Videos> The 425 Park visions of Foster, Koolhaas, Rogers, and Zaha Hadid
Norman Foster’s winning design for 425 Park. (Courtesy Foster + Partners)
After today’s announcement of Norman Fosters next project in New York, a luxury condo tower at the United Nations, we just can’t get enough of the British starchitect. Luckily, a stash of video renderings and presentations from the firms behind the planned 425 Park tower can provide just the fix. It wasn’t too long ago that the starchitect-filled competition for the new Park Avenue tower selected Foster + Partners as its winner. Now after the design presentations at the recent MAS Summit and the release of photo renderings from all players—including runners up Richard Rogers, Rem Koolhaas, and Zaha Hadid—we can indulge in the virtual demonstrations of their designs.
New Balance to Build Commuter Rail Station as Part of Boston Headquarters Expansion
New Brighton Landing by Elkus Manfredi Architects and Howard/Stein Hudson Associates. (Courtesy Elkus Manfredi)
It has been five decades since there has been a commuter rail station in Brighton, but this will soon change. MassDOT Secretary Richard A. Davey and New Balance Chairman James S. Davis announced this summer that they will build a new Worcester Line commuter station, and just a few days ago, the sports apparel company gave word that it is slated to open in 2014.
Days After Major Renovation, Sandy Shutters Statue of Liberty Indefinitely
The Statue of Liberty the day after Hurricane Sandy. (Courtesy US Coast Guard)
In October, AN reported on new accessibility improvements at the Statue of Liberty, including installing a new HVAC system, improved ventilation, and a fire stair climbing through the 126-year-old statue. After remaining shuttered for a year during the improvements, Lady Liberty triumphantly reopened this fall.
Until Hurricane Sandy. The New York Times reports that the statue itself suffered no major damage during the storm (despite any fake Twitter photos you may have seen), but the grounds surrounding the “Mother of Exiles” suffered quite a bit of damage. Among the problems is damage to the large dock where ferries would unload visitors. Additionally, the promenade surrounding the island lost more than half of its brick pavers during the storm. There’s also some worry that the new mechanicals just installed might have suffered damage when the statue’s basement flooded. No timeline has been given as to when the monument will reopen.
Architects Build A Times Square Pavilion to Promote Dialogue for Veterans Day
Matter’s “Peace & Quiet” installation in Times Square. (Ka-Man Tse / Courtesy Times Square Alliance)
Opening today for Veterans Day, a new pavilion designed by Brooklyn-based Matter Architecture Practice aims to bring a little Peace and Quiet to the hectic liveliness of Times Square. The new temporary pavilion, built yesterday and set to remain standing through November 16 is described as a “dialogue station” by its architects. “It is a tranquil place to meet, share stories, leave a note, shake hands, or meet a veteran in person,” Matter continues on its website. Times Square “seemed the ideal circumstance (or mad challenge) to initiate and inform a poignant exchange of ideas, to will intimacy in an instance of its opposite.”
Massive New Development on the Brooklyn Waterfront Sparks Last Ditch Protest Effort
Handel Architects’ Design for Greenpoint Landing.
When it comes to waterfront development in New York City, there’s always a battle to be waged, and this time, it is over 22 acres near Newtown Creek in north Greenpoint, Brooklyn where developers, Park Tower Group, plan to break ground in the summer of 2013 to build Greenpoint Landing. Curbed reported on Election Day last week that someone circulated a flyer protesting the development’s ten 30-to-40-story luxury residential towers to be designed by Handel Architects. This protester’s main gripe is the scale and density of the project, which the flyers state is much larger than “most of the buildings average 5 stories” and doesn’t allow for much “green space.” But the plans for Greenpoint Landing are well on its way, and could include a pedestrian bridge by Santiago Calatrava.
On View> Parks for the People Reimagines Our National Parks as Social & Cultural Destinations
(Courtesy Val Alen Institute)
Parks for the People
The Octagon Museum
1799 New York Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
Through November 30
Parks for the People presents student ideas of how to reimagine our national parks as natural, social, and cultural destinations. Teams from City College of New York, Rutgers, Cornell, Florida International University, Kansas State, Pratt, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Washington competed in a semester long studio, engaging questions of the preservation, sustainability, accessibility, and technology in 21st century national parks. The National Parks Service, Van Alen Institute, and the National Parks Conservation Association sponsored the competition, which ultimately declared the teams from City College, for their work on the Nicodemus National Historic Site in Kansas, and Rutgers, for their project at the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Pennsylvania (above), the winners. All seven entries, each representing a different region of the country, will be on view at the Octagon Museum in Washington, D.C.
Sandy Snuffs Out Century Old Lighthouse near Staten Island
The Old Orchard Shoal Lighthouse before and after Hurricane Sandy. (Courtesy US Coast Guard)
Staten Island’s Old Orchard Shoals Lighthouse stood as a protective beacon in Sandy Hook Bat for 119 years, but has now been reduced to rubble atop its rocky outcropping after being slammed by Hurricane Sandy. Built in 1893, the cast-iron lighthouse once stood 51 feet tall and had been listed on the National Park Service’s Maritime Heritage Program, but had been declared obsolete by the General Service Administration and sold at auction in 2008 for $235,000. The US Coast Guard confirmed this week that the stout structure succumbed to the storm. Light House Friends has more history on the Old Orchard Shoals Lighthouse:
In the late 1800s when winter ice closed down Staten Island Sound, the waterway separating New Jersey from Staten Island, an estimated 15,000 tons of shipping were forced to use the narrow channel that ran along the eastern shore of Staten Island. In doing so, the vessels passed dangerously close to Old Orchard Shoal. A bell buoy and a lighted buoy initially marked this shallow area, but mariners considered these navigational aids grossly inadequate…After $60,000 was approved, construction of the lighthouse was completed in 1893. The new fifty-one-foot, cast-iron tower was cone-shaped, built in the “spark plug” style common among offshore lights in that region.
[Via SI Live and Working Harbor.]
Philly’s KieranTimberlake Finds New Home in an Old Bottling Plant
Inside the Henry F. Ortlieb Company Bottling House.
KieranTimberlake has been looking to buy a building for over a decade now, and after a long search, the Philadelphia firm is putting down roots in the Northern Liberties neighborhood with the recent purchase of the 1948 Henry F. Ortlieb Company Bottling House. The firm’s substantial growth first prompted the partners, James Timberlake and Stephen Kieran, to search for a new home, and this two-story, 63,000 sq foot building located on the Ortlieb campus will provide more than enough space to accommodate the firm’s 90 plus employees.
Protest> The Eisenhower Memorial at the Tipping Point
Frank Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial. (Courtesy NCDC)
How many Americans know that the Eisenhower Memorial will be the largest presidential memorial in Washington, D.C.? Or that it will be using untested, experimental elements for the first time? Or that it will cost nearly as much to build as the neighboring memorials to Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson combined? These basic facts are still not widely known because the current design has emerged from a planning process that limited rather than encouraged public participation. It has also led directly to a controversy that has stalled the project in regulatory and political limbo and left its supporters and critics without common ground. We need public input to find the consensus that this and every memorial needs.
Buckyball Lights Up Again in Madison Square Park
BUCKYBALL illuminated in blue (Photo Credit: James Ewing)
New York-based artist Leo Villareal is creatively illuminating the constructed form. In Madison Square Park, Villareal’s LED light-up geodesic dome, Buckyball, stands tall, undamaged but unlit after Hurricane Sandy. The Madison Square Park Conservancy told AN that the lights are expected to be back on tonight. And soon, Villareal also plans to light-up a far larger construction on the West coast: the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
Egg on Face at Louis Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park?
Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island. (Paul Warchol / Courtesy FDR Four Freedoms Park)
You can’t make a monument without breaking some eggs. Fabergé cosmetics heir Reed Rubin is protesting a decision by the board of Roosevelt Island’s Four Freedoms Park to not include a donor inscription on the Louis Kahn-designed FDR memorial. For a $2.5 million donation in honor of Rubin’s parents Vera D. and Samuel Rubin, founders of the cosmetics firm and the Reed Foundation, the foundation claims it was promised an inscription in a prominent spot (preferably near the bust of FDR on a slab facing Manhattan).
The board of the park, not wanting to compromise the monument’s design, proposed an inscription in another location in the park. Rubin and the foundation are fighting back, and had tried to postpone October’s dedication. The New York Daily News quoted a letter written by the park’s board chairman William vanden Heuvel to the foundation: “You may prevail in a courtroom. But it will be a Pyrrhic victory, dear friends, a scar not a medal on the list of your achievements.”
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