NYC Department of Design and Construction Announces New Roster for City Projects
New York City Department of Design and Construction Commissioned Steven Holl Architects to design new Hunters Point Community Library in Queens for a prior Design + Construction Excellence Program
All too often public buildings can fall short on creativity, but with the launch of the Design + Construction Excellence Program in 2004, the Bloomberg administration has raised the ante and tapped a number of top architecture firms from around the world to work on a slew of new city projects. The New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) announced today that they have selected 26 emerging and leading architecture firms out of pool of 264 applicants to participate in the next wave of the program, including the likes of BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, nArchitects, and TEN Arquitectos. Read More
A New Competition Asks Architects to Create Ideas for a More Resilient Waterfront
The Rockaways Post Hurricane Sandy (Courtesy of Tom Duggan/Flickr)
Hurricane Sandy not only caused considerable damage to the Rockaways, but it also exposed the vulnerability of New York City’s waterfront communities to future storms and changing weather patterns. Today, the American Institute of Architects New York, along with NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, L+M Development Partners, Bluestone Organization, Triangle Equities, and Enterprise Community Partners, announced a new design competition for “resilient and sustainable development in the Rockaways.” The group called on architects to come up with different strategies for how cities can build more thoughtfully in areas prone to flooding.
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.
The New Whitney Museum Takes Flight
Whitney Museum rendering (Courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners)
The Whitney Museum, set on an outpost far from Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side and in the midst of the hip yet historic Meatpacking District, is forging ahead with its grand plans to make a bold architectural statement with a new building by Renzo Piano, which will sit adjacent to Gansevoort Market Historic District and the post-industrial High Line park.
First they must get their approvals, including the non-governmental, but not unimportant, local community board, which is “charged with representing community interest on crucial issues of development and planning, land use, zoning and City service delivery.”
Yesterday officials from the Whitney presented the large, probably not shiny new museum design to the Arts & Institutions Committee of Community Board 2 with a zippy video that flies viewers through the iceberg-like structure. The big change from earlier manifestations seems to be the addition Breuer-like fenestration facing the High Line.
Architects with Altitude
Towering figures in the field of architecture. Click to enlarge. (BK / Architect's Newspaper)
Witold Rybczynski, smart writer, stupid article.
Last Thursday, Slate‘s respected architecture critic weighed in with the dubious notion that the shorter in height, the greater the architect. This silly notion has gone viral on the web, and we felt it was our job to rebut it with some tall figures. Here they are.
Voters Help Out CA Architects
Despite the sting felt countrywide by largely left-leaning architects, architects in California have a lot to smile about after yesterday’s elections: particularly because a number of ballot propositions went their way. Most importantly Prop 23, which aimed to suspend AB 32, the state’s anti-pollution, pro-sustainability legislation, was trounced, preserving green building and retrofitting funds not to mention important environmental and anti-sprawl measures. Also the defeat of Prop 22, which prohibits the state from taking certain local funds (like city redevelopment funds), to replenish its coffers should help preserve money that architects often tap into. On the negative side—particularly for landscape architects—Prop 21, which would have increased vehicle license fees to help fund state parks, was defeated. And of course prop 19, which would have legalized marijuana in California, went down as well. Sorry architects. You can’t have everything!
Architects #1 in Something!
Unfortunately not a good thing. According to MSNBC (and via Curbed LA), architects saw the most job losses of any profession in 2009. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job losses in the profession jumped 17.8 percent, bringing the total number of employed architects to 189,000 in the first three quarters of 2009, compared to 230,000 in the same period a year earlier. The good news: The BLS predicts a 10% jump in architecture jobs by 2018. But can we make it till then? The list, by the way, was rounded out by the following big job losers: carpenters, production supervisors/assembly workers, pilots, computer software engineers, mechanical engineers, construction workers, tellers, and bookkeepers.
PARK(itects) Day
In the Beginning: It all started with some chairs and a bike rack on Bedford Ave five years ago. Courtesy Transportation Alternatives
On this brisk fall day, why not hit the park for lunch, especially since there’s one closer than you think. Today is the city’s second annual PARK(ing) Day, an event hosted by Transportation Alternatives and the Trust for Public Space where various civic and volunteer groups have taken over parking spaces citywide–if you look at the map, it’s really mostly Manhattan, and Manhattan between Houston and 34th Street at that–and turned them into “parks.”
This year has twice as many parks as last year, at a total of 50. But more than just expanding the size of the project, Transportation Alternatives wanted to test the limits of what these pocket open spaces could be. This led to a partnership with the local AIA chapter and the Center for Architecture, who led an outreach effort to get designers involved.
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Welcome to the new blog of The Architect’s Newspaper. As you can already tell, we are inaugurating the blog from this year’s Biennale, where founding editor William Menking is serving as the commissioner of the U.S. pavilion. For the next week, you can check here for all the latest news from Bill, as well as editors Julie Iovine and Anne Guiney, on the latest news and views, parties and gossip.
But that’s not all. Archpaper.com is still the go-to source for the latest architectural news from New York, California, and beyond. But be sure to check the blog as well for web round-ups, news analysis, party pics, and, of course, Eavesdroplettes. Think of it as our work on the boards. And, like any good blog, don’t forget to leave your comments.