Inside the Archtober Building of the Day #19: East Harlem School
East Harlem School by Peter Gluk and Partners. (Coutesy Peter Gluk and Partners)
A rainy day couldn’t dampen the spirits of the fourth graders that we met playing hoops in the brightly lit gym of the East Harlem School. It looks to me that there are two geniuses behind this wonderful building: Peter Gluck, the acerbic and seasoned architect/builder and Ivan M. Hageman, co-founder and Head of School.
Gluck led the tour, but Ivan was ever-present—in the cafeteria leading an appreciation of the chef and servers, and in the reception area meeting with parents. He welcomed us into his office, which is perched at the east end of the building with a clear glass open view up 103rd Street to the Public School embedded in the nearby housing project. Jane Jacobs eyes on the street.
On View> Detroit Disassembled, Photographs by Andrew Moore
Facade, Michigan Central Station, 2009. (Andrew Moore)
Detroit Disassembled:
Photographs by Andrew Moore
Queens Museum of Art
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY
Through January15
The Queens Museum of Art (QMA) presents the powerful photography of Andrew Moore from his three-month visit to Detroit from 2008 to 2009. Moore’s photographs are a tragic yet beautiful glimpse into the decline of a city that was once the twentieth century industrial heart of America. Michigan Central Station (above) stands empty, the organ screen at the United Artists Theater is crumbling, and bright green moss covers the floor of the former Ford Motor Company Headquarters. “Moore’s exquisitely realized visions of architecture overtaken by vegetation remind contemporary viewers that our own familiar culture is subject to the forces of entropy and the eternal strength of nature,” says a statement from QMA.
Inside the Archtober Building of the Day #18: 200 Fifth Avenue
200 Fifth Avenue. (Cynthia Kracauer/Center for Architecture)
Building of the Day #18: 200 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
Beautiful weather continues to make Archtober the best month ever to enjoy great architecture. Madison Square, where 200 Fifth Avenue is located, is a palimpsest of the northward expansion of commerce and civilization in Manhattan. A public space since 1686, it first became a park in 1847. With the construction of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, (Griffith Thomas with William Washburn Architects, 1859) on the site of the current 200 Fifth, the area became the social, cultural, and political hub of elite New York in the years after the Civil War—think Edith Wharton. And it has the monuments to prove it.
55 Warren: One Scoop with Glitz on Top
A view up from the courtyard at 55 Warren, designed by OCV Architects and interior designer Leopold Rosati. (Courtesy Leopoldo Rosati)
Last week, we took a trip around the block from the AN office to go to an open house at 55 Warren hosted by Legrand, the French systems management company. While we were impressed with all the gizmos and glitzy gadgets, it was OCV Architect’s clever renovation of the old cast-iron building that grabbed our attention.
On View> Cooper-Hewitt on Designing Lasting Solutions with the Other 90%
Favela Painting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Courtesy Haas&Hahn)
For a long time in the West there has been a common misgiving that aid is about patronage. The Cooper Hewitt’s latest exhibition, Design with the Other 90% : Cities, which opened this weekend at the United Nations Visitor’s Center, rebukes this notion by spotlighting communities in the southern hemisphere who are taking the initiative, harnessing local resources to solve their own problems. In the show, designers and architects are tapping into existing currents of change.
FLW Double Header! Experience Fallingwater at the Guggenheim
Attention Frank Lloyd Wright fans! You can satisfy two Wright cravings with this one event. Head over the the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to catch a screening of Kenneth Love’s lush new documentary Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterwork with Reflections of Edgar Kaufmann Jr. The film, which was supported by the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation, the Estate of Edgar Tafel, and the Laurel Foundation, will be screened in the museum’s New Media Theatre on October 21 and 28 and November 4 and 18 at 1:00 and 3:00 pm. The screenings are free with the price of admission to the museum. It’s the perfect marriage of content and container. Wright would approve.
Inside the Archtober Building of the Day #14: the Metropolitan Tower
The West 57th Street POP (Privately Owned Public) Space by Rogers Marvel. (Courtesy Rogers Marvel)
The Metropolitan Tower is the wedge-shaped, Darth Vader-like all black glass monolith next to Carnegie Hall. Rising a tidy 716 feet in 77 stories of offices in the low-rise portion and residences in the high rise, the AIA Guide to New York City tells us that its developer Harry Macklowe claimed to have designed it himself. Not true! Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron (now SLCE Architects) get the credit for the 1987 tower.
St. Nicholas Back at WTC
Answered prayers: St. Nicholas to rebuild. (markamav/Flickr.com)
“Win-win!,” were the two words that Father Mark Arey chose to describe this morning’s deal signed with the Port Authority that will bring St. Nicholas Church back to the World Trade Center site. Arey, the spokesperson for the Greek Archdioses in America, said the agreement was signed in the governor’s Manhattan office by church council member Michael Jaharis and the Port Authority’s soon-to-be-departing-director Chris Ward. Governor Cuomo stood witness to the signing with Archbishop Demetrios. The governors prodding of the Port brought the two parties toward an agreement. The new building will sit at the corner of Liberty and Greenwich streets near Four World Trade.
Performer: An Auto-Affirmation for Everyone
Next time you are in Times Square, don’t be shy when you see a spotlight– no matter how lame your dance moves are, you are guaranteed an explosive roar of applause from an invisible, enthusiastic crowd of people as long as you are moving. (What a refreshing departure from the notorious American Idol jury.) This location-appropriate spotlight installation is an interactive public art work by Adam Frank, an installation artist and a product inventor, whose body of work “represents an ongoing investigation of light and interactivity.” His shadow-casting oil lamp, LUMEN, is one of the MoMA Store’s best-selling items.
Video> Noguchi Museum Takes Civic Action
Detail from map of the LIC study area by WXY's Fall 2010 studio at Parsons. (AN/Stoelker)
With buses running from the Lever House on Park Avenue, the Noguchi Museum was flush with Manhattanites last night for the opening of Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City. The show of ideas by local artist teams—led by Natalie Jeremijenko, Mary Miss, Rirkrit Tiravanija and George Trakas—fleshes out urban dreams for the mostly industrial area. In anything but an autocratic manner, the show—the first ever at the museum to include contemporary artists and not Noguchi—encourages dialogue between large institutions, government, and the public.
Archtober Building of the Day #12: Betances Community Center
The Betances Community Center in the Bronx (Courtesy Stephan Yablon Architect)
When is a Center really a center? Well first of all it’s got to have a center, don’t you think? The Betances Community Center has a splendid gym holding strong in the middle of the plan, full of warm, white light modulated by the south-facing glass block wall and monitor side walls of Kalwall. Originally intended to house a boxing ring and bright orange bleacher seating, the space is now multi-purpose with the bleachers accordioned to the walls; the famous boxing program moved elsewhere. Even without the ring, the architecture packs a wallop of clarity, modesty, attention to detail, and programmatic resolution.
Manny Hanny & SEQR Together Again
The Manufacturers Trust, circa 1954. (Courtesy Esto/Ezra Stoller)
Yesterday, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court denied a request by the city and Vornado seeking to dismiss Justice Lucy Billings’ ruling which allied a protected natural resource with an urban landmark. In ruling that the Citizens Emergency Committee to Protect Preservation (CECPP) and Pratt professor Eric Allison had legal standing for their petition, Billings cited Save the Pine Bush v. Common Council City of Albany, a case addressing the protection of a forest Upstate under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. In deciding against the appeal, the court effectively said that they won’t hear the Manufacturers Hanover case in piecemeal. The case returns to Justice Billings’ courtroom next Wednesday where CECPP is asking for everything from reams of email correspondence between Landmarks and Vornado, to the new tenant’s lease and rental terms.
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