Ask Not What The Google Can Do For You
Wolf Point on the Chicago River. (Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli)
The biggest stir caused by the Kennedy’s newest proposal for developing Wolf Point was not obscuring the Merchandise Mart views or initial reactions to the renderings or the stuffing of three very tall towers on one impossibly small piece of land. It was more like, “There’s a living Kennedy with a stake in Chicago real estate?” We all know the family sold the Mart years ago. Fewer of us knew they held on to that little sandbar that sits in front of the the Sun-Times building.
Ready to boost the family fortune, the Kennedys with Hines, Cesar Pelli, and bKL plan to stuff three towers onto the site. Is this the architectural equivalent of a 10 lb. bag of sugar in a 5 lb. sack? Maybe, but development of that scale is also kind of exciting. And that leads to the biggest question. Can this economy support a residential and commercial project of this size? Well, Jean—that’s the last sibling standing, right, so the land must be hers—get out your good-faith checkbook: Google is coming. They’ve leased the top floors of the Mart, which will serve as the new headquarters of Motorola, which Google has acquired. That means thousands of high paying fancy Google jobs just across the street. With that news, Wolf Point is a done deal, no?
Domesticating the Cathedral of Commerce with Luxe Condos
The crown of the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan. (dragonflyajt/Flickr)
New York City’s nouveau-tall skyscrapers, like the Christian de Portzamparc-designed One57 which recently topped out at 1,004 feet, have been wooing the world’s richest residential buyers with unimaginable amenities and floor-to-ceiling glass. But if you interested in an address that redefined tall—one hundred years ago—your options are more limited. Now, developers Alchemy Properties have acquired the top 30 floors of the iconic Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan, the world’s tallest structure when it opened in 1913, with plans to build 40 super-luxury residential units in the sky.
Vives les Plages! Paris Rethinks its Riverbanks by Banishing Cars
Left Bank: Port de Solférino, Musée d’Orsay (Courtesy APUR/J.C. Choblet)
The “reconquest” of the Seine’s riverside expressways will be ushered in by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, following a long battle with Nicolas Sarkozy’s recently ousted right-wing government. Continuous two-lane motorways have severed Paris from the banks of the Seine, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, since Georges Pompidou opened them in 1967 under the slogan “Paris must adapt to the car.”
New Renderings Take A Fresh Look at One World Trade Center
One World Trade as viewed from Spruce Street. (Courtesy Durst)
The Durst Organization and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey released a handful of new interior and exterior renderings of a value-engineered version of original designs for One World Trade. Clearly the long-term maintenance argument won out over David Childs’ proposal for a sculpture-clad spire instead of a simple antenna. The resulting design seems far more efficient, if not aesthetically complete. Noticeably absent is Silverstein’s yet-to-be-leased towers Two and Three, which won’t rise until an anchor tenant is found. But neither collapsed cranes or a fire this morning will slow the tower from its relentless climb.
Following Leak, Official High Line Renderings Hit the Street
Two slightly arched sections along 30th Street will provide a brief river vista before giving way to the sweeping views of the interim section.
Everyone loves a fresh High Line rendering, prompting a leak of the latest batch—complete with giant “Not for reproduction” text scrawled across the images—last week via DNAinfo. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the High Line released officially approved renderings yesterday that are crystal clear and text free.
Changes from the designs released in March predominantly show refined detailing by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The delightful rubberized I-beam section for the kids has more planting and the final wrap-around interim section features a few new set of scalies, but the temporary solution remains much the same, with a lean walkway overlooking the self-seeded rail bed.
Rem’s Next New York Commission is in the Bag
OMA to design Coach display in New York and Tokyo.
High-design fashion label Coach has been pursuing big-name architects, recently announcing its corporate headquarters will be the anchor tenant for a new Kohn Pederson Fox tower at Hudson Yards with James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s High Line running underneath. Next up, Rem Koolhaas’ OMA will design the brand’s new flagship shop-in-shop at Macy’s in Herald Square.
Bjarke Ingels Offers A Surreal Reflection of War at a Danish Bunker Museum
(Courtesy BIG)
Denmark has chosen one of their own, the Copenhagen and New York-based Bjark Ingels Group (BIG) to design the Blåvand Bunker Museum, a structure to be located—or more specifically embedded—in a historic seaside site where German forces occupied Denmark during World War II. Ingels slices into the landscape and builds lightly out of glass atop the ruin of a massive concrete bunker, all of which will be recreated to serve a completely different purpose.
A New Canvas for the Design Community: The Garage
Thursday, July 26, 2012
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In an economic environment in which competition amongst homes for sale is fierce, homeowners, architects and designers are turning to the garage. According to the National Association of Home Builders House Price Estimator, adding a garage to an average single family detached house can increase the value of the home by tens of thousands of dollars, depending on location.
For the enterprising architect or interior designer, garages represent a blank canvas. It’s an area of the home that often collects clutter (and rarely sees aesthetic effort), but the garage acts as the main entrance of the home for many people. Improvements in this space are easily recognizable (and thus, proposable) to prospective clients, especially with the right garage-specific features.
When it comes to choosing those features, Gladiator® GarageWorks, a Whirlpool Corporation brand (yes, of home appliance fame), suggests utilizing functional products designed specifically for the garage environment. Which, as it turns out, is important: broad temperature and humidity fluctuations can ruin many products. They even make an ENERGY STAR® qualified garage-specific refrigerator for clients with home offices, shops, or entertaining areas in their garages.
Yet, as functional as these products are, they do not leave much to be desired when it comes to aesthetics. Take the Gladiator® Storage Bench, pictured here, for example. How many features in your garage have a beautiful bamboo top? It’s a great spot to sit and remove your shoes in the garage, but also looks nice in the mudroom or in the living room as an entertainment center. And it has plenty of space for various items to keep inside.
When it comes to areas of the home ripe for the architect’s or designer’s touch, don’t overlook the garage. Gladiator® brand even offers an interactive design tool on its website, allowing designers to visualize their ideas in different layouts. The space is there, as are the garage-specific products. What garages need, and are now getting, is attention.
Spreading the Placemaking, 80 Projects Funded by National Endowment for the Arts
A yarn-bombed statue, Bombshells Flea. (Courtesy ArtWorks)
The National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) announced the recipients for this year’s round of Our Town grants—a $5 million investment in creative placemaking all over the United States. Combining grants from 2011, the program has invested over $10 million in projects in all 50 states and Washington D.C.
This year, 80 applicants were chosen from a pool of 317 entries, which were all assigned to one of three panels: Arts Engagement-projects mainly focused on artistic production, Cultural Planning and Design-projects to build local support systems and spaces necessary for creative placemaking, and Non-metro and Tribal Communities-projects based in small communities not adjacent to metropolitan areas.
Women Rule A+D Museum’s Annual Come In! Exhibition
Noesis, installation art by Amy Jean Boebel. (Kenneth Johansson)
Femmes are front, center, and all around in Los Angeles’ Architecture and Design museum’s third installation of its summer series, Come In! Usually a fun-filled event, this year’s exhibition strikes a chord in an industry often criticized for not being more gender equal.
Issue aside, this year’s Come In! Les Femmes exhibit offers a look into the unique perspective of 25 women from varied art and design disciplines. As expected, in dealing with gender, one can’t escape the occasional critique of women’s roles in society and this exhibition is no exception. By juxtaposing blissful bridal images with symbols of domestic drudgery like irons and cookware, graphic designer Petrula Vrontikis asks us to contemplate the thin line that divides princess from domestic peasant in what she calls, “Brides = Maids.” Meanwhile, rather than using a standard canopy, installation artist Amy Jean Boebel fashioned a charcoal aluminum wire mesh into a giant frilly top in “Noesis.” Inside, a television set broadcasts the changing roles of women through the years. Apparel was also architect Doris Sung’s starting point. Inspired by age-old corsets, Sung creates a sculpture made out of thermobimetal that contracts and expands according to ambient heat.
New York’s AIDS Memorial Approved by a Beleaguered Community Board 2
The approved AIDS Memorial is on track for installation across the street from the former St. Vincent’s hospital. (Courtesy NYC AIDS Memorial)
It was a week of devastating lows and mild highs for Community Board 2. With NYU virtually assured of getting their 1.9 million-square-foot expansion plan through City Council next week, in spite of vigorous local objection, the mood at last night’s executive board meeting was decidedly grim. But a new design for the AIDS Memorial, to be incorporated into the proposed St. Vincent’s Hospital Park across the street from the former hospital site in Greenwich Village, offered some hope. The new design was in response to a demand that the designers incorporate community input, providing hope for some that that the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) was not a waste of time. “With ULURP being ULURP, I didn’t think this would happen,” Village resident Robert Woodworth said of the memorial designed by Brooklyn-based studio a+i.
Frank Gehry Goes Contextual in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward
(Chad Chenier Photography / Make It Right.)
Make It Right, Brad Pitt’s development of contemporary, LEED Platinum homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward—an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and still far from recovered—has a new addition: Frank Gehry. Gehry’s new duplex on the site was completed this week. The surprisingly simple design (especially considering some of the expressive homes in the development) features a waterproof solar canopy, a roof terrace and six covered porches. Still one could argue that Gehry’s stilt-raised design, with its fiber cement siding (that looks like local clapboard siding), metal roofs and focus on outdoor space, is one of the most contextual of the bunch.
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