Open House New York Highlights the Brooklyn Navy Yard
Building 92 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (Dave Pinter / Flickr)
In a city known for specialized districts—diamonds, finance and garments to name only three—the Brooklyn Navy Yard is perhaps the most unique. The “Yard” is home to nearly 170 design related businesses like industrial designers, fabricators, artists, and architects and as a former ship building facility it is gated and closed to the public. But on May 12 Open House New York will open the former navy facility to the public from 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. and may of these creative studios and work spaces will open their studios for self guided tours. It will be an amazing day and AN will publish a full list of participating studios later in the week, but contact Open House to purchase a ticket for the tour which includes a drinks party at the Yard’s new Building 92.
Unveiled> Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University
West-facing facade at night (Courtesy Steven Holl Architects)
Located on the eastern edge of the Virginia Commonwealth University campus at the corner of Belvidere and Broad Streets, Steven Holl’s Institute for Contemporary Art will act as threshold to the university and the city. The core of the building is a double-height “forum” cased in a twisting facade to the north and intersected by a performance space jutting southward. These frame the glass facade of the east-facing entrance—a visual gateway leading from the city to the university that allows for transparency and natural light while activating the weathered zinc facade at night. Radiating from the forum are a series of long rectangular galleries stacked atop one another at varying angles towards the east, framing the sculpture garden and funneling visitors to the secondary entrance facing the university. Glass facades at the ends of the stacked galleries can be projected onto from within to animate the sculpture garden. Read More
On View> OPEN: An Exhibition by Tsao & McKown Architects
Courtesy Tsao & McKown Architects
OPEN: An Exhibition by Tsao & McKown Architects
Slocum Gallery
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Syracuse, NY
Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown aim to provide a critical context to seven projects in their OPEN exhibition, ranging from a lipstick tube to a prototypical community of 25,000 in China. The exhibition provides a theoretical framework with which to view the projects, with the inclusion of historical, cultural, and economic background research in addition to sketches and drawings that demonstrate the design process at work.
Fate of Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in the Balance
Yesterday's committee vote approved replacing Orange County Government Center. (AN/Stoelker)
Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center moved a tentative step closer to demolition yesterday after a subcommittee of the county legislature approved $14.6 million to finance the design of a new $75 million complex. With the subcommittee vote cleared, a full vote by the legislature is expected on May 3. But committee chair Michael Pilmeier’s vote breaking a four to four split hints that the plan may not have the two-third majority of the legislature needed to proceed.
L&L Holding Company, owners of a midcentury office tower at 425 Park Avenue, are looking to build a new, high design office tower on that site. It would be the first new office tower built on Park Avenue since the 1980s. Some of the biggest names in architecture are competing for the job: Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Ateliers Christian de Portzamparc, Herzog & de Meuron, Foster & Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, OMA, Maki and Associates, KPF, Richard Meier and Partners, Rogers Sirk Harbour + Partners, and Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of the center for urban real estate at Columbia, is running the competition for L&L. “This competition of ideas is the first step in the process of realizing a globally advanced, bespoke skyscraper that will both complement Park Avenue’s existing architectural treasures and make its own indelible mark in the world’s most timeless office corridor,” he said in a statement.
Spandex and Cash to Flood Brooklyn Bridge Park
Site of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Fieldhouse. (Courtesy Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation)
An avid cyclist plans to bring his passion for bike racing to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Joshua Rechnitz announced Thursday that his nonprofit, the New York City Fieldhouse, will build a $40 million multi-purpose recreation center on the inland edge of the park bordering the BQE. Now occupied by a deteriorating industrial building used for storage by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the new facility designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners will include a modern velodrome along with space for a variety of other recreational activities.
Expect to be hear a lot about Todd Williams and Billie Tsien in the weeks and months to come. First up, their much anticipated (and highly controversial) new building for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which opens imminently. Second, the fate of their building for the American Folk Art Museum (now owned by MoMA) hangs in the balance, with Jean Nouvel’s tower looming on the horizon. Third comes the announcement that the pair will renovate and expand the Hood Art Museum at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The project will include new and renovated galleries for Darmouth’s art collection, which dates to 1772.
On View> Robert Neffson’s Urban Landscapes
Neffson's painting of 57th Street with Skidmore Owings & Merrill's Number 9 building at left. (Courtesy Bernaducci Meisel) (56x79 inches)
Until about the mid 20th century, there was a tradition for New York’s urban landscape painters to split time between New York and Paris. It was not uncommon for collectors to hang dual streetscapes side by side. It’s surprising then to see the digitally inflected work of Robert Neffson tweak the tradition for the 21st century. Neffson’s paintings of 57th Street and Notre Dame embrace a multimedia studio process for hyperrealistic results.
On View> Fred Sandback: Decades
(Adam Reich / Courtesy David Zwirner)
Fred Sandback: Decades
David Zwirner
525 West 19th Street
Through April 21
The drawings and sculptures of Fred Sandback are the subject of a new exhibition at New York’s David Zwirner gallery. The projects are arranged by decades, representing distinct periods in the artist’s career, spanning the years 1969 to 2000. Sandback created minimalist sculptures out of simple materials in response to the architecture of specific interiors. Installations made from thin lengths of material redefine spaces, creating objects and planes by simply implying their outlines. On display are early works from the 1960s made of metal wire and cord, permutational works of the ’70s, and reliefs and site-specific projects from his late career. Drawings are included, like 16 Variationen von 2 Diagonalen Linien 1972 (above), plus the Zwirner gallery has reconstructed the interiors of Galerie Heiner Friedrich, the Munich space for which many of Sandback’s works were designed. A rare copper wire sculpture, Proposal for Heiner Friedrich, Munich, Six Rectangles, Copper Wire (Sculptural Study), spans three rooms and is a highlight of the show.
Video> Ben & Jane Thompson Tour Seaport, circa 1981
The video shows the bad old days before the Thompson plan for the seaport was complete.
While combing the web for info on the early days of the South Street Seaport‘s Pier 17, AN came across a Youtube video of Ben & Jane Thompson discussing plans for redeveloping the upland and the piers near Fulton Fish Market. The short video, circa 1981, certainly puts the current debate on SHoP’s new design into historical focus, particularly when Ben Thompson speaks of retaining the now long gone market.
Event> Eventually Everything: The 2012 D-Crit Conference May 2
Eventually Everything D-Crit Conference May 2
Eventually Everything: The 2012 D-Crit Conference
Wednesday, May 2, 12:30–7:00 p.m.
Visual Arts Theatre
333 West 23rd Street
No charge for admission; Registration required
On May 2 the School of Visual Arts Design Criticism MFA program, a.k.a. D-Crit, presents its third annual thesis conference, and this year’s line-up promises to be intriguing, covering an array of subjects–”Main Street, USA and the Power of Myth,” “Graphic Ornament in Interior Architecture,” “Towers to Town Homes: Public Housing, Policy, and Design in the US” to “Missing the Modern Gun: Object Ethics in Collections of Design,” to name a few. The list of thesis topics alone makes a statement about the possibilities of design criticism and how D-Crit aims to push its limits.
South Street Seaport Preservationistas: Oh no! PoMo Don’t Go!
Detail of the Pier 17 model presented by SHoP at yesterday's Landmarks hearing. (AN/Stoelker)
The PoMo aficionados were out in force at yesterday’s Landmarks Preservation hearing for the new proposal for South Street Seaport’s Pier 17. It would seem that just as debate on the value of 1970s Brutalism shifts into high gear, the 1980s PoMo crowd is revving its engines. As preservationists and developers whacked it out, some larger questions about context and neighborhood integration arose.
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