Times Square, Slightly Tamed
(Katy Silberger/flickr)
I’m a Times Square avoider. It’s too crowded, clogged with slow moving tourists, for me to get where I need to go without being so frustrated that I swear to never return. On rare occasions, I succumb to the charm of the lights, but those moments are usually glimpsed from a distance, down a street corridor or out the window of a cab. But yesterday, on my way to an event in midtown, I chose to go through Times Square to see how it had changed since Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan’s recent street closure plan had been implemented. Read More
UPDATE: Guangzhou Opera House Fire
A rendering of the Opera House interior. (Images courtesy zahahadidblog.com)
A spokesman for Zaha Hadid Architects sent AN the following statement on the condition of the building following the fire: Read More
Hadid Opera House Burns
Picture of the blaze from the Chinese media (courtesy abbs.com.cn)
AN has learned of a fire at Guangzhou Opera House. The project, designed by Zaha Hadid with a web-like exoskeleton, includes an 1,800-seat theater as well as a multipurpose hall and support facilities. The building was set to open this fall. Read More
The FiveThirtyEight on Traffic
(Bryan Christie Design for Esquire)
In a feature for Esquire, number cruncher and future predictor Nate Silver ponders the continuing decline in per capital vehicle miles traveled. Americans are driving less. Significantly less, in spite of major drops in gas prices since last year. Certainly the economy has something to do with this. Fewer people are driving to work since few people have jobs. But Silver doesn’t think the economy explains the decline. Read More
At Home in Dystopia
J.G. Zimmerman, Dystopia Series: Suburbia (all images courtesy of the respective artists.)
Friend of AN Jeremiah Joseph visited an exhibition of interest in New York’s gallery district.
Et in Arcadia Ego, a new exhibition at the Thornton Room in Chelsea, examines the intersection and overlap of natural and man-made landscapes. With the title, roughly translated from Latin, “I am in pastoral utopia,” the show, curated by Blanca de la Torre and Juanli Carrion, could easily devolve into a Nature equals Good, City equals Bad equation. Instead, the way the six artists explore the topic is not so divisive or stale. The work tends to engage the subject from the side, generating surreal results. At the end any answers are farther off than before viewing the work, and this ambiguity is show’s strength. It prevents the viewer from standing too sure-footed and jumping ahead to conclusions and prejudices. Read More
Stimulating High-Speed Rail
A map of possible high speed rail corridors unveiled by the White House and the Department of Transportation. (courtesy whitehouse.gov)
This afternoon, President Obama and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood unveiled a map of possible high-speed rail corridors, with clusters on both coasts, in the North and the South. Read More
Back on the Map
Two versions of the MTA subway map found on the authority's website. One represents the Cortlandt Street R/W as closed with a gray dot. In another version, it appears to be in operation. (Courtesy MTA).
It may not have a marquee name attached to it, but work on the Cortlandt Street R/W subway station is another sign of the slow but increasingly steady progress at the World Trade Center site. Closed since 9/11, the heavily damaged station has stood as an eerie reminder of that day, visible to the thousands of riders that pass by it everyday as the trains creak and twist toward Rector Street. Read More
Decor Out the Door
In addition to their scholarly and artistic value, many historic houses and period rooms are the rescues of the nascent preservation movement. On view since 1938 at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), two 1880s Aesthetic Movement rooms from the Rockefeller Mansion on 54th Street are finding new homes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Virginia Commonwealth Museum. Read More
Shovel Oh So Ready
Architect and friend of AN Jeremiah Joseph writes in with this report of the March 27 WORKac lecture, “Shovel Ready,” at Parsons.
Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, of the 2008 PS1 Warm-Up pavilion fame, tag team presented their work to a standing room only crowd. With a range of projects, from buildings to urban proposals, the duo showed the office’s penchant for both intelligence and wit. Like many young offices most of WORKac’s work is still in the realm of unbuilt projects, but with five competitions already completed in 2009 this office has no intention of waiting around casually for the work to knock on their door. Read More
Allied in Ann Arbor
All photographs by Richard Barnes
While unlikely to receive the scrutiny or attention of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the new addition to the University of Michigan Museum of Art is something of a return to form for Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works. Read More
Stars to Trash City Sanitation Facility
The downtown glitterati are upset about the planned sanitation and salt storage facility planned at Canal Street and the West Side highway. Read More
Porter House: Hoboken Edition
(photos: Shawn Michael Lowe)
Say “Hoboken” to a New Yorker and Irish Bars (and rowdy ex-frat boys), quaint row houses, and the Path Train might spring to mind. Thanks to the recently completed Garden Street Lofts (on sale now!), you can add high-end green condos designed by name brand architects to that list. Read More
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