Author: Linda G. Miller - Contributing Editor

In this issue:

· El Museo Opens New Public Face to the Barrio
· Curves in All the Right Places
· New Life for Legendary Lobby
· Pratt Institute Collaborates on Third + Bond Interiors
· Portsmouth Teams Up for Education
· A List to Watch

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El Museo Opens New Public Face to the Barrio

El Museo del Barrio reopens this weekend after undergoing a series of renovations that began when Gruzen Samton Architects won a design competition to renovate the building in 2000, a design that won an award for Design Excellence from the Art Commission in 2003. Priority was to give the museum, located in the circa 1920 neolcassical Heckscher building, a more welcoming public face. The firm designed a new glass façade and redesigned the 4,500-square-foot courtyard with a metal canopy. Other improvements include modernized galleries, the new Carmen Ana Unanue Galleries, an expanded shop, and El Café, which will serve as a multipurpose programming space. The museum reopens with two exhibitions — “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis” and “Voces y Visiones: Four Decades through El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection.” The renovation was funded through the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, with support by local elected officials, and administered by the NYC Department of Design and Construction.

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Curves in All the Right Places

One Jackson Square, a 35-unit luxury residential condominium containing one- to three-bedroom residences, two-bedroom duplexes, a penthouse, and retail on the ground floor, has opened. The building, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) with SLCE serving as production architect, steps down from 11 to seven stories north to south, to accommodate zoning laws and mediate neighborhood scales. Undulating, ribbon-like glass bands define individual floors; the fluid form of the façade, conceived as an eroded block of wood, is reprised in the lobby. Designed by KPF with Situ Studio acting as fabrication consultants, 65 13-foot tall bamboo panels with three-dimensional undulations form tables and seating areas. Working from KPF’s surface geometry, Situ Studio developed a digital parametric model that included all construction details and all building systems that interface with the bamboo wall. Each of the unique panels was then fabricated using CNC production techniques. Sustainable features include a series of green roofs, rainwater harvesting, and ample daylighting.

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New Life for Legendary Lobby

As part of the Empire State Building’s more than $550 million capital improvements program, a team of engineers, architects, contractors, artists, craftsmen, and historians, led Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, project manager Jones Lang LaSalle, and EverGreene Architectural Arts collaborated for two years to restore the lobby to Shreve, Lamb and Harmon’s design intent — with modern enhancements. Guided by historic photographs, on-site forensic analysis, existing architectural elements, and even decades-old dirt patterns, the restoration team employed a 26-step process to recreate the Art Deco mural using the same techniques as the original artists from Rambusch Studios. The lobby, long hidden by 1960s “modernization,” was enhanced by new lighting designed to recreate its original intensity. In addition, special entrances and new traffic flow separate office tenants and their visitors from tourists visiting the building’s renovated observatories.

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Pratt Institute Collaborates on Third + Bond Interiors

Located in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, Third + Bond was designed by Rogers Marvel Architects as a modern adaptation of a traditional townhouse. The residential condominium consists of eight four-story townhouses with 44 residential units. Pratt Institute alumni, faculty, and students outfitted the interiors; the three-bedroom duplex features furniture fabricated in natural wood, glass, and metal, with home accessories by former Pratt faculty Eva Zeisel, industrial design professor and alumnus Bruce Hannah, architecture professor and alumnus Bill Katavolos, and alumni Harry Allen and Giovanni Pellone. The apartment is outfitted with GROW, an ivy-like solar and wind panel system designed by Pratt alumni and acquired by The Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection in 2008. Elements of the two-bedroom floor-through model include designs made from natural and recycled/recyclable materials. A project of the Hudson Companies, Third + Bond is scheduled to be complete in the Spring 2010 and is expected to achieve a LEED Gold certification.

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Portsmouth Teams Up for Education

After a series of public workshops to develop community consensus and unite the public behind a plan to maintain the historic Portsmouth Middle School building at its existing downtown location, the City of Portsmouth, NH, has commissioned JCJ Architecture, in collaboration with Portsmouth-based associate architect DeStefano Architects, to develop the design for the renovation and expansion of the 129,765-square-foot school. The design aims to protect the historic character of the 79-year-old building and fit into Portsmouth’s architectural and urban environment. With a 650-student capacity when completed, the school will support Portsmouth’s educational program and team teaching approach for sixth through eighth grades. Every floor will be organized to accommodate two teams for each grade level around a shared breakout space. The teams will also have three general classrooms, one science classroom, and a special education classroom. In addition, the plan will improve the facility’s energy performance, meeting the criteria of New England’s Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS). The three-phased construction project will be completed by August 2013, and will add 30,000 square feet to the school’s footprint.

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A List to Watch

New York-based World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced the 2010 World Monuments Watch, calling international attention to sites in every type of environment, from urban centers to barren plains, threatened by war, natural disasters, urban sprawl, and neglect. The list includes 93 sites now at risk in 47 countries. In the U.S., there are nine sites listed — the Cultural Landscapes of Hadley, MA; Marcel Breuer’s Atlanta-Fulton Central Library; Commodore Ralph Middleton Munroe Miami Marine Stadium; Phillis Wheatley Elementary School; St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 in New Orleans; Taliesen and Taliesen West; Taos Pueblo; and one in the Metro area — the Bridges of the Merritt Parkway. Completed in 1940, the Merritt winds 37.5 miles through the wooded landscape of southern Connecticut. Many of its 68 bridges, ranging in design from French Renaissance and Neoclassic to Art Deco and Rustic, may be at risk due to necessary infrastructure work required to maintain the thoroughfare. Click here for the complete list.

In this issue:
· CCNY Architecture Students Inhabit New Home
· Cooper Union Morphs Three Schools into One
· Pediatric Emergency Services Cater to Children
· Tram Terminal Will Light Way to Roosevelt Island
· Ode to Poetry
· Developer Lends Land For Public Art
· Zinc Goes Green for Prototype Villa
· Five Teams Short-Listed for Basque Country Master Plan
· Calatrava’s New Rail Station Realized (in Liege, Belgium)

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CCNY Architecture Students Inhabit New Home

The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at City College of New York officially opened last week, a few blocks south of its former home in Shepard Hall. The 135,000-square-foot facility, designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects, houses administrative offices, classrooms, exhibition space, an architectural library, design studios, faculty offices, a model shop, and a rooftop open-air amphitheater. The original Modernist, glass-block building designed and constructed as a library in the late 1950s, was gut-renovated, preserving only the structure of reinforced concrete columns and floor slabs. The exterior is now clad in pre-cast concrete with light shelves. Oriented vertically on the east and west façades, and horizontally on the south, aluminum louvers are designed to balance outward views and maximize shading. The open-air amphitheater overhangs the atrium. The central atrium brings daylight down to the ground floor, and incorporates intersecting steel staircases and pedestrian bridges. Faculty offices look over the open-plan design studios that take advantage of the natural light along the perimeter.

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Cooper Union Morphs Three Schools into One

The recent ribbon cutting ceremony at 41 Cooper Square, designed by Morphosis with associate architect Gruzen Samton, marked a defining moment in Cooper Union’s 150-year historyand its goal to create an iconic building that reflects the institutions values. The nine-story, 175,000-square-foot building houses the Albert Nerken School of Engineering and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, along with student and teaching studios and common spaces that serve the School of Art and the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Conceived as a vehicle to foster collaboration and cross-disciplinary dialogue among the college’s three schools previously housed in separate buildings, state-of-the-art classrooms, laboratories, studios, and public spaces have replace more than 40% of the college’s academic space.

The building itself is symbolically open to the city. Visual transparencies and accessible public spaces connect the institution to the physical, social, and cultural fabric of its urban context. Built to LEED Gold standards, the facility will be the first LEED-certified academic laboratory building in NYC. Technologies such as radiant heating and cooling ceiling panels, an operable building skin of perforated stainless-steel panels offset from a glass-and-aluminum window wall, a full-height atrium, a green roof, and a cogeneration plant make the facility 40% more energy efficient than a standard building of its type. In addition, flexible laboratories, studios, and classrooms are designed with renewable, recycled, and low-emission materials that will accommodate pedagogical objectives and research activities. The project team for the new academic building includes owner’s representative Jonathan Rose Companies, and construction manager F.J. Sciame.

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Pediatric Emergency Services Cater to Children

Davis Brody Bond Aedas (DBBA) and New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital (MSCHONY) recently broke ground on the new Alexandra and Steven Cohen Pediatric Emergency Department in the Washington Heights. The $50 million project will be located within the Children’s Central Building and in the existing shell of the Children’s Bed Tower. DBBA designed the new department after collaborating with Poltronieri Tang to complete a feasibility study and program development. Occupying 30,070 gross square feet, the building will create 29 treatment bays and two trauma bays, radiology and CT-ready suites, a pharmacy, orthopedic and cast procedure rooms, negatively- and positively-pressured isolation rooms, and a mechanical system that affords department-wide isolation and purge capabilities in the event of airborne catastrophic or infectious event. The scale of the new pediatric emergency department will ensure an intimate and nurturing environment for its young patients. Both clinical and public spaces will display full-height images taken from children’s literature, and various waiting rooms integrate intimate family reading areas, a multimedia/interactive wall, and game kiosks. Completion is scheduled for summer of 2011.

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Tram Terminal Will Light the Way to Roosevelt Island

BL Companies Architecture plans to transform the Manhattan Tram Terminal to Roosevelt Island, operated by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, by incorporating lightness and movement. The transportation hub design will replace the metal roof with thin sheets of sloped, translucent polycarbonate — a material that will provide soft diffused day lighting, reduce energy consumption, reduce the heat island effect, and limit evening light pollution. The waiting platform will be similarly covered with polycarbonate. Partially glazed walls and motorized doors will provide further protection from the elements. The undersides of each roof will be comprised of energy efficient lighting and offer a warm, low-intensity glow. On the Roosevelt Island side, the tram station’s exterior metal cladding will remain intact, except that the metal siding flanking both sides of the platform will be removed. The waiting platform will be enlarged and partially enclosed, and will also include translucent polycarbonate roofing, glazed walls, and soft, indirect lighting.

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Ode to Poetry

The Poets House, a poetry library and literary center designed by Louise Braverman Architect, recently opened in its new home at Ten River Terrace in Battery Park City. The 11,000-square-foot space is located on the ground and second floors and contains a reading room that will house a 50,000+-volume collection, a whimsical children’s room, and a programming hall where leading poets will recite their works. Designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, the space features insulation made of recycled blue jeans, lights that adjust based on natural daylight levels, low-flow lavatories, wind and hydro-electric power, and building materials that are recycled or manufactured locally. Landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburg designed the outdoor amphitheater. In 2004, the organization received approval from the Battery Park City Authority to build a new library at the base of the Polshek Partnership-designed Riverhouse condo tower, and signed a 60-year, rent-free lease agreement in 2007. Poets House estimates that over the course of its new lease, it will save about $60 million, which will now to go programs and services.

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Developer Lends Land For Public Art

Trinity Real Estate has donated 37,000 square feet, or one square block, of vacant, undeveloped space between Canal, Grand, Sullivan, and Varick Streets to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) for approximately three years (or until the market picks up) for public art exhibitions. The recently-opened LentSpace, designed by Interboro Architects (a winner of a 2006 AIANY New Practices Award), is curated by Adam Kleinman of the LMCC. The project features a tree nursery that provides shade while incubating street trees to be planted throughout the downtown neighborhood at a later date. A custom, operable fence encourages a variety of social encounters; incorporating benches for seating, the fence also acts as a support for the end-to-end graphic design commission that repurposes its façade. These two elements frame a central event space, and when walking across the east/west axis, visitors pass through three zones with unique spatial engagements. The encounters continue after exiting the lot, as LentSpace is bookended with Juan Pablo Duarte Square, creating a larger network of open space. The inaugural exhibition features three distinct but inter-connected programs. “Points & Lines” presents seven art installations that each refer to issues of “boundary” in relation to LentSpace’s identity as both host and guest. “end-to-end” and “Late Editions” are parts of a series of print-media based reviews of the space and exhibition by artists and architects.

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Zinc Goes Green for Prototype Villa

Studio Daniel Libeskind has unveiled the prototype of the Libeskind Villa, the first in a series of signature homes. The residence has been built in Datteln, Germany, at the headquarters of Rheinzink, the developer of the villa’s zinc façade. A trio of interlocking architectural bands envelops the angular villa; the asymmetrical interior has spiraling, two-story peaks and smooth transitions to secluded terraces. Design details include: a balcony adjacent to the master bedroom with elaborate metalwork; light wells that direct daylight into a sauna; and recessed wardrobes that streamline dressing spaces. The villa is largely constructed of wood, with a wooden core that offers maximum thermal insulation and efficient operation. In addition, the insulation of the exterior walls matches that of passive houses. The home employs onsite renewable energy sources including a solar thermal system invisibly integrated into the zinc façade, as well as a geothermal system with a high-efficiency heat pump. Electric power may be generated from photovoltaic thin film, and rainwater can be harvested from the roof for use in the garden’s irrigation system. The project complies with many of the world’s energy-saving standards, including Germany’s KfW40 code. The project has been realized in partnership with Berlin-based company proportion.

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Five Teams Shortlisted for Basque Country Master Plan
Five design teams, out of 47 that applied, were short-listed to develop proposals for a new master plan that will regenerate the area surrounding the Bay of Pasaia in the Basque Country of northern Spain. NY-based Balmori Associates in collaboration with Dutch firm S333 Architecture + Urbanism will compete with four other international teams led by Zaha Hadid, West 8, KCAP, and Ezquiaga, of the UK, Holland, and Spain, respectively. The Province of Gipuzkoa has created the Gipzukoa Aurrera for the development of strategic projects, and has organized the competition to plan an outer harbor for the bay between 2011 and 2020. In spite of the physical limitations specific to the bay and the fact that it does not have a bulk liquid handling dock, current port activity moves an annual cargo of around five million tons, which contributes approximately 1.8% to the domestic product of Gipuzkoa. Other challenges include the bay’s relationship with the existing urban centers, which belong to four different municipalities.

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Calatrava’s New Rail Station Realized (in Liege, Belgium)

The new high-speed rail station at Liège-Guillemins, Belgium, designed by Santiago Calatrava, has opened. The architect was first commissioned to design the station in 1996 after Euro Liege TGV determined that the existing station was unsuitable for the demands of high-speed rail travel. Calatrava was required to replace the existing station without interrupting train service for the 36,000 daily riders. Envisioning a building that would reflect the new station’s significance as a high-speed, inter-urban link through Europe’s cities, Calatrava designed a structure “without façades” with a glass-and-steel vaulted roof that stretches over five working platforms. The result is a station designed to symbolize the city’s renewal and provide shorter travel times to Aachen, Cologne, and Brussels, as well as to Frankfurt, Paris, London, and the Southern portions of Europe, which are now only a few hours away.

Event: H209 Water Forum
Location: Liberty Science Center, 09.09-10.09
Speakers: For a full list of the more than 100 speakers, and to download the full H209 program, go to henryhudson400.com
Organizers: Henry Hudson 400 in partnership with Liberty Science Center, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, and the Netherlands Water Partnership

The Dutch have a saying that God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. “The Dutch have a long, and sometimes painful, relationship with the sea,” said Cees Veerman, chairman of the Dutch Delta Commission and co-chair of H209 — a two-day forum for the Dutch to share their knowledge and best practices. The great flood of 1953, ever present in conversation today, spurred the creation of the Delta Works, a series of locks, dams, and flood barriers. With the predicted rise in sea level and fluctuations in river discharge, the Dutch are constantly planning for disaster. For that reason, the government established a “new” delta committee, called the Sustainable Coastal Development Committee. Whereas the former committee focused on hydraulic engineering works to counter an acute threat, the second is charged with making recommendations with a broader mandate. Top on their list of goals: how to adapt to climate change.

Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam showed post-WWII and current photos of his city, Holland’s second largest with Europe’s largest port. Located on the North Sea, the port of Rotterdam has 24/7 access, hosting companies that specialize in storage, trans-shipment, and ancillary services. “And it could all be gone in seconds,” said Aboutaleb. One solution to rising tides is the Delta Works’ Maeslant Barrier, a storm surge barrier built in 1997 consisting of two enormous doors that fill with water and sink to the bottom when closed to seal off the port. The barrier is only closed in extreme weather, but the Dutch expect this to happen more frequently due to the rising sea levels. Because of this and other developments, Rotterdam hopes to be a 100% climate-proof delta city by 2025.

Also on the minds of attendees was Hurricane Katrina, which U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA) said was our “wake-up call,” warning of another category-three storm in the near future. She compared the U.S. to a drowning person, as Holland is an Olympic swimmer. The senator reiterated reform goals she detailed in a letter to President Obama urging restoration, flood protection, and a new system of integrated water management. She called for dedicated funding to replace the project-by-project approach that has characterized the Water Resources Development Authority legislation in the past, and hopes this administration will designate a high-level working group to address these issues.

Continues…

Event: H209 Water Forum Keynote Address
Location: Liberty Science Center, 09.09-10.09
Speaker: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — Chairman, Waterkeeper Alliance
Organizers: Henry Hudson 400 in partnership with Liberty Science Center, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, and the Netherlands Water Partnership

When Henry Hudson reached New York Harbor, he noted it was teeming with salmon, mullet, and wraith-like rays. Americans have been fisherman since the country was a Dutch colony, employing techniques learned from the Native Americans. “The Hudson River is our Noah’s Ark,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of the Waterkeeper Alliance, the largest grassroots water protection group in the country. The organization started in 1966 in Crontonville, NY, when commercial and recreational fisherman united to save the Hudson River.

According to Kennedy, “they were prototypical blue-collar environmentalists,” and to them, “the Hudson was their environment, their workplace, their property, their park — it was their Riviera.” They felt Penn Central was robbing them of their river, which had turned black with oil, and joined forces despite doubting they could beat a large corporation and force it to obey the law. In the course of researching an article about angling in the river two years earlier, one member of the group came across two little-known laws — the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888 and the Refuse Act of 1899. These statutes forbade pollution of American waters and provided a bounty reward for whoever reported the violation.

The Riverkeepers, as they called themselves, succeeded in shutting down the Penn Central pipeline and collected a $2,000 bounty, the first ever awarded under the statute. The group went on to collect larger bounties against Standard Brands, Ciba-Geigy, American Cyanamid, and $200,000 from Anaconda Wire and Copper.

The Waterfront Alliance now has 200 member organizations worldwide. “Know your rights,” says Kennedy. “The people own the waterways, not the government or a corporation.”

In this issue:
· September 11 Memorial & Museum Design Unveiled
· SHoP Architects Joins the Nets Design Team
· Manhattan’s MOCA Opens
· Yeshiva University Opens Study Center Uptown
· Design Trust Grows Urban Farms & Preserves Creative Industries
· Urban Quad and Commons Encourage Student/Faculty Interaction
· ICU Creates Healing Environment
· Steven Holl Architects’ Big Leap Across the Pond

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September 11 Memorial & Museum Design Unveiled

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum revealed Davis Brody Bond Aedas’ architectural design for the museum at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site. According to the plan, visitors will enter the museum through the pavilion located between the two memorial pools on the northeast quadrant of the memorial plaza. The pavilion, designed by Snøhetta, will provide information, ticketing services, and security screening. Visitors will then access the museum’s lower-level lobby and public gathering space, known as “Memorial Hall,” which in turn leads to the exhibition spaces at the bedrock level. To reach the primary exhibition space, visitors will descend a gently ramped “ribbon,” echoing the ramp that once was used by construction workers to help build the World Trade Center, and used again in the aftermath of the attacks for the recovery and clean-up of the site. From the ramp, vistas will provide a sense of the enormity of the site, the scale of the original Twin Towers, and offer views of the preserved portion of the slurry wall.

Visitors will be able to stand between the locations of the original towers and experience their scale, which will be referenced by two metal-clad volumes. Key artifacts include the “Survivor Stairs,” the “Last Column,” and interpretive exhibitions designed by Thinc Design together with Local Projects. Programming will honor victims of the September 11, 2001, and February 26, 1993 terrorist attacks, preserve the history of the events, and provide historical context for 9/11, its aftermath, and continuing implications. The design features the preserved box column remnants that mark the footprints of the original towers. Where possible, remains of the original slab will also be preserved in the footprints.

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SHoP Architects Joins the Nets Design Team

After scrapping Gehry Partners’ original design (for being too expensive), Forest City Ratner Companies, the developer of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, has signed SHoP Architects to collaborate with Ellerbe Becket on the design of the Barclays Center. The 675,000-square-foot sports and entertainment venue will become the home court for the Nets basketball team. The facility will have 18,000 seats for basketball and up to 19,000 seats for concerts.

The building design consists of three separate, woven bands. The first engages the ground where the weathered steel exterior rises and lowers to create a sense of visual transparency. A canopy over the entrance cantilevers 30 feet high creating a visual transition and framing a large viewing portal into the seating area. The second, a glass band, allows views from inside and outside of the arena. The third band floats around the roof and varies in transparency, the weathered steel creating backlit patterns. The main concourse is placed at street level, allowing a direct view to and from the street as well. Large areas of glass at street level are intended to make it not only pedestrian-friendly, but also encourage a strong visual connection to its urban context. Construction is expected to begin later this year, with an anticipated opening during the 2011-12 season. The Center for Architecture conducted a public forum on Monday, September 14th, and images and a model of the facility are on view at Brooklyn Borough Hall through 09.18.09. (Tuesday, 09.15: 8:30 am – 5:30 pm; Wednesday, 09.16: 8:30 am – 8 pm; Friday, 09.18: 8:30 am – 5:30 pm.)

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Manhattan’s MOCA Opens

The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), dedicated to reclaiming, preserving, and presenting the history and culture of Chinese people in the U.S., is poised to officially open on September 22. Designed by Maya Lin Studio, the new 14,000-square-foot venue on Centre Street has entrances both in Chinatown and SoHo. The museum features multiple exhibition galleries, interactive visitor kiosks, a multi-purpose auditorium/classroom, a research center, and a flexible space for programs. The design juxtaposes the past with the present. At the heart of the museum is its sky-lit courtyard, left raw and untouched, harkening back to a traditional Chinese courtyard house. The core exhibition spaces wrap around the courtyard; biographic films projected onto the glass windows facing the courtyard will offer a glimpse into the stories and faces of Chinese Americans through history — from the 1850s to the present day. MOCA began as a community-based organization in 1980 and has evolved into the keeper of the community’s documented and cultural history.

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Yeshiva University Opens Study Center Uptown

The new 60,000-square-foot Glueck Center for Jewish Study at Yeshiva University recently opened on the school’s Washington Heights campus. Designed by HOK, the center’s six floors and lower-level archives house a two-story, 500-seat Torah Study Hall, modern lecture halls, eleven classrooms, conference and seminar rooms, faculty and student lounges, a dean’s suite, 50 faculty and administrative offices, library archival space, a patio, and gardens. The design meets the university’s mission of Torah Umadda — the synthesis of general and Jewish studies — by linking the Glueck Center and the Gottesman Library via a ground-floor atrium. The façade of channel glass, recessed sidelights, and Vetter stone blends into the fabric of the campus. The center is the first new building on this campus — one of six in NYC — in 20 years.

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Design Trust Grows Urban Farms & Preserves Creative Industries

The Design Trust for Public Space is about to embark on two new projects. Five Borough Farm, a collaboration between NYC- and Brooklyn-based urban farm Added Value, will develop a kit-of-parts designed to replicate the farm’s community-oriented model throughout the city. The second, Made in Midtown, will commission a comprehensive study of the fashion industry’s presence in the Garment District and its place in New York’s creative economy. Partnering with the Council of Fashion Designers of America, this project will recommend place-based strategies to strengthen and preserve creative industries in New York. The resulting study will help guide policies for light manufacturing industries citywide.

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Urban Quad and Commons Encourage Student/Faculty Interaction

Marymount Manhattan College on East 71st Street is composed of two buildings, one built by John Russell Pope in 1929 for the New York Junior League. To complement its urban surroundings without increasing its footprint, the school has completed two renovations, both designed by Lori Kupfer. The Lowerre Family Terrace, a 5,000-square-foot rooftop quad features a water wall, heated trellis, and garden areas. The Commons further encourages interaction among students, faculty, and staff with nearly 20,000 square feet carved out of the third and fourth floors of two separate buildings. Connected by a staircase, the upper floor contains a food servery, and the lower floor includes a student lounge with flexible, private areas that can be used for meetings. A glass canopy and vanishing glass wall system opens out to the terrace, which links the college’s Main and Nugent Buildings and provides students with access to the newly renovated Thomas J. Shanahan Library.

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ICU Creates Healing Environment

The NYU Langone Medical Center recently completed a 35-bed, 19,600-square-foot intensive care unit on the 15th floor of Tisch Hospital, the medical center’s flagship 705-bed acute-care facility. Designed by Perkins Eastman, the patient- and family-centered unit offers state-of-the-art technology, privacy, and space to accommodate open visiting hours to create an environment more conducive to healing. The large, private patient rooms feature natural light, views of the city, and flat-screen televisions. The spaces were carefully programmed for families to visit and staff to work efficiently. Other ICU patient safety features include computerized charting systems inside and outside of each room with multi-patient video surveillance technology.

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Steven Holl Architects’ Big Leap Across the Pond

An international competition has resulted in Steven Holl Architects with Glasgow -based JM Architects being selected to design a new building for the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) in Garnethill, Glasgow, Scotland. The team will work with the GSA to refine the school’s masterplan and design a new building to enhance the teaching, learning, and research facilities available to students, staff, and the public. The new building will be located opposite the 1909 Charles Rennie Mackintosh Building — recently voted the UK’s favorite building of the past 175 years in a national survey conducted by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The competition, which was to find an architect-led team and not to select a design, received submissions from more than 150 firms internationally from which seven were shortlisted; the Steven Holl Architects/JM Architects team won in a unanimous decision. This is Steven Holl’s first project in the UK.

(Continued from above)

The “Dutch Dialogues” workshops were the outgrowth of extended interactions among Dutch engineers, urban designers, landscape architects, city planners, soils/hydrology experts, and their Louisiana counterparts. New Orleans-based David Waggonner, AIA, principal of Waggoner and Ball Architects, with the backing of the American Planning Association, initiated the talks, which continued at a panel including Waggonner, Bruce Knight, president of the APA, and Paula Verhoeven, director of the climate office for Rotterdam. While “safety first” remains the cornerstone of Dutch water management policy, a new “living with water” mentality has transformed its approach to urban design and redevelopment. In addition to dikes, levees, and super levees, the Dutch are building terraced levees, roof parks, water plazas, and water storage basins under parking lots. While the land is reclaimed from the sea in Rotterdam, the new port area frees up land in the city center for development.

In the panel New Opportunities for Blue/Green Development, “green” was talked about in terms of both sustainability and economic development. Trent Lethco, associate principal at ARUP, stated that we have to reclaim our waterfront from its industrial past. The question is whether to move buildings and infrastructure or repurpose them. Laurie Kerr, senior policy advisor for buildings at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, expressed concern over the frequency of storms, flooding, and power outages. Most critical to Kerr is protecting critical infrastructure such as power plants, vehicular tunnels, and water treatment plants on the waterfront. Anneke De Vries, CEO of ING Real Estate in the Netherlands, presented a new mixed-used development her company is developing on the site of a former Shell Oil plant. According to NY-based developer Jonathan Rose, “the recession is a great time to plan projects like Battery Park City, which took 30-40 years to plan.” Ultimately, “AIA members have visions; design does matter on the waterfront,” AIANY Executive Director Rick Bell, FAIA, said in closing.

In this issue:
· 9/11 Memorial Preview Site Opens
· Times Square Wurkstadt
· Artists Re:Construct Lower Manhattan
· Milton Glaser Hearts SVA
· NYSE Goes High-Tech and High-Touch
· Princeton Greens Up
· Dallas Decks Freeway with Park, Restaurant
· Louboutin’s New Shoe 212Box

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9/11 Memorial Preview Site Opens

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has opened a 9/11 Memorial Preview Site at 20 Vesey Street to give the public the opportunity to learn about the memorial and museum, view the construction progress at the World Trade Center site, and participate in creating content for the museum by sharing personal 9/11 stories. Thinc Design, the lead exhibition design team in partnership with Local Projects for the WTC Memorial Museum, designed the preview site and interior exhibition panels. Display models and renderings, selected artifacts, and a 9/11 timeline illustrate what the WTC site will look like when rebuilding is complete. In addition, real-time construction images of the WTC site allow visitors to view the construction as it happens.

Note: Preserving the Past While Building for the Future: Creating the September 11 Memorial Museum will take place 1:00-4:00pm, 09.13.09, at the Center for Architecture. Click the link for more information and to RSVP.

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Times Square Wurkstadt

Wurk Environments, an alternative to traditional office business centers, has hired Swanke Hayden Connell Architects to design its first “Wurksite,” at 1515 Broadway in Times Square. The 65,000-square-foot flex office space occupies two contiguous floors, each with its own character — the 11th floor is modern-chic and geared towards media/entertainment clients, and the 12th is conservative-contemporary, designed with legal or financial services in mind. More than 185 furnished office suites are planned, from self-contained mini-executive suites to built-to-suit environments. “Boulevards” on each floor act as thoroughfares extending through the office space, accented by coffee niches that are intended to echo the bustling NYC crossroads below, as are Wurksite’s furnishings, lighting, layout, textures, and color scheme. Tenants may rent a lounge for parties, events, and conferences. Wurk plans to open two more Manhattan locations this year, then export the concept to tier-one cities nationally and internationally.

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Artists Re:Construct Lower Manhattan

The Alliance for Downtown New York launched a new phase of its Re:Construction initiative with four new art projects. Rainbow Conversation, designed by artist Rachel Hayes, at Louise Nevelson Plaza at William Street and Maiden Lane, has turned 41 chain-link fences surrounding a construction zone into an animated, colorful wall; Nina Bovasso’s Botanizing on the Asphalt, at Hudson River Park along West Street, contains more than 400 feet of concrete jersey barrier covered with the artist’s signature “groovy” flowers; Flying Animals, a mural by artist Caitlin Hurd, on the corner of Washington and Rector Streets, creates a contrast between bustling life in the city and the tranquility of rural life; and in her Poster Project at 50 Trinity, artist Ellen Berkenblit presents six ink and graphite drawings enlarged and printed on a vinyl banner covering the construction barricade. Re:Construction is funded by a $1.5 million Community Enhancement Fund grant awarded by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and made possible through the assistance from the Hudson River Park Trust, City of New York, NYC Department of Transportation, Department of Design and Construction, Department of Buildings, and NYS Department of Transportation.

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Milton Glaser Hearts SVA

Designer Milton Glaser’s latest project isn’t a logo or poster, but the new School of Visual Arts (SVA) Theater in Chelsea. The design features what may be the city’s largest kinetic sculpture — a series of three metal cylinders that sit atop the marquee and rotate at hourly intervals, based on Vladimir Tatlin’s 1920 Constructivist Monument to the Third International. The theater’s façade features a billboard that quotes an eclectic group of cultural icons on the subject of art, from Paul Gauguin to Frank Zappa. For the interior, Glaser created two gold-leaf light fixtures, custom floor coverings, and decorative elements in colored metal overlaid with stenciled designs. The 20,000-square-foot theater, which has had many incarnations (once as the Roundabout Theatre, then as a multi-screen movie theater), now houses two auditoriums, one with 490 seats and the other with 360. Both auditoriums have presentation stages, upgraded lighting, sound, and projection capabilities, and are ADA compliant.

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NYSE Goes High-Tech and High-Touch
The NY office of Perkins Eastman has been commissioned by NYSE Euronext to design the “next generation trading floor” in its main room. Extensive renovations to create a unified trading environment will include installing modern trading desks, new screens and workspaces, and a new network. Large open trading areas will accommodate up to 40 traders each. The finished space will likely resemble NYSE Euronext’s new NYSE Amex options trading floor, which was also designed by Perkins Eastman.

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Princeton Greens Up

This fall, close to 300 Butler College students at Princeton University will be living in new residence halls designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners with landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. The 113,000-square-foot project consists of two contemporary structures with a total of five dormitories all connected at the lower level. The two- to four-story red brick buildings, accentuated with horizontal bands of limestone, are designed to harmonize with three existing halls. The new complex will contain 41 single suites, 59 quad suites, and six residential college adviser suites. Dormitory floors include kitchenettes, studies, and lounges, and common areas include a food emporium with seating areas, a “gallery,” lounge, classroom, seminar rooms, a computer room, laundry rooms, and the exterior Butler Memorial Court.

The building envelope is 30% more energy efficient than the code requires; natural daylight and ventilation are incorporated into the design, as are high-efficiency plumbing fixtures. The roofs on more than half of the Butler buildings have been planted with 14 varieties of hardy sedum, and a 5,000-gallon underground storm water storage tank will collect rainwater runoff from the roofs and be used to irrigate the courtyard. Faculty and students from the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) will measure heat flux, soil moisture, and temperature, and the data they collect will help determine how energy efficient the green roofs are in comparison to conventional roofs.

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Dallas Decks Freeway with Park, Restaurant

NY-based Thomas Phifer & Partners is designing a 6,000-square-foot restaurant and performance pavilion for the Woodall Rodgers Park, a 5.2-acre deck park over a freeway in Dallas designed by Office of James Burnett. Plans call for a full restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating, as well as a more casual café in the center of the park. Designed to connect with the surrounding landscape, the project has floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and a sculpted ceiling constructed of a series of coffers, each with a small skylight. The south side will have retractable glass doors to a covered terrace, which will have direct views to a performance pavilion. The event space will feature a private dining room to accommodate up to 80 guests with access to an outdoor grill and bar. Green features include geothermal radiant heating and cooling. The base park is expected to be complete in late 2011 with amenities, including the restaurant, scheduled to be finished in 2012.

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Louboutin’s New Shoe 212Box

Shoe designer Christian Louboutin, known for his red-soled stilettos, will be opening a new 1,800-square-foot store in a two-story 1930s building in West Hollywood. Designed by NY-based 212box, the store’s main entrance is accessed through a hand-forged iron gate that opens into a front patio surrounded by a tall, green wall. Three shoe display rooms flank the entrance. One has arched display niches and a mirrored wall that display the shoes on white glass shelves as if they were works of art. Another is covered in custom-made white-on-white ceramic tiles designed by the firm, each with one of 9,000 encrypted letters, numbers, and symbols. The third contains a tin-panel-clad cash wrap that also serves as a bar with built-in swivel stools and adjacent banquette. The back wall of the stairwell is clad in antique mirror panels that rise more than 26 feet to create a glow and draw customers up to the second floor; a screen of hand-blown glass bubbles functions as the stair railing. The second floor contains retail space as well as a VIP lounge. 212box has already completed stores for the company in Hong Kong, Las Vegas, London, Moscow, and New York.