performance.

Deborah Lohse photo ©Anja Hitzenberger

Architectural performing arts are thriving throughout the city this summer. Changing Room is a photo/installation/performance series presented by Anja Hitzenberger in an abandoned storefront at 145 Nassau Street in Manhattan. Each week a new installation by Illya Azaroff, Assoc. AIA, Director of Design, the design collective studio, is installed for live performances. Hitzenberger also photographs performers and dancers of different body shapes and movement backgrounds every week. Gallery hours are Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 8pm and performances begin every Friday at 6pm through July 28. For more information and performance schedule, click the link.

Metapolis II

Ballet National de Marseille performs the North American premiere of Metapolis II, an evening-length convergence of contemporary dance with cutting-edge architecture created by Frédéric Flamand, the Ballet National de Marseille’s artistic director, and Zaha Hadid, the Pritzker Prize-winning Iraqi-British architect.

Pino Pipitone, courtesy Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

And, if you haven’t heard, Metapolis II, a collaboration between choreographer Frédéric Flamand and Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA, will be making its North American premiere at the Lincoln Center Festival 2007. Performed by the Ballet National de Marseille, there will be three performances at the New York State Theater July 25, 26, and 27. The piece synthesizes video (some created in real time) with the dancers’ bodies and Hadid’s moveable sculptures. Click the link to order tickets.