News – What’s New at AIANY and the Center for Architecture.

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 Winter issue. The theme:

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.

08.01.08 Winter 2008-09: Competing for Space

08.08.08 Call for Entries: Park(ing) Day
On Park(ing) Day — launching on 09.19.08 — people will reclaim parking spots for a single day, transforming them into vibrant, functional, public spaces. The NYC Streets Renaissance in partnership with the Trust for Public Land will reserve 50 spots this year, and they are seeking architects, landscape architects, designers, and artists to help bring inventive installations to the streets by building collaborative Park(ing) Spots. Projects will be a partnership between the designer/firm and an NYC community group; they should reflect the social, cultural, and aesthetic context of the community in which they are built.

09.05.08 Call for Entries: Social Habitat and Development Competition
The Colegio de Arquitectos of Ecuador invites architectural design professionals to participate in this international competition as part of the XVI Quito Pan-American Architecture Biennale to be held 11.17-21.08. All participating projects will be published in the Biennale catalogue. The BAQ/2008, in partnership with the Department of Housing Development and Management of the University of Lund, Sweden, and under the Program PROMESHA created the award to acknowledge efforts to improve the lives of the most vulnerable urban populations within a sustainable framework, and to provide better living standards and an improved quality of life.

09.15.08 Call for Nominations: Richard H. Driehaus Prize
The $200,000 prize, administered through the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, is awarded annually to an outstanding architect or firm whose work applies the principles of Classicism, with respect to sustainability, in the built and natural environment. Practicing architects, firms and their representatives, as well as industry leaders, architectural students, and classical enthusiasts are encouraged to submit nominations for consideration for the 2009 laureate.

09.15.08 Call for Entries: From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes
This competition seeks to provide a new model for formerly vital, urban residential neighborhoods through the creation of sustainable, affordable housing. Selected teams will work on infill sites, proposing designs for a 1,100- to 1,500-square-foot, single-family home to be built in the Near Westside neighborhood of Syracuse, NY. The goal of the competition is to create innovative designs for cost-efficient, green prototypes sensitive to the scale and composition of the existing conditions, while providing a new vision that is legible to a wide array of existing and potential residents.

09.19.08 Call for Submissions: P/A Awards
The P/A Awards recognize unbuilt projects demonstrating overall design excellence and innovation. Architects and other design professionals practicing in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico may enter one or more submissions. Proposals may be for any location, but work must have been directed and substantially executed in offices in any of the three countries. All entries must be commissioned by paying clients for execution. Winners will be honored at a celebration in NY in January 2009, and published in the January 2009 issue of ARCHITECT.

09.19.08 Call for Architects: Smithsonian Institution African American Museum Design
The Smithsonian Institution is calling for initial ideas to build the newest museum on the National Mall, which will be dedicated to black history. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is scheduled to open in 2015 and officials hope to name an architectural team by spring 2009. Submissions will be narrowed down to between three and seven firms for a design competition. Congress has pledged to provide half of the museum’s $500 million cost, with private fundraising to cover the balance. The Smithsonian is encouraging minority architects to participate, but teams submitting proposals are not required to include minorities.

10.01.08 Call for Entries: Make Some Green Competition
Keeseh Studio invites students and design enthusiasts to pursue ecodesign that utilizes waste material. The goal is to promote “upcycling,” or the use of waste material as raw material for other products or processes, by generating innovative designs and redefining the standards of environmental sustainability. Three entries will win media coverage of their product or process and one will win a cash prize of $1,000.

10.15.08 Call for Entries: 2008 Beyond Green High-Performance Building Awards
The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council SBIC will recognize initiatives that shape, inform, and catalyze the high-performance building market, as well as the real-world application of high-performance design and construction practices. Award winners will present their projects in January 2009 in Washington D.C., in conjunction with an awards reception. Winning projects will also receive a plaque, be published on the Whole Building Design Guide website, in SBIC’s newsletter, and included in SBIC technical guidelines and publications.

07.22.08

With the hot, humid weather, I suggest staying cool in the city’s many air-conditioned museums and galleries around town. Buckminster Fuller is at the Whitney Museum, pre-fab housing is at MoMA, and the latest Emerging NY Architects committee competition exploring South Street Seaport is at the Center for Architecture.

– Jessica Sheridan, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP

CLICK ON THE CENTER: AIANY BLOG: The AIANY Chapter has launched a new blog. The Center features opinion pieces on architectural issues relevant to NY-based designers, firms, and projects, along with spotlights on debates and discussions at the Center for Architecture and AIANY, and is an informal discussion board. Be sure to check it out regularly and contribute to the dialogue.

Some of the recent debates include:

· AIANY Policy. Have you wondered how AIANY establishes its policy positions? Laura Manville, the AIANY Policy Coordinator explains all.

· O’Toole Building and St. Vincent’s Hospital. Read Frederic Schwartz, FAIA’s testimony at the NYC Landmarks Commission to develop an adaptive re-use of the O’Toole Building.

· Architecture and Morality. In response to Robin Pogrebin’s article, “I’m the Designer. My Client’s the Autocrat,” in the New York Times, The Center invites your takes on architects working in countries with questionable human rights records. Check out “To Serve God or Mammon? The Architect’s Dilemma,” by Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA.

In this issue:
· Historic Preservation Faces Sustainability Hurdles
· The Gang’s All There: Attention to Materials Pushes Limits of Design
· Rubber Hits Road with Bike Share Project

Event: Experimental Architecture Series: Jeanne Gang
Location: Center for Architecture, 07.16.2008
Speaker: Jeanne Gang, AIA — Principal & Founder, Studio/Gang (Chicago)
Moderator: Saf Fahim, AIA — Design Principal, Archronica Architects, & Chair, Architecture Dialogue Committee
Organizers: The AIA New York Chapter and the AIANY Architectural Dialogue Committee

The Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theater (left) and Marble Curtain (right).

Studio/Gang

Along with her own designs, Jeanne Gang, AIA, juxtaposed a seashell’s patterns with a computer-generated graph showing how the growing shell emits its pigments. This mathematically regular “relation to material and time,” she explained, was inexplicable until today’s technology allowed for precise analysis. Such close attention to the properties of natural materials and the power of ideas yields Studio/Gang’s approach to architectural processes that moderator Saf Fahim, AIA, identified as “the triad of materials, ideas, and process.”

Like Rem Koolhaas and other provocateurs at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, where she worked before forming Studio/Gang in 1997, Gang devotes intense attention to analyzing program requirements in the early phases of a project, and she delights in proposing solutions that others may consider impossible. Her firm’s first independent project, the Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theater at Rock Valley College in Rockford, IL, is an outdoor theater sporting an operable roof with six triangular panels that open like an origami flower, allowing open-air performances while remaining weatherproof. Backlit porthole windows help maximize the building’s profile on a small-college budget. For some viewers, the 12-minute sequential opening of its six overlapping “petals,” repeated at the beginning and intermission of each event, often upstages the performances.

Gang was one of four architects selected for the National Building Museum’s Masonry Variations Exhibition in 2003, and curator Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, assigned her the charge of working in stone. A floor with limited weight support complicated the structural requirements. Gang’s solution was to hang from the vaulted ceiling a network of catenary-curved chains of translucent, 3/8-inch-thick marble, cut by water jets into 660 different puzzle pieces designed to distribute stresses. Along with dissolving the conceptual border between rigidity and fluidity, the Marble Curtain tested how stone behaves in tension rather than compression, an area where data had been scarce.

Expanding into larger-scale projects, Studio/Gang has used baseball as a heuristic tool: investigations of Chicago’s stadiums, Wrigley Field, and U.S. Cellular Field (New Comiskey Park), led to both a study of urban density for the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004-05, and a new stadium plan for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2004 Venice Biennale. The design suggests informal rooftop viewing structures just beyond Wrigley’s outfield (a feature now sanctioned by Chicago’s building codes). The sporting facility would fragment its seating into separate angled-tier components distributed through an urban neighborhood.

Gang’s breakthrough project may be the hotel/residential tower Aqua, whose 82 individually sculpted floor plates will give occupants various views of Chicago while offering a topologically varied profile suggesting the Great Lakes region’s limestone outcroppings and its pools and eddies. Scheduled to open in 2009, Aqua aims to remind observers that “water and time are processes that act on the building,” as Gang noted, and that good design begins with close, thoughtful readings of the Earth.

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

Event: Reception Program for 2008 Bike Share Demonstration Project
Location: The City Bakery, 07.14.08
Keynote: Janette Sadik-Kahn — Commissioner, NYC Department of Transportation
Organizers: Forum for Urban Design; Storefront for Art and Architecture; The City Bakery

Four bike share stations attempted to connect existing transportation networks during this year’s NY Bike Share Demonstration Project.

Courtesy nybikeshare.org

While the scope of the New York Bike Share Demonstration Project may seem small in relation to programs established in some European cities — Paris currently has over 20,000 cycles in rotation — this short test run was intended to be one step in convincing NYC to invest in a more comprehensive program on a citywide scale. This year’s four-day program expanded its pilot effort conducted last summer, offering more cycles and more stations in Lower Manhattan to exchange cycles.

The concept of bike sharing provides short-term bicycle rentals, offered either free or at minimal cost, and is intended to complement existing transportation networks. Designed to bridge gaps in subway and bus lines with point-to-point rentals, renters are not required to return cycles to the same stations. This year’s demonstration proved that commonly perceived shortcomings, like the need for significant labor to redistribute cycles at the end of each day, could be overcome by strategically locating stations. Forum for Urban Design Deputy Director Loreal Monroe reported that the group “never experienced a redistribution problem” this year.

At the program’s wrap-up reception, NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan spoke alongside the demonstration project organizers about the importance of bringing increased cycle access to the roads. “Biking can be a transformative element in NYC’s transportation design,” said Sadik-Kahn. A week earlier, the DOT released a Request for Expressions of Interests for experienced groups interested in implementing a program for the city. A more comprehensive bike-sharing program may be in NYC’s future.

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

“P.F. 1” at P.S. 1.

Jessica Sheridan

Every summer I attend the Young Architects Program installation in the courtyard of P.S. 1. While I have had mixed reviews in the past, some years the projects really impressed me. This year, WORKac’s “P.F. 1 (Public Farm 1)” is one of those years. Instead of resorting to the annual beach theme, the firm produced a work that is both fun and practical.

Cardboard cylinders fill the space with containers of vegetables. A ladder allows visitors to climb inside of the cylinders to get a close-up view of the growing process, and a periscope allows viewers to observe other visitors throughout the installation. Part of the installation produces farm noises when a visitor puts his or her ears against it. Live roosters and chickens roam the courtyard, and visitors can hold and pet baby chicks in a coop. There are layers of discovery throughout, where unexpected sounds or sights appear upon closer inspection. All five senses are engaged — something that is rare in architecture.

My biggest criticism with the program each year is that firms fail to fully incorporate the courtyard’s perimeter walls into their designs. Granted, it is difficult to fill the large space on such a small budget, but the tall concrete walls always seem sparse and stand out as an afterthought. This year is no exception. Although the installation touches the walls in a couple of places, they are left largely untouched, and therefore one’s attention is called to them. Ultimately, P.F. 1 is a fun day on the farm, provides sustenance, and an escape from urbanity… and that is what a summer installation in the city should be.

In this issue:
· Lincoln Center Programs POPS
· Green Building Eases New Mothers into Parenthood
· Fort Ticonderoga: Silver on Parade
· A Lesson Plan for Designing New York City Schools
· Condo Caters to Adult and Children’s Entertainment
· New Jersey Takes Advantage of Skyline Views

Lincoln Center Programs POPS

The former Harmony Atrium will become a new visitor center for Lincoln Center.

Courtesy Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

A privately owned public space (POPS) was unveiled at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in a design by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects for a new visitor center. Formerly known as the Harmony Atrium, it’s between Broadway and Columbus Avenue at 62nd and 63rd Streets. Plans call for transforming the space into a “theatrical garden” for performances and civic events. The redesigned 7,000-square-foot public space will feature a centralized box office, information desk, dynamic media wall, Rosa Mexicano restaurant, and public restrooms. Pentagram design consultancy and Show & Tell Productions, a creative technology company specializing in environmental communications, are also involved in the project. In addition, plans for a new micro-park designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in association with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners will include an urban grove at 62nd Street across from the visitor center. The park aims to create a more inviting entrance at the southeast portion of the campus and provide a shaded, quiet place to congregate.

Green Building Eases New Mothers into Parenthood

New Space for Women’s Health.

Lilker Associates Consulting Engineers

Perkins + Will and Lilker Associates Consulting Engineers are designing a new 8,000-square-foot sustainable facility for the New Space for Women’s Health, an independent, stand-alone birthing center to open in 2010. The new center, which is being retrofitted from an existing Midtown parking facility, will provide an environment where midwives, mental health professionals, family educators, among other professionals to offer women and families prenatal and postpartum care, childbirth education, gynecological services, social work, and psychological care. The three-floor building has LEED certification in mind, including high-efficiency heat pumps, sustainable heat recovery systems, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and energy-saving lighting equipped with sensors that reduce interior lighting relative to available natural light.

Fort Ticonderoga: Silver on Parade

Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center.

Tonetti Associates Architects

Sited on Fort Ticonderoga’s central parade ground in the Adirondacks, the Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center is a 16,000-square-foot structure with French-style masonry recreating a secure warehouse built during the French and Indian War and blown up by retreating French troops in 1759. Designed by NYC-based Tonetti Associates Architects, the project is slated to earn LEED Silver certification for a number of green features, including use of locally quarried stone, and a geothermal heating and cooling system that serves the entire building using heat pumps from three deep wells. The education center contains classrooms, galleries, production spaces for mixed-media interviews, museum store, central hall, and what the museum calls “essential mingling spaces.” Research for the project spanned three countries and two continents including Canadian sources at Fortress Louisbourg in Cape Breton, Vieux-Montréal, Québec, and French sources at the coastal fortifications of Normandy and Brittany, as well as sources from the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society library, and New York State Library in Albany.

A Lesson Plan for Designing New York City Schools

PS/IS 295.

Swanke Hayden Connell Architects

PS/IS 295, a new 88,000-square-foot Pre-K through 8th grade school in Queens Village, has been completed. Designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects (SHCA), on behalf of the NYC School Construction Authority, the plan strives to foster a connection between the school and the neighborhood by making major assembly spaces available for community use. Consisting of standardized rectilinear spaces on a highly irregular site, the design aims to reflect both the busy commercial strip of Jamaica Avenue and the adjoining quiet residential neighborhood. The program is organized into a long, four-story volume on Jamaica Avenue. The auditorium and gymnasium slide out from under it to relate to a smaller scale and the south-facing playground. A pre-cast concrete “frieze” of playing children animates the building’s through-lobby, accessible from Jamaica Avenue and the playground. This frieze wraps into the building’s interior and frames the auditorium entrance, where a public art mural resides.

Condo Caters to Adult and Children’s Entertainment

Georgica.

Cetra/Ruddy

Georgica, named after East Hampton Village’s Georgica Pond, is a 20-story, 58-unit, 134,000-square-foot residential tower at East 85th Street and Second Avenue. The Cetra/Ruddy-designed project incorporates a playroom and fitness center. Interior design details will include custom bamboo and glass walls, limestone fireplaces, and a limestone and marble lobby. A landscaped roof deck, by HM White Site Architects, is to accommodate adult and children’s activities with a playground, flowering trees, ornamental grasses, and a natural lawn. Construction is set to be complete in 2009.

New Jersey Takes Advantage of Skyline Views

Vela Townhouses.

Arquitectonica

The Vela Townhouses, a luxury waterfront community in Edgewater, NJ, near the George Washington Bridge, is a 140,000-square-foot development designed by Arquitectonica to take advantage of Manhattan skyline views. Five separate buildings contain 29 townhouses, and eight units comprised of three floors, a cellar, private roof decks, and glass-enclosed solariums. By blending traditional elements, textures, and materials with a contemporary motif, the firm attempted to create a sleek aesthetic. The community also features designs by landscape architect Thomas Balsley Associates, including a waterfront infinity-edge pool. Rosen Global Partners developed the project.