Hudson Square Pushes to Reclaim Pedestrian Space
Street scene in Hudson Square (Courtesy Hudson Square Connection)
A major transformation of the once-industrial Hudson Square neighborhood in Lower Manhattan aims to bring pedestrian vitality to streets originally designed for delivery trucks servicing printing houses. Crain’s reports that Hudson Square Connections, the local business improvement district, has selected a design group led by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects from a pool of 23 respondents to create a new streetscape to improve the area’s image.
More on the plan to balance the area’s changing demographics.
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The Straw That Broke the Silver Towers' Back
The proposed fourth tower at NYU is being reconsidered. (Rendering courtesy Grimshaw and MVVA)
I.M. Pei speaks and NYU listens. The university announced this week that plans for a Grimshaw-designed residential highrise planned for Pei’s landmarked Silver Towers block will be scrapped after the architect expressed disapproval over the project. The proposed 400-foot tower set amid three original concrete structures had been a point of conflict between NYU and its neighbors.
Artist Creates Amazing Breathing Wall From Trash Bags
One Hundred and Eight installation (Courtesy Nils Völker)
Artist Nils Völker has created a breathing wall comprised of trash bags and cooling fans. One Hundred and Eight selectively inflates a grid of, you guessed it, 108 bags to create a strikingly simple yet poetic result. The softness of the trash bags rising and falling is really something to see. The installation can also interact with the viewer, sensing a person’s presence before the wall. From the artist:
Although each plastic bag is mounted stationary the sequences of inflation and deflation create the impression of lively and moving creatures which waft slowly around like a shoal. But as soon a viewer comes close it instantly reacts by drawing back and tentatively following the movements of the observer. As long as he remains in a certain area in front of the installation it dynamically reacts to the viewers motion. As soon it does no longer detect someone close it reorganizes itself after a while and gently restarts wobbling around.
Can you imagine this idea translated to the scale of architecture? Cloud-like hallways – or even full facades – might actively follow passers by with a gently inflating and deflating rhythm. [ Via Today and Tomorrow. ]
Watch the video after the jump.
Envisioning a Green Future for the BQE
"Green Canopy" proposal for the BQE (Courtesy Starr Whitehouse)
The proposals are in after Monday’s final public meeting to decide the future of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway trench which severs the Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Columbia Street Waterfront neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Residents spoke up and prioritized their wishes for a less disruptive BQE including reduced noise and pollution, increased neighborhood connectivity and bike / pedestrian safety, and an overall greener streetscape.
In short, the BQE is going green, or at least as green as a pollution-spewing six-lane highway can be. Luckily the NYC EDC, NYC DOT, and Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects have come up with three compelling design solutions to improve the area.
Kids Build Massive Model of the High Line
Kids build a model of the High Line (Courtesy High Line Blog)
Children from a school in the West Village love the High Line and they have a giant model to prove it. Carol Levitt’s second grade starchitects-in-training recently finished their wood-block coup de grâce detailing the story of the famed elevated park – past and present.
Rudolph’s New York Home Passes Landmark Test
23 Beekman Place (Courtesy Paul Rudolph Foundation)
The latest Upper East Side landmark isn’t another of its signature rowhouses, but rather what’s atop one of those brownstones. Yesterday, the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved landmark status for mid-century architect Paul Rudolph‘s less-than-context-sensitive home at 23 Beekman Place.
And that’s great news for New York’s modern architectural heritage. Read More.
Video: Chinese Hotel Climbs Fifteen Stories in Six Days
Chinese hotel built in just six days (DifferentEnergy Video)
Would you stay in a 15-story structure built in six days? Through the magic of prefabrication, one new hotel in Changsha, China was built erector-set-style at just such a fantastic pace and recorded through time-lapse photography. The better term might be constructed in six days, however, as the building’s foundation and the factory-made pieces were already finished at the beginning of this architectural ballet, but the feat proves rather amazing nonetheless.
While you might have never heard of Changsha, China, home to the new Ark Hotel, the country’s 19th largest city mirrors the building’s rapid growth. Changsha tripled in size between the 1940s and 1980s and today contains an estimated population of 6.6 million.
While such a quickly constructed building might seem prone to shoddy construction, the Ark Hotel is reportedly built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake, meaning a quake over 1,000 times more powerful than January’s quake in Haiti. Call us skeptical, but we’d opt to be out of the building when disaster strikes.
Prefabrication, architecture’s “oldest new idea,” can have its green benefits. The Ark Hotel is thermally insulated and boasts only one percent construction waste. [ Via Gizmodo. ]
Have Your Say On the Future of the BQE Monday Evening
Final BQE Community Meeting This Evening, Monday, November 15
It’s not too late to join community leaders from the Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Columbia Street Waterfront neighborhoods along with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to discuss the future of the Bronx-Queens Expressway. The third and final BQE Community Design Workshop takes place this evening and will cover refined designed proposals aimed to reconnect areas surrounding the urban expressway.
More information after the jump.
Zero Energy Red Hook Green Gets Zero Help From City
Rendering of the proposed Redhook Green project (Courtesy Jay Amato / RHG)
Red Hook Green gets a red light from the NYC Department of Buildings. Brooklyn’s touted “brownstone of the future” is up against the ropes after a zoning decision ruled the mixed-use building cannot proceed as planned. Jay Amato’s ultra-sustainable, shipping-container chic Red Hook Green was denied its proposed accessory residential use on industrially zoned land, officially throwing the entire project into limbo.
Spooky Starchi-Lanterns Make for a Truly Haunted Halloween
Starchi-Lanterns a scary sight this Halloween (Courtesy Abrahams-May Architects)
While Halloween 2010 is fast fading into blurry memory and rotting pumpkins are heading curbside, these Starchi-Lanterns featuring the glowing smiles of super-personas old and new were too good to pass up. Designers Kyle May of Abrahams-May Architects and Julia van den Hout of Steven Holl put their heads together and came away with these sixteen spooky mugs.
It looks like Zaha and Gehry are having a swell time in the second row, while just above a stern Rem and Prince-Ramus are staring off in opposite directions. Kudos to those who identify all the starchitects in the comments. [ Via NY Observer. ]
Slideshow: Zonnestraal Sanatorium Saved From Ruin
Zonnestraal Sanatorium in Hilversum after restoration (Courtesy WMF)
Abandoned and nearly lost, the Zonnestraal Sanatorium in Hilversum, Netherlands has been meticulously restored to its former glory by Bierman Henket architecten and Wessel de Jonge architecten. In honor of their efforts, the two firms were awarded the 2010 World Monuments Fund / Knoll Modernism Prize. Alan Brake penned an article for the print edition of The Architect’s Newspaper:
Designed in 1926–1928 by Johannes Duiker and Bernard Bijvoet and completed in 1931, the sanatorium is considered a seminal work of early modernism. Though it was well known when it was built, the structure was eventually abandoned, and since then nearly subsumed by the surrounding landscape. Portions of the three-building complex were almost completely lost, so many parts of the sanatorium had to be meticulously reconstructed, including formerly mass-produced elements that had to be recreated by hand.
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