Category: In The News

As May approaches, and with the AIA National Convention just two weeks away, a range of resources can help you organize your downtime. Architect has published, “At the Convention: How to Spend Your Free Time This May in Beantown,” by Fred A. Bernstein, with suggestions on architecture, restaurants and bars, and shopping locations to check out.

Also, Architectural Record‘s website, Record Reveals: Boston, features a city guide complete with overviews of the city’s history, museums, galleries, shopping, dining, nightlife, and walking tours. An open photo gallery encourages individuals as well as firms to submit photographs of interesting buildings, both new and old.

NYC Department of Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster, FAIA, resigned on 04.22.08; her deputy, Robert LiMandri, will serve as acting commissioner until the administration names a replacement…

The AIA and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have selected the top 10 examples of sustainable architecture and green design solutions including the Queens Botanical Garden Visitor & Administration Center by BKSK Architects… The AIA Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) Educational Facility Design Award winners include Perkins Eastman, receiving an Award of Merit for the Hopkins-Nanjing Center Samuel Pollard Building, in Nanjing, China…

PermMuseumXXI Competition “Special Prize Holder” winners include Acconci Studio and the team of Asymptote Architecture, Hani Rashid, and Lise Anne Couture… IA Interior Architects was named an Official Honoree for the 12th Annual Webby Awards… Queens Botanical Garden will honor Rick Fedrizzi, President/CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council, at the Rose Ball on 06.17.08…

NBBJ has promoted Jane Ayers to principal in its NY office… Farid Cardozo has joined Stantec as a senior associate…

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art announced that it is accepting first-time applications for the launch of its post-professional degree, the Master of Architecture II program, to begin the 2008-2009 school year…

Oculus 2008 Editorial Calendar
If you are an architect by training or see yourself as an astute observer of New York’s architectural and planning scene, note that OCULUS editors are looking for writers for the Fall and Winter issues. The themes:

Fall OCULUS: Practice. Focus of this year’s Practice issue is on the architectural office — the culture and decision-making structure of NY-based practices, how the office’s design reflects the culture, along with the views of key players in the firm.

Winter OCULUS: Competing for Space. Explore the growing competition between expansionist institutions on limited sites and the interests of adjacent communities, many in residential areas with moderate-income families.

If you’re interested, please contact OCULUS editor-in-chief Kristen Richards. with a brief outline and full contact information.

Spring 2008: closed
Summer 2008: closed
Fall 2008: closed
08.01.08 Winter 2008-09: Competing for Space

04.30.08 Call for Entries: LONDON 2008
Arquitectum presents its eighth international contest, an exhibition hosted by the Architectural Association School of London. The theme calls for a movable architecture gallery that travels across the River Thames to connect the various art spaces and collect visitors along the river, especially in the South Bank. The exhibition space should adapt to the movement of the river, to the different requirements of an exhibition and the artist, and to the weather in London. Early registration deadline is 04.30.08; final registration ends 06.30.08.

05.30.08 Call for Entries: USGBC 2008 Natural Talent Design Competition
This competition — which provides an applied learning experience in the principles of integrated design, sustainability, innovation, and social consciousness — calls for a proposed design for the Empire Fulton Ferry Art Center & Middle School. Participants will compete in a local competition, then the first place winner will compete for a national award at GreenBuild Boston in November 2008. Awards include Green Building Scholarships as well as travel and registration to GreenBuild, where finalists’ entries will be displayed and where final judging will occur.

05.30.08 Call for Entries: NYC Green Building Competition
Launched by the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and Environmental Protection Agency Region 2, this national competition seeks projects and ideas that promote NYC as the pre-eminent cultural and sustainable urban epicenter. Design projects are encouraged that integrate whole-building principles, employ the tenets of green building construction and end-of-life considerations, anticipate post-occupancy concerns, and complement the community in which they reside.

06.01.08 Call for Entries: 2008 World Habitat Awards
Established in 1985, the World Habitat Awards seek to identify practical, innovative, and sustainable solutions to current housing issues, which are capable of being transferred or adapted for use elsewhere. A panel of international judges assesses entries and awards £10,000 to two winning projects at the annual United Nations global celebration of World Habitat Day. The competition is open to all individuals and organizations, including central and local governments, community-based groups, NGOs, research organizations, and the private sector from any country.

06.01.08 Call for Entries: AIA New Hampshire IDID Awards
The fourth Integrated Design/Integrated Development (IDID) Excellence in Sustainable Design and Development Awards program honors work that contributes to the creation of a sustainable world. Awards are to be presented to outstanding buildings; urban, regional, and rural planning; landscape design; interior design; historic preservation; renovation; and rehabilitation projects. Submissions will be accepted for projects by New England design professionals, or projects in New England by design professionals elsewhere.

06.02.08 Call for Entries: Best Private Plots 08
This competition highlights the garden as a place of innovation, creativity, and action. Award criteria includes: ideas, artistic and conceptual quality, use of plants and materials, relationship between inside and outside, organization of open space, and technical and ecological planning. This is an open competition; candidates can include: landscape architects, architects, garden owners, designers, florists, gardeners, artists, and nurseries. First prize: €7,000; second prize: €5,000; and third prize: €3,000.

06.05.08 Call for Entries: Schiphol Sound Barrier Design Contest
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is organizing an international competition for the design of a sound barrier, to be built parallel to Runway 18R-36L (Polderbaan). The aim is to achieve a reduction in ground noise by at least seven decibels. The barrier must present an innovative solution for the complex problem of ground noise produced by aircraft taking off. Design agencies, businesses, universities, and private persons are invited to enter. The winning design will be awarded a prize of €750,000, with €1,250,000 in prize money to be distributed in total.

04.15.08

Congestion pricing may have come and gone for now, but with Earth Day approaching, let’s hope for new alternatives to reduce pollution and aid the greening of the city.

– Jessica Sheridan, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP

SAVE THE DATE: OCULUS is celebrating its 5th Anniversary this year with a party following the Annual Meeting.
Location: Center for Architecture
Date: 06.03.08, 8:30-11:00

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Exhibition: FEEDBACK
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street, through 04.19.08

(left) Fluxxlab’s Revolution Door uses manpower to generate energy for an LED sign; (right) The Power Cart by Mouna Andraos and Fluxxlab, among others, provides power to recharge electronic devices via a hand crank and solar panel.

Courtesy Eyebeam

In the future, perhaps sick buildings will automatically vent stale air by opening slits in their façades, recycling will be universal, and dead cell phones and laptops will be easily recharged with a few twists of a hand crank. These are just a few of the eco-friendly measures being conceived by architects, artists, and engineers featured in FEEDBACK, an exhibition at Eyebeam in Chelsea through this Saturday.

Visitors enter through a revolving door designed by Carmen Trudell and Jenny Broutin, who formed the design firm Fluxxlab to work on experimental sustainable projects together. Titled Revolution Door: Power for People by People (2007), the door recycles the energy used to push it to light up an LED sign. Fluxxlab also contributed the show’s exhibition design, which includes artificial turf covering a central “green,” evoking the ambiguous nature of some environments. Recycled artificial grass was a more eco-sensitive option than real grass would have been, said Broutin, who led one of FEEDBACK’s many accompanying workshops on the turf one recent Saturday.

Around the common green lie displays of about 20 projects at various phases of development. Designed by Mouna Andraos with help from Broutin, Trudell, and others, The Power Cart (2007) is a recycled-wood contraption designed to wheel around city streets, providing power to recharge cell phones or other devices via a hand crank and solar panel. On the side is a shelf for wine bottles, so the eco-conscious may have a drink while they wait for their gadgets to charge.

Systems for monitoring air pollution and other toxins abound. One highlight is Living City (2008) by architectural designers David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of The Living. The latest phase of this project involves networking buildings in NYC and San Francisco to share air-quality data gleaned by sensors. In response to the air quality readings, a prototype building façade at the SF art center Southern Exposure “breathes” by opening and closing gill-like slits (viewable at Eyebeam through live video). Eyebeam visitors can also see (but, alas, not ride) a prototype of the wooden bike that Rogers Marvel Architects and West 8 designed for Governors Island.

A few projects may leave visitors scratching their heads, such as Annina Rüst’s eRiceCooker (2006), which tracks references to genetically modified rice on Internet news sites and automatically cooks rice in response, creating an excess of food that seems counterintuitive. Overall, though, FEEDBACK serves as a roadmap of promising routes being developed toward a more sustainable future.

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

Event: City College School of Architecture Lecture Series: Amanda Burden
Location: City College School of Architecture, 03.27.08
Speaker: Amanda M. Burden, Hon. AIANY — Chair, NYC City Planning Commission & Commissioner, NYC Department of City Planning
Moderator: George Ranalli, AIA — Dean, City College of New York (CCNY) School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture
Organizer: CCNY School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture

Long Island City is one of the major development sites Amanda Burden, Hon. AIANY, has taken on as commissioner of the NYC Department of City Planning.

Jessica Sheridan

Under the leadership of Commissioner Amanda Burden, Hon, AIANY, the NYC Department of City Planning has worked at a frenetic pace over the last six years, including rezoning one-sixth of the city — more than combined actions of the past 40 years.

Burden’s role in reshaping NYC is significant in making Mayor Bloomberg’s aggressive redevelopment plans possible. A review of City Planning’s major initiatives during the Bloomberg administration include: the East River waterfront, World Trade Center site, West Side Rail Yards, Jamaica Business District, Long Island City, Greenpoint / Williamsburg waterfront, the South Bronx, 125th Street, and the High Line, to name a few. Each of these projects could take years of analysis, field observation, and community interaction, yet somehow they have all been implemented under one administration.

Embedded in Burden’s City College lecture were counterpunches to criticism of some of the proposals’ scale, affordability, and potential to restrict community access to neighborhood assets. For example, when discussing the Greenpoint / Williamsburg waterfront, Burden cited the FAR bonus for waterfront buildings that include at least 20% affordable housing. Burden also mentioned “get-downs” allowing direct water access that will be part of both the East River and the Greenpoint / Williamsburg waterfront projects, deflecting criticism that recent waterfront redevelopment projects tend to treat the water as something to be seen and not experienced. Burden also discussed the numerous down-zoning and preservation efforts made by the department in an effort to maintain the character of important neighborhoods like City Island, Park Slope, and Whitestone.

While the debate rages on as to whose needs these massive development projects address, there is no debating Burden’s sweeping impact on the shape of this city.

Max Driscoll, LEED AP, is a junior architect at Croxton Collaborative Architects and a member of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Event: D-Crit Reading Night: “Evil”
Location: KGB Bar, 03.27.08
Speakers: Steven Heller — Author, The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? & Co-Chair, MFA Design, School of Visual Arts; Philip Nobel — Author, Sixteen Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero & Columnist, Metropolis; Andrea Codrington — Writer, Editor, & Brand Strategist, Brand Building Communications
Organizers: MFA program in Design Criticism (D-Crit), School of Visual Arts

The SVA D-Crit program takes on “Evil.”

Courtesy School of Visual Arts

The School of Visual Arts (SVA) launches its Design Criticism (D-Crit) program this fall, seeking to strengthen links among journalism, academic critique, and design. Several months before classes begin, D-Crit is already striking an informal, edgy profile with readings at the literary nightspot KGB. By taking on vast topics like Home, Music, and Evil, D-Crit’s organizers aim to show up the breadth and flexibility of this area of critical writing. The latest reading also showed how evil can elicit both gravity and wit.

Steven Heller, author and co-chair of the MFA Design program at SVA, argued that a symbol can be wrenched out of its history and converted to a visual weapon dangerous enough to ban. Fascinated from youth with the Nazis and the swastika, Heller expanded this interest into The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?, explicitly “a polemical history, not a linear or narrative one.” He has considered arguments for rehabilitating the symbol because of its long pre-Nazi history in Hindu and Native American cultures, among others; yet, he is against ever normalizing it, voicing special scorn for Sid Vicious-style transgressive displays. Because of the unique pathology of Nazism as “a paradigm of how terror became official policy for a civilized state,” Heller says, a suggestion that time could ever decontaminate it “begs the question, ‘What is enough time?'”

Author and columnist Philip Nobel read from a Metropolis column that nearly got him fired: an open letter to Philip Johnson connecting washed-out aesthetics to fascism. Nobel took the “Dean” to the woodshed for cynicism, collaborationism (in his period of admiration for Hitler — something Johnson’s admirers ignored until critic Michael Sorkin unearthed some early writings), and the tendency to revel in a position of power out of proportion to his architectural gifts. Though Johnson’s “acerbic wit, deracination of Modernism, and endless pimping” defined contemporary architecture for several generations, Nobel makes a case that Johnson’s influence also constricted and warped it. Nobel’s potshots add up to a distinction between taste making and the ethical seriousness that informs deeper talent.

Andrea Codrington, brand strategist for Brand Building Communications, observed how Hollywood directors use Modernist design to connote menace. Commercial cinema mythologizes American domesticity and the associated homey building styles; the flip side, Codrington finds, is a tendency to portray Europeans, and their clean-lined buildings, in terms of “villainy and vanity.” James Bond, she notes, becomes increasingly endangered the closer he gets to the geometric lairs of the Dr. Nos, Blofelds, Goldfingers, et al., all “monomaniacal scoundrels with exquisite modernist taste.” Hollywood’s habitual demonization of Modernism, she concluded, eventually ran counter to reality: when genuine terror hit Americans on 9/11, the culprits were not the elegant villains of Hitchcock or Kubrick. They lived in caves.

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

Event: Reflecting Absence: Designing a Memorial at the World Trade Center
Speaker: Michael Arad, AIA — Partner, Handel Architects
Location: 7WTC, 03.20.08
Organizer: Downtown Alliance (part of the Downtown Third Thursday series)

Arial view from the southeast of “Reflecting Absence.”

dbox, courtesy wtcsitememorial.org

When it opens in 2011, the World Trade Center Site Memorial, whose theme is “Reflecting Absence,” will look somewhat different from its original concept. In addition to the bosque of trees that has been added surrounding the Memorial, the concept and progression of the underground Memorial Gallery has been altered. Michael Arad, AIA, winner of the memorial design competition, showed how the design has been refined over the past four years, presenting a palette of details currently under development with landscape architect Peter Walker, FASLA. Undergoing fine-tuning are the fountain design and the project’s name plaques, both of which are intended to ultimately reinforce the memorial’s underlying theme, “Reflecting Absence.”

The water delivery system designed for the project’s massive fountain centerpiece is vital, says Arad. Though initially intended to be a sheet of water “clinging to the surface” of the memorial, the fountain will ultimately feature individual streams of water canting more than six and a half feet from the face of the wall. The fountains take inspiration from Arad’s initial concept of providing two large fissures in the Hudson River. Now they will mirror the footprints of the towers on the memorial site.

After many mock-ups, Arad and his team are also close to finishing the design of the name plaques, including material and font. The plaques will now circle the top ring of the fountains (instead of the original location proposed circling the lower level of these openings) and may be partially engaged with the water. Viewing the names from the surface, rather than from inside the fountains, altered one of the project’s initial concepts – reflecting from within the void. According to Arad, this move “changed the entire meaning of the project’s edge,” making the ground-level perimeter of the fountains even more important.

Carolyn Sponza, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners, and the AIANY Chapter Vice President of Professional Development.

The New York Times published an article about a proposal to move the Joyce Theater performing art center from the World Trade Center site to the Fulton Street Transit Center (See “Proposal Would Relocate Arts Center to Transit Hub,” by Robin Pogrebin, 04.10.08). While the proposal, put forth by Avi Schick, president and downstate COO of the Empire State Development Corporation and chairman of the Board of Directors at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, is not yet approved, I am concerned that the state will make rash, damaging decisions dictated by inadequate funding.

One of the biggest challenges facing planners of the WTC site is how to make it a destination for locals and tourists at all times of day and night. The commercial development, major transit hub, retail stores, and memorial should keep the site lively throughout the day. However, once work hours are over, I doubt a shopping mall will do the trick. It hasn’t worked in the past, and businesses in Lower Manhattan have enough trouble staying open once Wall Street executives limo home, outside the area. Instead, the Joyce Theater’s diverse performances and programs, that attract both young and old audiences, would create a magnet for evening activity. The WTC could become a downtown alternative to Lincoln Center.

The proposal to move the art center to Fulton Street would take away from both the Joyce Theater and the transit center projects. How will the state reconcile between the current transit hub, designed by Grimshaw Architects with James Carpenter Design Associates and Arup, and the Gehry Partners-designed art center? The proposal itself seems to assume that buildings can be used for anything, no matter what the initial design intent. It is a matter of misappropriation. The transit hub, designed for mass transit, cannot simply incorporate an art center; and by proceeding with this proposal, there is no guarantee it will save the city any money.

Ultimately, I feel that the state has not been able to see culture as a critical asset. It is often viewed at best as an enhancement to a place, or at worst an afterthought, but it is not perceived as a requisite to successful urban planning. For a city internationally renowned for its culture, it’s a shame new, high profile projects are being compromised.