Category: In The News

The City of New York Parks & Recreation Department is in the process of forming a working plan for future development of the park system. To participate, take the department’s Public Outreach Survey.

A preliminary short-list of prospective designers for the National Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC, includes NYC-based Robert Rogers, FAIA, & Jonathan Marvel, AIA, of Rogers Marvel Architects…The six finalists in The Red Hook Bicycle Master Plan Design Competition are Heather Aman Design, Jonathan Rule, HOK Sport, Route Peddlers, H3 + EWT, and Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture…

Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri announced an executive staff reorganization to further standardize the Buildings Department’s operations. Appointments include: Fatma Amer as First Deputy Commissioner; Thomas Fariello, RA, as Acting Bronx Borough Commissioner; Ira Gluckman, AIA, as Queens Borough Commissioner; Marshall Kaminer, PE, as Staten Island Borough Commissioner; Derek Lee, RA, as Brooklyn Borough Commissioner; Magdi Mossad, PE, as Manhattan Borough Commissioner; and Christopher Santulli, PE, as Acting Assistant Commissioner for Engineering and Safety Operations…

12.12.08 Call for Entries: YOU, ME & THE BUS II
This national design competition seeks concepts for bus shelters in Athens, GA. The project aims to enhance the public transportation system and improve quality of life in Athens by integrating utilitarian public services with artistic ingenuity and inspiration. It will fund a total of eight bus shelters, to be installed along local transportation arteries. Designs should convey the theme of Art Rocks! A Public Art Tribute to the Music of Athens. Shelters should hold a minimum of three people with a wheelchair space, and respond to the relationships between pedestrians, sidewalk, curb, and street.

01.12.09 Call for Entries: 09 Skyscraper Competition
The annual Skyscraper Competition organized by eVolo invites students, architects, engineers, and designers to explore ideas and concepts for vertical density. Multidisciplinary teams are encouraged. The competition calls for innovative designs for the 21st century that takes into consideration the historical and social context, existing urban fabric, human scale, and the environment.

02.06.09 Call for Entries: 2009 ASLA Professional Awards
Each year the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) awards program honors the best in landscape architecture from around the globe, while the student awards program provides a glimpse into the future of the profession. Six categories include: general design; residential design; analysis and planning; research (co-sponsored by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture and Landscape Journal); communications; and landmarks (co-sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation). The student awards program features the student community service and student collaboration categories. Award recipients receive featured coverage in Landscape Architecture.

Event: Hong Kong | New York: Vertical Density | Sustainable Solutions
Location: Chase Manhattan Plaza, 10.16.08; Tishman Auditorium, New School, 10.17-18.08
Speakers: Learning from Hong Kong, 10.16.08: Thomas Wright — Executive Director, Regional Planning Association; Thomas Ho — Property Director, MTR Corporation, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Elliot Sander — Executive Director & CEO, MTA; Christopher O. Ward — Executive Director, Port Authority of NY & NJ; Paul Katz, FAIA — Partner & Principal, Kohn Pedersen Fox; David Scott — Principal, Arup & Chair, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat; Julia Lau — Sun Hung Kai Properties; Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA — Executive Vice President, The Related Companies; Debating Density, 10.17.2008: Nicholas Brooke — Chairman, Professional Property Services Group, Hong Kong; Mark Willis — Visiting Scholar, The Ford Foundation; Peter Cookson Smith — Founding Director, Urbis, Hong Kong; Christine Loh — President & CEO, Civic-Exchange; Margaret Brooke — Heritage Hong Kong; Robert Tierney — Chair, NYC Landmark Preservation Commission; Carrie Lam — Secretary for Development, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Amanda Burden, Hon. AIANY — Chair, City Planning Commission & Director, Department of City Planning; Designing Density: Theory and Practice, 10.18.08: Brian McGrath — Associate Professor of Urban Design, Parsons School of Design; Paul Chu — Hong Kong Urban Design Alliance; Laurence Liauw — Architect & Associate Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Ackbar Abbas — Professor of Comparative Literature, Hong Kong University & UC-Irvine; Alexandros E. Washburn, AIA — Chief Urban Designer, NYC Dept of City Planning; Eric Höweler, AIA — Principal, Höweler Yoon Architecture; Jim Robinson — Executive Director, Hong Kong Land
Moderator: Carol Willis — Director, The Skyscraper Museum;
Organizers: The Skyscraper Museum

NYC and Hong Kong share certain conditions, physical and cultural: excellent harbors, limited buildable land, a history as transit points for immigration and emigration, and a collective willingness to explore the “culture of congestion,” as coined in Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York. If NYC was the original test bed for the idea, Hong Kong has adapted it successfully and stretched its possibilities. Hong Kong now has the world’s highest concentration of skyscrapers. Its middle class and its developers have created a thick forest of high-rise housing to accommodate them. The buildable areas of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula are so Manhattanized that the common description as Asia’s Manhattan has almost run its course and inverted itself, so that Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, executive vice president of the Related Companies, could refer to “New York [as] actually America’s Hong Kong.”

Carol Willis, director of the Skyscraper Museum, drew distinctions between forms of density produced by wealth and by poverty: affluent cities, like NYC and Hong Kong plus London, tend to embrace vertical development, while poorer cities like Mumbai and Cairo, though technically denser on a raw statistical basis, are predominantly low-rise. (If only the buildable 25% is considered, Hong Kong, like Manhattan, has about 70,000 people per square mile.) The early 20th-century Futurist vision, a rationalized city of high-tech multimodal transportation, takes literal shape in the elevated pedestrian bridges, large-scale harbor reclamation projects, and single-seat rail-to-airport connections of today’s Hong Kong.

A key part of this realized future is the MTR train system, a profitable private company that pursues an integrated rail/property development model. By coordinating all aspects of construction and management of mixed-use properties atop or adjacent to railway stations, MTR finances high-volume rail operations (some 3.4 million personal trips a day) without any government support. MTR also supports ambitious designs, including the eco-community LOHAS Park (“Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability”) near Tseung Kwan O station, a 50-tower complex that will segregate cars completely from pedestrian space in the interests of air quality, recreation, and healthy living. Local panelists, including the MTA’s Elliot Sander and the Port Authority’s Christopher Ward, expressed admiration for what Ho called a “win-win-win-win” for Hong Kong society, developers, government, and MTR. They wondered whether sprawlbound American culture is ready for such a radical departure into a post-automotive future.

The “Debating Density” discussion produced rigorous self-critiques of development’s erasure of building styles and street life. The panel’s fundamental question — does density pay, or does it cost? — becomes more urgent, said Kohn Pedersen Fox’s Paul Katz, FAIA, in the context of current financial collapses triggered by housing loans; financial, housing, and environmental crises are all consequences of sprawl, Katz finds, and density is the solution. Yet planning for density, incentivizing dense community formation in and around urban areas, and ensuring affordability have also exacted costs: the city is losing a degree of its authenticity, and air pollution undermines postcard views. Panelists stressed that an engineering-based approach to planning can strip away the idiosyncrasies that are inseparable from high-quality urban life. NYC’s street-level diversity is a positive model for Hong Kong and other cities.

Panelists emphasized the importance of bottom-up planning, looking at the city as a multidimensional organism rather than the 2-D zoning maps, photos, and renderings. Hong Kong Urban Design Alliance’s Paul Chu has his students examine sections rather than plans to acquire a sense of self-organizing urban textures and understand how superblocks destroy complexity. Ackbar Abbas, a professor of comparative literature and native Hongkonger, recalled Koolhaas’s idea that congestion is not so much a problem as the “forever insoluble problem that allowed Manhattan to be built.” If a “Hong Kong-ism” is arising, the city’s history as a site of migration, dependence, and recurrent threats give it a unique dynamic balance, forever converting its own crises into vitality.

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OCULUS, Icon, Content, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.

Event: Ordos 13 — in conjunction with exhibition 13:100 | Thirteen New York Architects Design for Ordos
Location: The Urban Center, 10.17.08
Speakers: Gregory Wessner — Digital Programs & Exhibitions Director, The Architectural League of New York; Lyn Rice, AIA — Founder, Lyn Rice Architects; Pablo Castro — OBRA Architects; Daniel Holguin & Issei Suma — Multiplicities; Hayes Slade & James Slade, AIA — Principals & Founders, Slade Architecture; Alexandra Barker, AIA — Principal, Barker Freeman Design Office; Keller Easterling — Keller Easterling; Josh Uhl, AIA — Associate, Toshiko Mori Architect; Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss — Founder & Partner, Normal Architecture Office; Rodrigo Vidal — rsvp architects; Eric Bunge, AIA — Partner, nARCHITECTS; Jinhee Park, AIA, & John Hong, AIA — Principals, SINGLE speed DESIGN; Paul Lewis, AIA, Marc Tsurumaki, AIA, David Lewis — Partners, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis; Dan Wood, AIA — Principal, WORKac
Organizers: The Architectural League of New York

13 NY-based firms’ designs for Ordos are on view at the Urban Center.

Courtesy The Architectural League of New York

The design phase has come to end in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, where 100 international firms are each designing 1,000-square-meter villas within 100 days without constraints of a client. In 13:100 | Thirteen New York Architects Design for Ordos, designed by Project_ at the Urban Center, the 13 NY-based architects participating in the project have been given 1/100 of the gallery to present their villas in images, texts, drawings, and a 1:100 scale model. Recently, they were given more restraints: each firm could present 15 slides shown for 15 seconds.

Every presentation was different, emblematic of the various styles of the firms (perhaps most unique was Slade Architecture, who planted staff in the audience to shout words timed with the slides), but what one could take away from the presentation was a sense that, regardless of the size of the homes, Ordos amplifies contemporary concerns about ecology, economy, inequity, celebrity, and cultural hegemony. For example, Eight Towers by SINGLE speed DESIGN features energy-efficient design. As the title implies, the villa consists of eight towers that connect at different points, each symbolizing a different use. The idea is that when one tower is occupied, the others do not need to be consuming energy.

Lyn Rice Architects is focusing on one of Ordo’s environmental issues — trying to control regional erosion. The design of Villa 007, on what used to be a meadow, consists of three landscaped courts that shape the glazed-concrete villa.

The Villa-Villa, or “a House in a House” as described by Eric Bunge, AIA, of nARCHITECTS, responds to Ordos’ extreme climate by expanding and contracting with the temperature. In inclement weather, the “Inner House” compactly holds the essentials of living while the “Outer House” provides an extra layer of shelter. In temperate weather, the residents can expand their dwelling to the “Outer House,” an outdoor-like environment.

Christian Bergner, Assoc. AIA, currently works at Caples Jefferson Architects, having previously worked with Studio Libeskind. He studied architecture in Oxford, UK, BA (Hons), was a project manager for national and international projects, the Chairman for the Oxford Architecture Society, and executive member of the national architecture society ARCHAOS. Bergner is also a member of the AIANY Emerging NY Architects (ENYA) Committee and seeks LEED accreditation.

The new TKTS Booth in Times Square.

Jessica Sheridan

Finally, after eight years since the Theatre Development Fund and Van Alen Institute’s international ideas competition launched, the TKTS Booth in Times Square is open. Designed by Perkins Eastman based on Choi Ropiha’s concept, the small pavilion echoes and blends with the surrounding environment and provides much needed gathering space in one of the most congested areas of the city.

The dominating side of the booth consists of red glass steps, mimicking the nearby lights and signage — from the Virgin Megastore to Bank of America and the blinking Coke sign above. The all-glass structure is transparent, yet as one moves around it, it reflects the cars, signs, and people crowded around the square. On a clear afternoon, the sun shines through the glass to cast red shadows on the street, expanding the booth’s boundaries. Although small in size, because of the reflections, the surrounding activity is amplified and activated making the structure seem bigger than it really is.

The booth’s underside, facing north, is where the ticket windows are located. There are two kiosks on the east and west sides that display available tickets. While having two kiosks instead of just posting the listings at the front of the line alleviates some of the crowds, they are sited at the sidewalk corners at busy intersections that block pedestrians trying to pass (especially when a group is huddled around the kiosks trying to decide what show to see). Also, the biggest urban planning challenge — alleviating the long lines — is not fully addressed by the new booth. Unattractive red retractable belts wind the lines along the sides of the pavilion, imposing on the sidewalk, again in the way of passing pedestrians. Although there is more plaza space on the south side of the booth, the north side remains congested.

Overall, I think the new TKTS Booth is a success, and I now plan on making an effort to take time to sit on the steps, people watch, and absorb the activity of Times Square.

In this issue:
· Living Classrooms Educate Future Scientists
· The Lights are Now Brighter on Broadway
· Blue Men Cultivate Young Kids
· Museum Connects Town to Ex-Architect-Turned-Painter
· Portugal Explores New Era of Science
· Korea Opens for Business with New Convention Center

Living Classrooms Educate Future Scientists

Lehman College.

Perkins + Will

Lehman College in the Bronx, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), recently broke ground on its new Science Building. The first of a three-phase project designed by Perkins + Will to create a science-oriented “campus within a campus,” the 69,000-square-foot building will feature state-of-the-art laboratories for research and learning along with a conference center and office space.

The building is intended to be used as a teaching tool. The central courtyard will enclose a wetland of native grasses hosting microbes capable of cleaning stormwater that can be recycled within. Faculty and students will be able to collect samples, understand how contaminants in the water impact the ecosystem, and study how natural processes can remove contaminants from the environment. In addition, displays will provide real-time information on building operations, such as the energy saved by solar hot water panels and the amount of water cleansed and re-circulated over the building’s lifespan. Additional sustainable features include preservation of the existing trees and reuse of the college’s 1950s rock garden; radiant floor heating; rooftop greenhouse; aggressive storm and greywater management systems; and provisions for future blackwater treatment. The project is CUNY’s first to go for LEED and is expected to receive LEED Gold.

The Lights are Now Brighter on Broadway

TKTS Booth.

Photo by Emile Wamsteker, courtesy Times Square Alliance

Theater goers are now saying, “Meet me under the red steps in Father Duffy Square.” The new TKTS Booth, the winner of a 2000 international ideas competition sponsored by the Theatre Development Fund and directed by the Van Alen Institute, was designed by Perkins Eastman based on Australia-based Choi Ropiha’s winning concept. The custom-fabricated fiberglass booth is enclosed in an amphitheatre-style red glass staircase, 27 steps high, boasting seating room for more than 500 people. The state-of-the-art slip-resistant glass steps are lit from below with LEDs and incorporate geothermal-based heating and cooling technology.

The new Duffy Square also doubles the amount of pedestrian space previously available and allows visitors to experience the Times Square “bowtie” on the staircase or sitting at street-level café tables. NY-based architecture and interior design firm Williams Fellows Architects, designed the plaza. This $19 million project was overseen by the Times Square Alliance, the Theatre Development Fund, and the Coalition for Father Duffy in a public-private partnership that included $11.5 million in city funding from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

Blue Men Cultivate Young Kids

Blue Man Group Creativity Center.

Pentastudio Architecture

Pentastudio Architecture has been commissioned by the Blue Man Group, known for its elaborate theatrical shows, to design its newest venture — the Blue Man Creativity Center, scheduled to open in fall 2009. The school’s founders believe that a child’s physical environment has a great impact on his or her creative development, and spaces are designed to awaken the senses and inspire imagination via diverse materials, luminescent colors, tactile elements, and resonant sounds. The center, geared for children aged two through six, is located in NoHo. The circa 1830s buildings, became a designated landmark in 1965, and the architects’ plans have been approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Renovations include a new wheelchair-accessible entry at sidewalk level. Future plans are for a detailed design of the school space itself, including specialized furniture, millwork, lighting, and media. The firm previously designed the group’s rehearsal, casting, and training studio.

Museum Connects Town to Ex-Architect-Turned-Painter

Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso.

Louise Braverman, Architect

Louise Braverman, FAIA, has designed the new Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso, slated to be built in 2010 with the goal of being a cultural and economic engine for Boticas, Portugal. The museum will exhibit approximately 80 artworks by Portuguese artist Nadir Afonso (born 1920), known for his abstract geometric paintings. The artist was formerly a practicing architect who worked for both Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. The museum is divided into two distinct yet connected parts — a cultural structure and a below-grade exhibition space covered by a park. A double-height entry hall featuring a ceramic mural by the artist with a second story balcony provides entrance to an auditorium. A black-and-white floor pattern, typical of Portuguese design, runs throughout and merges the outdoor café with the indoor entry, café, multipurpose space, and gift shop. The below-grade exhibition space, carved out of a granite hillside and covered with a planted green roof park, connects to the pastoral section of town. The excavated granite also functions as a retaining wall for the galleries, and a glass roof will provide indirect light for the art displays.

Portugal Explores New Era of Science

Gouverneur Healthcare Services.

RMJM Hillier

A groundbreaking ceremony was recently held for Portugal’s first major medical research center for cancer and the neurosciences: the 300,000-square-foot Champalimaud Foundation Centre. The centre is the first building in a major redevelopment plan for Belem, along the Tagus River in Lisbon. Three buildings have been designed by a team that includes Bombay-based Charles Correa Associates as design architect, NY-based RMJM Hillier as laboratory and clinical design architect, and Consiste of Portugal as the architect-of-record. The main building houses the diagnostic, treatment and wellness centers, research labs, and administrative offices. One building hosts a rainforest garden that is accessible to patients and staff, an auditorium, restaurant, exhibition area, and conference center. The third building has an open-air amphitheater facing the river for public performances and community events. The three buildings are arranged to create a 125-meter-long pathway leading across the site toward open seas; the plaza is open to the public and suited for events. As a symbolic gesture in ushering in a new era of scientific exploration and discovery for Portugal, the Foundation arranged for a small robot to place the first stone in the building’s foundation, expected to be completed in October of 2010.

Korea Opens for Business with New Convention Center

ConvensiA Convention Center.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

Songdo ConvensiA Convention Center was officially handed over to the city of Incheon, by NY-based developer Gale International. The $155 million convention center, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, is the first building completed in the Songdo International Business District, a 1,500-acre master planned financial district. The ConvensiA offers one of the world’s longest column-free spans for exhibition space (145 meters). A sculptured roof resembles overturned boat hulls, and the center contains two boat-shaped exhibition halls and two-and-a-half gabled entrance spaces. Eventually, the facility will more than triple in size to eight halls and 10 entrance spaces. The “expandable” building will grow to 1.3 million square feet when complete. Songdo IBD will officially open in August 2009, as the first new city in the world designed and planned as an international business district.

According to a nationwide study of office workers released by Gensler, workplace design plays a pivotal role in overall business performance by supporting the new work modes of a knowledge economy. The Gensler 2008 U.S. Workplace Survey reveals that top-performing companies are embracing a fundamental restructuring of work through workplace design that places as much emphasis on collaboration, learning, and socialization as on individual “heads-down” work. Companies providing workplaces that are more effective for knowledge work are seeing higher levels of employee engagement, brand equity, and profit, with profit growth up to 14% greater than those with less effective work environments.

The Gensler survey makes evident that improving business performance via workplace improvements depends on the quality of space functionality and effectiveness, not quantity of space. Specifically, designing a workplace to support the right proportion of four knowledge work modes — focus, collaboration, learning, and socializing — is a key differentiator. Top-performing companies are those identified by survey respondents as the most profitable, admired, and leading in their industries. To read the full survey along with tips on workplace design, click the link.

Polshek Partnership Architects has won a 2008 Honor Award for Design Excellence from the Boston Society of Architects (BSA) for the Public Broadcasting Station Headquarters for WGBH… The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Intensive Care Unit, designed daSILVA Architects, has won a 2009 ICU Design Citation Award… Winners of the Holcim Awards 2008 for region North America include NY-based Christopher J. Collins, Executive Director of Solar One Green Energy, Arts, and Education Center, who also won a Gold 2008 Holcim Award for the Solar 2 Green Energy, Arts, and Education Center…

Peter Claman, AIA, of SLCE Architects, received the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award… The Historic Districts Council will present its 20th Landmarks Lion Award to preservation architect Walter B. Melvin, AIA…

The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) announced that the Mid-Hudson Section is merging into the NYC Section, making the IESNYC one of the largest sections of the IES…

SMWM, a women-owned architecture, urban design, and planning practice, has joined forces with Perkins+Will… Perkins Eastman announced the opening of a new office in Guayaquil, Ecuador… BBG-BBGM announced that senior partner Louis R. Hedgecock, AIA, has been promoted to managing partner…