Bloomberg: Bike Share Delayed Until Spring 2013, Duh
(Montage by The Architect’s Newspaper)
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this morning on his morning radio show that New York City’s forthcoming CitiBike bike-share program—already mired with delays caused by software problems—would be further delayed until at least next spring, confirming rumors that the system’s bugs weren’t being worked out quickly enough. On his radio show, the mayor delivered the bad news, “The software doesn’t work, duh.” He maintained that, “we are not going to put out the system until it works.” The highly anticipated program is set to become the largest is North America when it opens and was a signature piece of the mayor’s bike infrastructure plan for the city.
Zaha Hadid Reveals a Pleated Vision for the Venice Biennale
Before the 2012 Venice Biennale opens on August 29, Zaha Hadid Architects has released its own preview of the firm’s pavilion to be displayed at the Giardini and the Arsenale in Venice. The pavilion will be one of 66 projects in the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale, entitled Common Ground.
Proposals About New Microapartments Highlight Benefits and Drawbacks
Planning commissioner Amanda Burden, Mayor Bloomberg, and HPD Commissioner Wambua stand in a spatially accurate visualization of a possible Micro-Apartment layout for New York City’s Kips Bay competition. (Courtesy of NYC Mayor’s Office)
Take a minute to imagine what you would do if you had to cram your life into 270 square feet. In a typical ranch-style home, 270 could be a master bedroom, or a small living room, or a one-car garage. Now how about 220 square feet? It might make a shed or a bedroom. Now imagine this 15 by 18 foot or 15 by 15 foot space as your home.
Though it might sound more like another Ikea advertisement, two high-rent cities—New York and San Francisco—have been playing with the concept of permitting very small “micro-apartments” to alleviate high rents. By creating smaller housing, the idea goes, prospective renters will have a less expensive option and the city will be able to increase the density of residential units without increasing building size, always a contested point in neighborhood planning.
Tex-Fab Competition Proposals Harness “Research Through Fabrication”
"Latent Methods" explores the possibilities of shingles. (Courtesy of Tex-Fab)
While a winner has not yet been selected, Tex-Fab’s new APPLIED: Research Through Fabrication competition has already produced interesting results as four semi-finalists emerge. The competition solicited proposals that best displayed “research through computational fabrication.” The four proposals selected in the first round of adjudication address acoustics, structure, construction, material, and surface effects, each using on digital modeling and fabrication techniques. The proposals, described in more detail below, will be shown at ACADIA 2012 this October at the Synthetic Digital Ecologies conference, hosted at the California College of the Arts.
Unveiled> Yale-NUS Campus in Singapore
The new Yale-NUS campus in Singapore by Pelli Clarke Pelli. (Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli)
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects have released renderings today of the Yale-NUS campus which has begun construction in Singapore. The new institution, offering a four-year liberal arts curriculum to one thousand students, is a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore. To design the new campus, the architects have taken the distinct cultural backgrounds of the founding institutions as a reference for the design of the campus.
James Turrell Captures a Slice of the Vast Texas Sky with Twilight Epiphany Pavilion
(Courtesy Rice University)
For many, work by American artist James Turrell is instantly recognizable. Using light and basic geometric forms as the material of his compositions, Turrell subtly alters space and perception for visitors, creating weight and depth through visual experience that evokes meditation and contemplation.
Turrell’s work is at its height when gazing skyward. Multiple iterations of his Skyspace series have appeared around the world framing a dramatic slice of the heavens in his pristine geometry. The work is, essentially, a skylight: an opening above a room or pavilion for viewing the sky above, but to reduce the work to its function would disregard the transformative power of a simple yet moving experience. In each installation, a confined aperture begins to decontextualize the sky, featuring the color and texture of what is seen as an element of the art.
Ending Soon> Architecture for Humanity’s “I Love Architecture” Auction
Detail of Richard Meier's painting of the Getty Center.
You’d better hurry if you want to snag some artwork from your favorite starchitects like Bjarke Ingels, Richard Meier, or Daniel Libeskind, there’s only a few hours left to bid on items in Architecture for Humanity’s fundraising acution, “I Love Architecture,” which ends tonight at 7:00 p.m. The organization, which coordinates sustainable development projects, is dedicated to design that “creates lasting change in communities.” Architecture for Humanity acknowledges that many are not able to afford the expertise of an architect yet the help of an architect could contribute greatly to their community. The organization aims to raise $150,000 auctioning sketches donated by notable architects. Among the 60 contributors who have provided original sketches to be auctioned are Renzo Piano, BIG, Michael Graves, SHoP, Paolo Soleri, and Fumihiko Maki. To learn more about the contest visit the organization’s website or view the sketches.
Diller Scofidio+Renfro Take on Exhibition Design at the Cooper-Hewitt
A billboard announces the Cooper-Hewitt museum is under renovation.
Design studio Diller Scofidio+Renfro (DS+R) has certainly had a very good week. As we noted yesterday, the firm’s designs for the Columbia University Medical and Graduate Education Building in Washington Heights have just been released, and now today, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has announced that DS+R will be working with museum staff on the redesign of the museum’s exhibition spaces that are currently under renovation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Unveiled> Bjarke Ingels Builds an Arch Filled With Culture for Bordeaux, France
Rendering of MÉCA as seen from Bordeaux. (Courtesy BIG)
Bjarke Ingels has again thrown us for a loop, this time in Bordeaux, France. Ingels’ firm BIG has revealed its latest competition-winner called the Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, or, for the rest of us, MÉCA. As AN noted in April, BIG won the commission working with Paris-based FREAKS freearchitects, beating out the likes of SANAA and Toulouse-based W-Architectures, but the renderings have been kept under wraps until now. Ingels’ explained the design using his signature diagram-based narrative as an array of three visual and performing arts agencies arranged around a 120-foot-tall arch-shaped building.
Central Park Pavilion Restored with Historic and Contemporary Concerns in Mind
The Heckscher Building
Until recently, the only way to enter Central Park’s oldest and largest playground was through a chain-link fence. The great Heckscher Playground, impressive in scale and amenities, did not have an entrance to match, but a recently completed renovation to the building has retuned the structure to it’s original use with a contemporary twist blending the building’s history with contemporary needs.
360 Architecture’s Invisible Fort in Kansas City
(Courtesy 360 Architecture)
A giant Tetris block has landed in Powell Gardens, a large botanical garden an hour drive outside of Kansas City, Missouri. MIRRORRORRIM, designed and built by Kansas City-based firm 360 Architecture, is a modular stacking of bright, lime green, cedar cubes, forming a T-shape on the ground with a vertical tower rising above the crossing point. The wooden structure is layered over on some sides with perforated stainless steel panels.
Chicago Loop Alliance to Coat Sidewalks, Streets, & Buildings with Color
The promotional rendering for "Color Jam."
From May 29th through June 4th, sheets of vinyl will be layered over the intersection of State and Adams streets in Chicago’s Loop in a site specific installation entitled Color Jam. The public installation, commissioned by Chicago Loop Alliance through their Art Loop public art program, is the work of multimedia artist Jessica Stockholder. The exhibit will be an ongoing piece of public art, covering sidewalks, buildings. and the intersection itself with contextually abstract shapes and colors. The work will be on display from its “official” completion on June 5th through September 30th of this year.
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