Oscar Niemeyer’s Buildings As Never Seen Before
Cathedral of Brasilia. (Vicente de Paulo/Courtesy Paddle 8)
Grab your 3D glasses, the artists at Visionaire, an art and fashion publisher, have added dramatic new depth to architectural photography. The work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who brought Modern design to Sao Paolo, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro, has now been optimized for viewing through stereoscope lenses. Just as Niemeyer innovated architectural design, making soft, delicate curves out of his concrete buildings, the international team of artists at Visionaire are advancing stereoscopic design and traditional ways of viewing cities, neatly packaging 3D scenes of modern Brazil against Niemeyer’s landscape into lenticular cases featuring the art of Fernando and Humberto Campana and Beatriz Milhazes on its exterior.
Save Your Best Moves for Beaux Arts Ball 2012
Williamsburgh Savings Bank Interior (Courtesy Architectural League)
The Architectural League of New York has recently announced the theme and location of it’s annual Beaux Arts Ball for 2012. The event itself will be held on Saturday, September 22, in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank in Downtown Brooklyn. Emerging architects SOFTlab will be in charge of realizing this year’s theme, “Tender,” within the space. Read More
Perkins+Will Eyes Platinum on a Budget
A rendering of the stair atrium, shows region where the teaching wing meets the research wing.
Next month Lehman College CUNY will dedicate its $70 million Science Hall designed by Perkins+Will. The new Bronx facility will abut Gillet Hall, one of the campus’ depression-era gothic buildings, while sparring with Raphael Viñoly’s massive metallic wave-like gymnasium called the Apex. “We tried an elegant yet simple form that enhances the sculptural quality of the Viñoly building, so as not to try to compete against it, but to act as a foil,” said Robert Goodwin, design director at Perkins+Will. “And we maintained a strong relationship to Gillet Hall.”
OLIN’s Met Plaza
After its tony neighbors complained, the Metropolitan Museum of Art dropped plans for kiosks selling refreshments and tickets in a proposed plaza designed by OLIN, reports DNAinfo. The Met has been courting the nearby co-ops in monthly meetings, and doesn’t want the $60 million project to be held up. Construction is slated to begin in October. The community at large will get another gander at the construction plans at tomorrow night’s Community Board 8 meeting.
On View> Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House and Pavilion
(Courtesy Guggenheim / Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation)
A Long-Awaited Tribute: Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Usonian House and Pavilion
Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
Through February 13, 2013
In the years just before Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum forever altered the face Fifth Avenue, the directors of the museum went on a charm offensive. In 1953, they presented the exhibition Sixty Years of Living Architecture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The show introduced Wright’s Usonian House to New Yorkers by building the Prairie-style home on the construction site of where the architect’s tour de force museum would soon rise. Now through February 13 the museum presents a scaled-down version of the exhibition, which originally included the Usonian and a dramatic Wright-designed pavilion holding models, drawings, and watercolors by the master. This exhibition, A Long-Awaited Tribute: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House and Pavilion, celebrates the two structures that won over a somewhat skeptical New York audience to the work of America’s modern master.
Video> Progress at the World Trade Center Site on 11th Anniversary
For the eleventh anniversary of September 11, The Architect’s Newspaper has been reviewing progress at the World Trade Center site. Last Thursday, AN visited SOM’s One World Trade to survey the view from the 103rd floor and check in on construction of the tower’s spire. Friday, a trip to the top of Fumihiko Maki’s Four World Trade on Friday showed the less-publicized view of the site. From both vantage points, the hum of activity—both from construction crews and visitors to the memorial plaza—was readily apparent.
Of particular interest were substantial developments at the Vehicle Security Center, where a new entryway on Liberty Street will send security measures beneath a new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. It was heartening to read in today’s New York Times that the conflict between Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg over the Memorial Museum, reported here last year, was resolved in time for ceremonies this morning.
For all the talk of delays, an extraordinary amount work has been accomplished. As a tribute, AN has compiled a video montage showing continued progress at the site on this historic day.
Slideshow> Manhattan at the Feet of Four World Trade
Looking north from a corner office in Four Word Trade.
Compared to its neighbors, the Fuhimiko Maki-designed Four World Trade offers a more somber, reflective aesthetic at the World Trade Center site. Reflective quite literally, as the tower’s curtain wall mullions nearly disappear at street level. Inside the 977-foot-tall building, Maki’s stunningly-precise detailing is made evident, along with the breathtaking views of the surrounding New York region.
After climbing to death-defying heights yesterday at One World Trade yesterday, AN stopped by Tower Four’s construction floor 51 (or what will eventually be renamed the 60th floor when the building opens). While the interior office spaces are still shells, the clarity of Maki’s trapezoidal form shows through. Project Architect Osamu Sassa said columns at the tower’s perimeter—four on each side—were pushed to the edge, providing 80-foot spans of uninterrupted floor-to-ceiling glass. Column-free corners, many forming acute angles that proved to be a challenge in designing the curtain wall, make the views even more brilliant. Take a look for yourself in the slideshow below.
Event> Chris Payne’s “One Steinway Place,” Lecture September 13
Piano frames at the Steinway factory. (Courtesy Christopher Payne)
| Chris Payne: One Steinway Place | |
| Bonni Benrubi Gallery 41 East 57th Street New York Through September 29 |
Lecture 6:30-8pm South Street Seaport Museum September 13 |
One Steinway Place, the address of the venerable Steinway & Sons piano factory in Astoria, Queens, is also the title of photographer Chris Payne‘s latest show at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in midtown Manhattan. The series of large-format photographs are the result of his days and weeks spent in the factory, to which Steinway gave him full access. Payne captures the unexpected and striking forms, patterns, and textures that emerge when he turns his lens to pianos-in-the making. “A piano is something we all think of and love as a whole, but like anything complex, it is really just a kit of parts, built up gradually out of raw, messy materials. And yet, the deeper I look into its construction, the more I revere it as one of the supreme accomplishments of the human hand and imagination,” said Payne.
On September 13 at the South Street Seaport Museum, Payne will speak about his Steinway project as well as his photographic series about North Brother Island. The lecture (6:30-8pm) is hosted by Open House New York. For information and tickets, click HERE.
The Municipal Arts Society is celebrating Grand Central‘s upcoming centenial, by holding a design challenge to reimagine the grand dame for the next 100 years. Foster & Partners, SOM, and WXY have each been invited to revamp public spaces inside and outside the terminal. More DOT pedestrian plazas anyone? The results of will be shown at the society’s third annual Summit for New York City on October 18. (Photo: Tom Stoelker/AN)
Slideshow> Tour One World Trade Looming Over Lower Manhattan
The site.
One World Trade continues to rise with the spire yet to come. Today, the Port Authority gave AN access to the 103rd floor. In a mad dash we took a few hundred photos, which we quickly whittled down to these 34. What’s missing are the sounds: workers shouting, metal clanging, and Queen’s “We Will Rock You” playing from a radio on the ride up. Tomorrow, we’re stopping by to visit One World’s little brother, Four World Trade.
Chelsea Market Expansion Approved at City Planning
New renderings of the Chelsea Market edition shows a set back of massing from the High Line. (Courtesy Jamestown)
In a unanimous vote today, the New York City Planning Commission approved Jamsestown Properties’ plans for expansion at Chelsea Market with few modifications. The building was rezoned to be included in the Special West Chelsea District, thereby allowing developers to increase density after a significant contribution is made to the High Line. Much to the quite literal relief of High Line visitors, this likely means bathrooms will finally find their way to the southern section of the park.
Picnics, Monuments & Memorials: Two Centuries on Two Blocks
The September 11th Memorial at night. (Tom Stoelker / AN)
Literally in the shadow of One World Trade is a memorial for September 11 that has been overrun by tourists since the days after the disaster. Its quiet dignity has been maintained, outlasting the dozens of hawkers who sold Twin Tower replicas just a few feet away. The memorial bears but one name, “Mary Wife of James Miles,” who died on September 11, 1796.
Today’s New York Observer weighed in on the New York Post‘s claim that tourists are turning the September 11 Memorial into a glorified playground. “When the construction barriers finally come down, the lines will be gone, people will come and go as they please. They will pray and they will play, and that is how it should be,” wrote the Observer’s Matt Chaban. As the debate continues as to what constitutes appropriate behavior at the memorial, one need only walk one block east to take in two century’s worth of history on how New Yorkers memorialize.
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