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.
SHoP’n the South Street Seaport
The overview of SHoPs redesign of the Pier 17 at South Street Seaport. (Courtesy SHoP)
Last night, SHoP‘s Gregg Pasquarelli presented plans to Community Board 1 for South Street Seaport’s Pier 17. Not surprisingly, the reception was positive. The design is a huge departure from the desolate barn-like mall developed by the Rouse Corporation in the 1980s, where to this day nachos and tropical cocktails remain de rigueur. The new owner, the Howard Hughes Corporation, hopes to bring New Yorkers back to one of the most spectacular sites in town, while welcoming tourists and not quarantining them in a thematic trap.
Angelica Trevino and Thorsten Kiefer are SHoP’s project managers. In a telephone interview, Trevino parsed the details…
Chakrabarti Joins SHoP as Partner
The partners of SHoP (from right) Gregg Pasquarelli, William Sharples, Christopher Sharples, Coren Sharples, Kimberly Holden, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Jonathan Mallie
Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of the Columbia Center for Urban Real Estate since 2009, has been appointed a partner at SHoP Architects effective immediately. The seventh partner (and only the second not related to the firm’s founders by blood or marriage), Chakrabarti will focus on large-scale urban projects, drawing on his years of expertise through such on-going endeavors as Related Companies’ involvement with the Moynihan Station project and development at Hudson Yards. (While he will remain director of the Columbia real estate program, he will forgo his consultancy with Related.)
Mixed Media> SHoP Talk: Botswana Innovation Hub
The roofscape of the SHoP-designed Botswana Innovation Hub.
With over 270,000 square feet and costs projected at $50 million, the Botswana Information Hub is ambitious on many levels, both literally and figuratively. The winner of an international competition, the SHoP-designed research campus brings green technology to the Gaborone, Botswana.
The sinuous structure merges into the landscape, with various levels seeming to kinetically lift from the earth. An “energy blanket” roofscape blends solar and water re-use systems into the sweeping composition. Gregg Pasquarelli tells AN all about it.
Iron Designers Fight and Fundraise
Will everyone have to wear toques tonight?
What will tonight’s secret ingredient be? Marshmallows? A T-square? Tea squares? To help raise funds for the Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction, a charter founded in 2004 to teach and promote architecture and design, the school is hosting the Iron Designer Challenge tonight. Like an ARCH DL for a good cause, teams of four professionals and two students will compete for the title of champion, as well as structural innovation, people’s choice, and, of course, best use of the secret ingredient. Teams will start at 5:00, with three hours to finish their work, but there is also a party open to the public—this is a fundraiser, after all—from 6:00 to 8:30. Tickets are 50 dollars, but you get to mingle on the roofdeck with the likes of the jury, DDC commish David Burney, SHoP principal Gregg Pasquarelli, Cooper-Hewitt ed head Caroline Payson, and Parsons architecture dean Joel Towers. Plus, there’s a damned impressive designy silent auction.
SHoP-ing for a Fight
SHoP's new Barclay's Center will be debated at a public hearing tonight in Brooklyn at 6 o'clock. (Courtesy Forest City Ratner)
SHoP’s new designs for the Barclay’s Center at Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards site has probably gotten the firm more attention than any of its previous ones, including its rather controversial plans for Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport. Today, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn penned an open-letter to the firm, calling out “Mr. Sharples, Mr. Sharples, Ms. Sharples, Ms. Holden, and Mr. Pasquarelli” for signing on to “a very contentious and troubled project that faces widespread resistance from the communities it would impact—and well beyond.” Meanwhile, “Mr. Pasquarelli” sat down with the Observer to, uh, talk shop on the project and defend his firm’s involvement in the project: “We gave serious consideration as to whether we wanted to do it. And I think the thing that convinced us was, after speaking with Bruce, we were convinced he really wanted to make a great building.” SHoP and Barclay’s collaborator Ellerbe Becket will be discussing their new designs at a special hearing in Brooklyn tonight at 6 o’clock, as will DDDB, no doubt—and us. If you can’t make it for the fireworks, we’ll recount them here for you tomorrow. Or follow us on Twitter, where we’ll be live-blogging the main event.
SHoP Drawings
The (retail) world according to SHoP (DBTH)
When I bumped into Gregg Pasquarelli at the LPC on Tuesday, I asked him about a certain map that had been floating around the Internet a day or two before. The SHoP principal began to fulminate. “That was totally taken out of context,” Pasquarelli said. Turns out it’s a SHoPping map. Read More
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