Three Winning Teams Imagine Sustainable Infrastructure for Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up!
Meeting Green. (Courtesy Community Design Collaborative)
On Friday, three winners of the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up! design competition were announced following deliberation by a jury of sustainable stormwater infrastructure industry insiders at Drexel University on Thursday. Created by the Philadelphia Water Department, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Community Design Collaborative, the competition called for creative and sustainable solutions for Philadelphia’s stormwater management. Architects, landscape architects, engineers, and other professionals formed 28 teams to provide innovative means for urban infrastructure to transform the city. From nine finalists, three winners were selected, each responding to a different urban context (industrial, commercial, and neighborhood) and cashing in on the $10,000 prize.
Neutra’s Gettysburg Cyclorama Demolished
Neutra’s Gettysburg Cyclorama under demolition. (Britt Isenberg / Flickr)
It has been clear since earlier this year that Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Center in Gettysburg, PA was to meet the wrecking ball, but within the last week, bulldozers have officially destroyed the structure, according to Hanover Evening Sun, ending a more-than-three-year battle over what to do with the mid-century building.
Originally designed to house Paul Philippoteaux’s 377-foot painting of Pickett’s Charge, the rotunda is being torn down in order to restore the land on which it has resided since the 1960′s to it’s historic Civil War state. Bob Kirby, Superintendent of the Gettysburg National Military Park, expects demolition to be completed by late April but major efforts to restore the landmark site will not occur until after July 3rd, the date marking the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Laurie Olin Awarded Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture
Laurie Olin. (Courtesy OLIN Studio)
Landscape architect and OLIN principal Laurie Olin has been awarded a 2013 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal for Architecture by the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. The award recognizes leaders who exemplify the actions and goals that Thomas Jefferson, an architect himself, would have admired. The medal will be awarded to Olin on April 12, the day before Jefferson’s birthday, and he will be delivering a lecture at the UVA School of Architecture. We assume he will be sporting a bow tie.
“Laurie Olin is one of the most revered landscape architects of our time,” Kim Tanzer, UVA’s architecture dean, told UVA Today. “He is an inspiring teacher, an extraordinarily talented and prolific designer, and an international thought leader in environmental design. From his drawings and writings to his built projects, he has set an amazing example for several generations of landscape architects. We are thrilled he will become the 2013 Thomas Jefferson Medalist in Architecture.”
Past architecture winners have included Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and Maya Lin. The other two recipients this year were Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III.
Winners of New York’s Telephone Booth Redesign Competition Announced
The Loop telephone booth proposal by FXFOWLE. (Courtesy FXFOWLE)
The “payphone”—like subway tokens—is a word that has increasingly become synonymous with an older New York. It’s been years since many of us have even stepped into, let alone used, one of those bulky, eerily abandoned and, let’s face it, uninviting, telephone booths peppering New York City’s sidewalks. But unlike subway tokens, the payphone is making a comeback.
Tunnel Time: Amtrak Tunnel Beneath Hudson Yards Sets Stage For Gateway Project
Map of the Amtrak Gateway Project. (Hopeful in NJ / Flickr)
Construction on the two-track Gateway project, a new tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan, will commence this summer beneath Related Company’s Hudson Yards redevelopment site. Related Companies and Amtrak will build this 800-foot-long “box tunnel,” which will first serve as a shell for Amtrak’s rail connection linking the Hudson tunnel to Penn Station’s tracks, and, eventually, to the proposed Moynihan Station. The actual Amtrak Gateway Project is still years away, but construction on this first leg of the tunnel is happening now to coordinate with construction on Manhattan’s West Side. The project will be funded by the federal government including some funding from the Hurricane Sandy relief package meant to help mitigate flooding during future storms. It’s estimated to cost between $120 and $150 million.
On View> Cooper Union Exhibition Explores Environmental Design in Modernism
Moderl of Oscar Niemeyer’s Building for the Emprezas Graficas o Cruzeiro. (Courtesy Cooper Union)
Lessons From Modernism is the smartest and most compelling exhibition ever mounted in New York (and maybe anywhere) on the influence of nature and the environment in architectural design. This Cooper Union exhibition looks at and analyzes 25 iconic modern buildings from architects like Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Jean Prouvé, and Oscar Niemeyer. Conceived and curated by Cooper Union Professor Kevin Bone, Lessons From Modernism brilliantly demonstrates how these and other important modern architects integrated environmental concerns into their designs and “explores the extent to which these practices have produced environmentally performative and distinctive architecture.”
Slideshow> Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway Pushes North
Inside the Second Avenue Subway. (Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Patrick Cashin)
Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway continues construction on the island’s east side. A new construction update from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority details excavation work at what will one day be the line’s 86th Street station and the various pieces of heavy machinery that are used in the construction process. Take a look at the photos below and be sure to check out more spectacular tunneling photos from the Seven Line subway expansion and the East Side Access Tunnel for the Long Island Railroad.
On View> MoMA’s Applied Design Exhibition Tackles Video Games and 3D Printing
Screen view of the Tetris video game, 1984. (Courtesy The Tetris Company)
In MoMA’s Applied Design exhibition, which opened over the weekend in The Phillip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, celebrity curator Paola Antonelli brings us a diverse sampling of recent and contemporary design, from old school video games like Tetris and Pac-Man to 3D printed furniture and energy efficient medical equipment. As in last year’s Talk to Me exhibition, museum guests get the opportunity to interact with the objects on display, including playing the video games. While the connections between the different pieces may be tenuous and visitors may struggle to identify the relationship between Ido Bruno’s Earthquake Proof Table and The Sims, Applied Design allows viewer to see items that have been churning up quite a bit of hype around the blogosphere, such as Massoud Hassani’s wind-powered mine detonator, pairing them with modern relics from the MoMA archives, including drawings from Lebbeus Woods and Douglas Darden. While disjointed, Applied Design does afford a glimpse of the wide varieties of methods, technologies, and materials utilized by today’s design vanguard. The exhibition is on view through January 14, 2014.
Van on Van: Guggenheim Curator to Lead Van Alen Institute
David van der Leer. (David Heald / Courtesy BMW Guggenheim Lab)
David van der Leer, an associate curator of architecture and urban studies at the Guggenheim, has been appointed executive director of New York’s Van Alen Institute. He will take over in May. The Institute, which has existed for more than 100 years in various forms, is dedicated to improving the public realm through exhibitions, competitions, and programming initiatives in New York and beyond. Reached by email, van der Leer declined to elaborate on his plans for the Institute.
Related Breaks Ground on Two SHoP-Designed Towers at Hunters Point South
Rendering of Hunters Point South. (Courtesy SHoP Architects)
While everyone is transfixed on SHoP’s dramatic unveiling of its new plan for the Domino Sugar Factory on the Brooklyn waterfront, another SHoP-designed project began construction to the north on the Queens waterfront. The first two towers of the Hunters Point South development, what will be New York City’s largest affordable housing project since the 1970s, broke ground, and the $332-million first phase could accept its first residents as soon as 2014. The first phase includes 925 permanently-affordable housing units, 17,000 square feet of retail space, an already-under-construction 1,100-seat school, and a new five-acre park.
Urban Farming Duo Plants Seeds for Boston’s First Rooftop Farm
(Courtesy Higher Ground Farm)
While rooftop farming has cropped up in a number of cities across the country, it has yet to take root in Boston. But this will soon change when founders Courtney Hennessey and John Stoddard launch operations of their new rooftop farm, aptly called Higher Ground Farm, located atop the Boston Design Center this Spring. According to CoLab Radio at MIT, the duo will start planting on a 40,000-square-feet segment of the expansive 55,000-square-feet roof within the next few months and be ready to sell the fresh produce by summer.
On View> Israeli Pavilion from the 2012 Venice Biennale Headed to New York
Fernando Guerra, Azrieli Center, Tel Aviv, 2012.
The Storefront for Art and Architecture is bringing Aircraft Carrier, the 2012 Israeli pavilion at the Venice Biennale, to New York. The exhibit—one of the most pointedly political statements at the biennale—confronts the influence of the United States and its foreign policy in the Middle East and how it has affected Israeli architecture. The pavilion points to the year 1973 and the OPEC oil crises as a watershed in global capitalism when American strategic interests helped enable a new level of corporate architecture in Israel. The resulting reflected glass skyscrapers set against the optimism of Tel Aviv’s White City could not be more a poignant modernist image.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by German publisher Hatje Cantz and edited by the curators, which contextualizes the phenomena in larger transformative processes. The book include texts by Milton Friedman, Justin Fowler, and Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and visual works by participating artists Florian Holzherr, Nira Pereg, Jan Tichy, Assaf Evron, and Fernando Guerra.
Exhibition Opening: March 7, 2013, 7PM
Exhibition: March 7 – April, 29 2013
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