Category: In The News

Event: Press Tour, Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC)
Location: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 10.20.08
Speakers: Shirley Ann Jackson — President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Johannes Goebel — Director, EMPAC; Bill Horgan — Associate Principal, Grimshaw Architects; R. Lawrence Kirkegaard, Hon. AIA — President & Principal Acoustician, Kirkegaard Associates; Craig Michael Schwitter, P.E. — Partner & Regional Director, Buro Happold North America; Denzil Gallagher — Partner, MEP Regional Discipline Leader, Buro Happold North America; William Paxson, AIA — Partner, Davis Brody Bond Aedas, Ernesto Bachiller — Associate Partner, Davis Brody Bond Aedas; and others

EMPAC exterior (left); concert hall (right).

Kristen Richards

A recent tour of the new Grimshaw/Davis Brody Bond Aedas-designed Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, revealed a building so high-tech that sci-fi comparisons are inevitable. As visitors peered around one futuristic all-black theater, EMPAC director Johannes Goebel jokingly referred to it as “the Darth Vader space,” while project architect Bill Horgan of Grimshaw Architects compared it with “The Matrix.” One of two studios devoted to new-media performance and scientific data visualizations, the 3,500-square-foot Studio 1, is wrapped with pockmarked acoustic tiles. Hovering overhead are metal rings, providing a framework to hold a 360-degree panoramic screen and projectors for immersive virtual environments, aided by heavy-duty processing power (the building is connected to the university’s supercomputer). A computer-controlled rigging system can be used to fly people or objects through the space.

With the lights up, the futuristic decor is rather imposing, but the true function of the space, as well as the smaller Studio 2, is its ability to disappear and adapt to varying theatrical contexts, often infused with video or projections that provide an enveloping sensory experience. The studios and a larger theater with a fly tower were designed for “a sense of not knowing what one will find when one walks in,” Horgan said. In a building where various shows might happen at the same time, acoustic isolation was crucial, so Studio 1 was designed to be structurally separate. It floats independently within the larger building, supported by a series of springs, explained Craig Schwitter, P.E., of Buro Happold, one of many firms that contributed their expertise in the building design.

EMPAC’s cedar-clad concert hall.

Kristen Richards

Representing the analog side of the building’s program, a more traditional concert hall was inspired by the resonant chambers of stringed musical instruments. The hall’s red cedar-clad rounded exterior dominates the center of the building’s seven-story atrium. Unlike the curved exterior, the hall’s interior is basically shoebox-shaped, but it is slightly convex to improve acoustic diffusion. Supported by a web of steel cables, a ceiling made of thin fabric reflects high-frequency sounds, while an upper volume above it reflects low-frequency sounds, helping to perfect the acoustics. Vaguely visible from the outside through the glass façade, the rounded form of the concert hall is the building’s dominant visual icon, its curves providing a contrast with the surrounding linear geometries. In one of many eco-friendly touches, the façade carries a system of hollow mullions containing hot water to help heat the space in winter, explained Denzil Gallagher of Buro Happold. Visitors who touched the mullions could feel their warmth.

EMPAC concert hall interior (left); Studio 1 (right).

Kristen Richards

All in all, the tour revealed EMPAC to be a visually eclectic but highly functional space that is already helping to promote experimental endeavors in architecture, digital technology, and performance. New-media art collective Workspace Unlimited (founded by an architect and an artist) has already put Studio 1’s panoramic screen to use. The group’s EMPAC-commissioned multimedia art installation “They Watch” employs hacked video-game software and motion-tracking technology to let viewers walk around the studio to explore virtual architectural environments and interact with animated characters in real time. The tour’s one disappointment was the lack of a demonstration of such spaces’ prodigious audiovisual capabilities, leaving this visitor resolved to return one day to see them in action.

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: Current Work: Coop Himmelb(l)au, Wolf D. Prix
Location: The Cooper Union, 11.20.08
Speakers: Wolf D. Prix, Hon. FAIA, FRIBA — Co-founder, Coop Himmelb(l)au
Moderator: Thom Mayne, FAIA — Principal, Morphosis
Organizers: The Architectural League of New York

BMW Delivery Center, Munich, Germany.

Image by Ari Marcopoulos; courtesy of Coop Himmelb(l)au

Practice is “not a color but an idea, of creating architecture with fantasy, as buoyant and variable as clouds,” reflected Wolf Prix, Hon. FAIA, FRIBA, of Coop Himmelb(l)au. During the last 40 years, the Vienna-based firm, founded by Prix with Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer, has tried to create an architecture with a “psychic” ground plan, not a physical one, characterized by walls that “no longer exist” and spaces that “are pulsating balloons.” With designs intended to expand the horizons of architecture and urbanism, Coop Himmelb(l)au’s projects are a result of the relationship between designers and computers. Prix explained, “During design development, we use modern technology as the main tool to create models, which are consequently dismantled and re-crafted with human energy [that then] projects back into the computer.”

Prix continued, “Coop Himmelb(l)au separates itself from other architecture firms because we don’t base our work on systems of measurement on the scale of human proportions. We create buildings from our fantasy that are often radically unconventional.” For the BMW Welt (BMW Delivery Center) in Munich, a glass-and-stainless steel structure has suspended bridges interconnecting components Prix calls “Forum, Tower, Double Cone, Lounge, Premiere, and Marina.” The design process involved re-crafting computer models over and over again to compensate for potential human fault. He described the building: “Our heartbeat becomes space; our face is the façade. Simply psychic.”

Christian Bergner, Assoc. AIA, currently works at Caples Jefferson Architects, having previously worked with Studio Daniel Libeskind. Bergner is also a member of the AIANY Emerging NY Architects (ENYA) Committee and seeks LEED accreditation.

In light of the MTA’s recent proposal to raise revenue by increasing mass transit fares by 23% while decreasing service by next June, the Ravitch Commission’s report seems to be gaining momentum. A group of transportation and finance experts, chaired by former MTA chairman Richard Ravitch and appointed by Governor Paterson, have met since this past June to come up with strategies to fund MTA projects and operations over the next 10 years. While I agree with most of the proposed strategies, the key to its success lies in the statement: “Our recommendations… are interdependent and only in combination do they chart a course that will both stabilize the MTA and begin to set the region on steady footing.”

The report is a comprehensive evaluation of the current state of the MTA. Included are recommendations to: fund operating and capital needs; mitigate the proposed 2009 fare increase and service reductions; improve mass transit region-wide; and foster changes in governance, transparency, and accountability. Along with expanding regional bus service and investing more in Bus Rapid Transit, the Commission suggests raising fares and tolls on a schedule-basis (and no more frequently than bi-annually). By increasing bridge tolls and adding tolls to East River bridge crossings, subway fares would only need to increase by 8%.

The Commission wants to return power to the MTA Chairman, an elected official, and eliminate the board-appointed Executive Director position to strengthen governance in the MTA. In an effort to improve transparency and accountability, the report calls for both the NYC Independent Budget Office and the NY State Office of the State Deputy Comptroller to routinely review and make public the MTA’s financial status. It recommends instituting a Mobility Tax, a deductible expense on employers, which will pay for new borrowing and direct expenses, as well as provide full costs for current expansion projects. This will lead to a separate operating budget from that for future projects.

“Straphangers and commuters must bear an equitable burden of the costs of operation of the transit system,” the report states. While there is plenty of opposition, especially from Brooklynites such as Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz who feel that their borough will bear the brunt of the costs, I feel that it is most important for the city to make it easier for people to commute via mass transit. Other recommendations not in the report — a gas tax on MTA-served counties, a scaled tax based on car size, Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing proposal released earlier this year — should also be considered. Ultimately, I believe that by making mass transit the most accessible and affordable route to and from the city, NYC and the MTA may be able to sustain difficult economic times.

In this issue:
· Silver Towers Obtains Landmark Status
· Children’s Aid Breaks Out Holiday Cheer with New Center
· Tapestry Weaves Mixed-Income Residential in East Harlem
· Mixed-Use Defies Rock and Hard Place
· High School Serves Athletes… on Roof
· Labs Plug and Play into the Future
· Double Skin Reveals Highest Non-Enclosed Observation Deck in Shanghai

Silver Towers Obtains Landmark Status

Silver Towers.

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) unanimously voted to designate the I.M. Pei & Associates-designed Silver Towers complex and its central sculpture, “Portrait of Sylvette” by Picasso, NYC landmarks, ending a five-year campaign by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP). According to the advocacy group, while the LPC has recently payed increasing attention to Modern architecture, Silver Towers is the first post-war urban renewal “superblock” development in NYC to be landmarked. Originally known as University Village, the 1967 residential complex, set on five acres north of Houston Street between Mercer Street and LaGuardia Place, was designed by James Ingo Freed for New York University. Three identical 30-story, reinforced concrete towers built in the Brutalist style encircle a 36-foot-tall concrete sculpture. The towers cover a small percentage of the site, reflecting the influence architect Le Corbusier.

Children’s Aid Breaks Out Holiday Cheer with New Center

Children’s Aid Society Center.

BBG-BBGM

BBG-BBGM completed the renovation of three visitation rooms and a multi-functional conference room for the Children’s Aid Society Center in the South Bronx — a project they performed pro bono. The firm raised funds and pro bono donations of materials from vendors and other entities to finance the renovation. During the course of several days, the partners and staff carried out the design and construction from start to finish. Despite space limitations, lack of natural light, and small budgets, the firm tried to achieve functional and creative designs with themes from a garden to an island oasis.

Vendors that donated include: Advantage Sports Flooring, Artistic Tile, Benjamin Moore, BestArt & Mirror, County Draperies, Design Communications, Drapery by LORE, Design Tex, DFB Sales, Evan Shatz Sales Associates, Haig Lighting, Hightower Group, InterfaceFlor, Johnsonite, Kellex Corporation, Knoll Textiles, Koroseal, Liora Manne, Milliken, Myriad Fine Art, Osborne & Little, P Kaufmann, Pavarini McGovern Construction Company, Richard J. Fasenmyer Foundation, Selective Surfaces, The Erwyn Group, Ultrafabrics, Wolf Gordon, and 3-FORM.

Tapestry Weaves Mixed-Income Residential in East Harlem

Tapestry.

Jonathan Rose Companies

Jonathan Rose Companies in partnership with Lettire Construction, has broken ground on Tapestry, the first affordable and mixed-income residential rental development designed for LEED Silver certification in East Harlem. The 12-story, 185-unit apartment building will be located at the foot of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough Bridge), and will offer a mix of market rate, middle-income, and low-income apartments. Designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects and MHG Architects, the project will contain studio through three-bedroom apartments, underground parking, a gym, accessible green roofs, a media/children’s playroom, bike storage, and 8,000 square feet of retail. The project is part of the 125th Street river-to-river rezoning, a multi-city agency rezoning effort to infuse the area with cultural, retail, entertainment, and affordable housing for Harlem residents. Tapestry is the first development to result from the rezoning, which was passed this past April.

Mixed-Use Defies Rock and Hard Place

Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. Apartments.

Meltzer/Mandl Architects

Despite a 30-foot-high rock outcropping covering nearly half the site, the Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. Apartments in the Bathgate section of the Bronx is currently under construction. Meltzer/Mandl Architects designed the 279 units by carving out a section of the rock for a lobby and allowing the remaining building to “float” above it onto a series of shear walls. The result will be a glass lobby that looks on a geological rock garden. The complex, which also features a latticework façade of articulated brick forms and two-story glass with metal panel accents, will offer studios through three-bedroom rental homes. There will also be 6,100 square feet of ground-level retail space, administrative offices, and on-site parking. Two outdoor recreation areas and community rooms are included in the 254,000-square-foot development. Completion is scheduled for 2010 under the sponsorship of Phipps Houses.

High School Serves Athletes… on Roof

Union City high school.

HOK New York

HOK New York and RSC Architects have designed a 366,550-square-foot high school to be sited on the former Roosevelt Stadium in Union City. The new school features an athletic stadium, complete with a grandstand area, on the roof for baseball, soccer, and football. As Union City’s only high school, the new structure will contain 66 general classrooms, small-group instruction space, cutting-edge science labs, and home economic labs. The athletic component of the high school also includes a three-station gymnasium, weight rooms, and locker rooms. The media center, located off the courtyard, creates both indoor and outdoor study areas, and will serve the general community by functioning as a public library. In addition, there will be a 980-seat auditorium, a small black box performance space, dance studio, and musical and choral studios for students.

Labs Plug and Play into the Future

RMJM Hillier

Washington University’s Bauer Hall.

Washington University in St. Louis recently broke ground on Bauer Hall, a 150,875-square-foot building for its School of Engineering & Applied Science, designed by RMJM Hillier. The new building will house the School of Engineering’s Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering (EECE), provide space for the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy & Sustainability (I-CARES), and expand the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

RMJM Hillier combined its expertise in state-of-the-art “plug-and-play” laboratories and historic preservation into a unified concept. Two-thirds of the space will be dedicated to research laboratories designed to maximize flexibility across the range of aquatics, aerosols, synthetic chemistry, and biomedical research activities. A plug-and-play casework system — including moveable base cabinets, removable tables, and ceiling-mounted service panels — improves ability to accommodate both bench-top and floor-mounted equipment while reducing the cost of future renovations as research priorities change. One feature will be an 85-seat distance-learning classroom available for use by all academic departments. Completion is expected in 2010.

Double Skin Reveals Highest Non-Enclosed Observation Deck in Shanghai

Shanghai Tower.

Gensler

Shanghai Tower is adjacent Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center in the Luijiazui Finance and Trade Zone, an area poised to be China’s first super-tall district. The 632-meter Gensler-designed tower, organized as nine stacked cylindrical buildings, will house Class-A office space, retail, a luxury hotel, cultural venues, and the world’s highest non-enclosed observation deck. The inner layer of the double-skin façade encloses the buildings, while a triangular exterior layer comprised the envelope. The spaces between the two layers create atrium sky gardens. Much like plazas and civic squares in traditional cities, the atria contain restaurants and convenience stores. The Shanghai Tower Construction & Development is the project’s developer, Thornton Tomasetti is the structural engineer, Cosentini Associates is the MEP engineer, and the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tongji University as the Local Design Institute will support Gensler. The development is slated for completion in 2014.

Once again NYC Transit is running vintage buses and trains during the holiday season. During weekday rush hours in Manhattan and Queens 19 classic buses will be circulating, while on Sundays old subway cars will be integrated into the transit system on the Sixth Avenue line. Be sure to keep an eye out.

The Rockefeller Foundation announced the 2008 recipients of the Foundation’s $2.7 million NYC Cultural Innovation Fund awards, including Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator of the Museum of Arts & Design; David Thorpe, Senior Partner and Global Director of Innovation, Ogilvy Worldwide; and Andrew Zolli, Founder, Z + Partners… The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum has appointed David van der Leer as the new Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design; previously he was publications and exhibition manager for Steven Holl Architects…

The first place winners of the CityRacks Design Competition are Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve (Bettlelab), based in Copenhagen, Denmark; third-place winner is Ignacio Ciocchini of New York…

Architectural Record‘s Design Vangaurd 2008 winners include NYC-based Urban A&O, on of AIANY’s 2008 New Practices New York winning firms…

McGraw-Hill Construction’s Architectural Record, in collaboration with BusinessWeek, has launched the first issue of HQ, a new publication and website for corporate executives, architects, owners, and developers…

Al D’Elia, AIA, has joined Butler Rogers Baskett as a Partner… Andrea O’Neill has been appointed Vice President for Institutional Advancement, a new position for NY School of Interior Design… Ted Moudis Associates announced the promotion of Monica Larsen Wetherell to Design Management Director…

01.05.09 Call for Entries: AIA/ALA Library Building Awards
This biennial program is intended to encourage excellence in the architectural design and planning of libraries. All entries must be libraries designed by architects licensed in the U.S and may be built anywhere but must have been completed since 12.01.02. Projects should demonstrates exemplary skill and creativity in the resolution and integration of formal, functional, and technical requirements, including ecological stewardship.

01.15.09 Call for Entries: IDP Outstanding Firm Award
Since 1991, the IDPAC has recognized firms that actively embrace the Intern Development Program and demonstrate their commitment by making the path to licensure an integral part of the firm’s culture. In 2008, the program is expanded to recognize IDP Firms that meet 12 criteria in the categories of Mentoring, Supervising, Training Opportunities, Commitment to IDP, and ARE Support. The award is reserved for firms that demonstrate excellence in at least three of these categories.

02.06.09 Call for Entries: 2009 AIANY Design Awards
AIANY’s annual Design Awards Program recognizes excellence in architectural design by NYC-based architects and for work in NYC. The purpose of the awards program is to increase awareness of outstanding design and to honor the architects, clients, and consultants who work together to improve the built environment. Winning entries will be featured in an Awards Exhibition at the Center for Architecture next year and published in a special issue of OCULUS.

02.06.09 Call for Entries: 2009 AIANY Building Type Awards
The AIANY’s Building Type Awards is a collaborative program with the Boston Society of Architects (BSA) that honors excellence in architectural design for specific typologies. This year, achievement in Health Facilities and Housing will be recognized. Winning entries will be featured in an Awards Exhibition at the Center for Architecture next year and published in a special issue of OCULUS.

02.11.09 Call for Entries: 2009 Young Architects Forum: Foresight
Young architects and designers are invited to submit work to the annual competition that reflects intelligent decisions and imagines an effective role for architecture in the future. Projects of all types, theoretical or real, and executed in any medium are welcome. The jury will select work for presentation in public forums, an online installation, and an exhibition at the Architectural League of New York in May 2009. Winners will receive a cash prize of $1,000.

Event: Designs For Living: New Directions in Design of the Home
Location: Trespa Showroom, 10.21.08
Speakers: Lee Mindel, FAIA — Principal, Shelton/Mindel Architects; Annabelle Selldorf, AIA — Principal, Selldorf Architects; Alan Wanzenberg, AIA — Principal, Alan Wanzenberg Architect
Moderator: Abby Suckle, FAIA, LEED AP — AIANY Interiors Committee & AIANY Secretary
Sponsors: Trespa; WB Wood NY

Neue Galerie.

Courtesy http://neuegalerie.org

Most architects in NYC do a lot of single-family residential work. Virtually all architects undertake interior design from the beginning of their practices, and for many it punctuates their careers. A panel composed of architects with expertise in all scales of residential design, from furniture to multi-family residences, were enthusiastic about designing interiors — warts and all — from the client who says he/she doesn’t know much about architecture but knows what he/she likes, to the interior designer who wants to “play architect,” to the decorator who wants to cover over the architecture.

All of the panelists expressed enjoyment in working with and getting to know their clients and their particular lifestyles — even when they themselves were the client. Alan Wanzenberg, AIA, of Alan Wanzenberg Architect, whose reputation is in designing for celebrities, has three homes on which to “experiment.” His primary residence for the past 30 years, an apartment in the city, “is not an easy space, and I’m always changing it and moving things around.” He uses his beach house on Long Island to play with furniture and his cabin upstate to work with light and color in a modest space.

Lee Mindel, FAIA, principal of Shelton/Mindel Architects, has designed a variety of interior types — an ocean liner, a Gulfstream airplane, Ralph Lauren’s headquarters with rooms that appear to be dipped in chocolate, vanilla, and caramel, as well as lighting and plumbing fixtures, textiles, and furniture. The North Sea Pool House on Long Island, which won an AIANY 2008 Design Award for Interiors, was formerly a garage/mechanical building. The two-story space is integrated with a pool, sculpture garden, and a creek. Sculptures that look like “pool toys” blur the lines between sculpture and furniture.

A 2006 AIANY Design Award project, a residence in one of Richard Meier Architect’s Perry Street towers, is an exercise in playful geometries — the street grid and the flow of the Hudson River are intended to give a feeling that the building’s core extends into space. The terrazzo floor was inspired by the Hudson when frozen.

For Annabelle Selldorf, AIA, of Selldorf Architects, working on interiors allows her to learn about the client and how they live. She usually agrees not to foist something on a client, and vice versa. “Taste,” she says, “is nothing to argue about. Either you have it, or you don’t; but there is room for discussion.” Selldorf also designs furniture, and feels that understanding its making helps her understand its usage. Selldorf completely renovated the interior of a Carrère and Hastings-designed Neue Galerie to exhibit early 20th-century German and Austrian artworks. Recently, she designed the interiors for Philip Johnson’s final residential project — the 12-story glass-and-steel Urban Glass House. What defines designing for a single client/resident, according to Selldorf, is to conjecture who might the residents be and what is it that people do nowadays.

I strongly believe in the power of mentorship in the profession, but it is often difficult to find someone who has the perfect combination of availability and willingness to share experiences and a kindred professional trajectory. The AIANY Women in Architecture (WIA) Committee has found a solution to this issue with its annual “Speed Mentoring” program.

Similar to speed dating, the rules are simple. Four women of different experience levels sit around a table, fill out a short questionnaire, exchange contact information, and talk for 20 minutes. Once time is up, everyone switches places in the room to find three new women of different experience levels to talk with for 20 more minutes. And so on.

Throughout the evening at the Miele showroom, many universal themes for practicing architects were addressed — how to start your own business, how to deal with the bad economy, how to adjust to changing technology, and how to balance work with life. Women discussed overcoming insecurities and finding a voice in the workplace; which computer programs work best for different design phases; what it was like to work as a woman in the field in the 1960s versus today; and how to maintain an interest in the field. They also talked about how raising a family had led them to either leave the profession for one with a better pay-scale and shorter hours (such as development), or start their own firm where they could be in control of their schedule.

What made the November 20 event this year so successful was the wide variety of women who gathered. From firm principals, to emerging designers fresh out of school, to women who chose related but alternate career paths, to those who left the profession altogether (even the founder of the original Women in Architecture Committee was there!), the program highlighted the most important aspect of mentorship: everyone can learn from everyone else’s experiences. Thank you WIA for providing the venue.