New York City Targets Buildings’ Heating Oil to Improve Air Quality
Hazardous smoke rises from a building using heavy oils. (Courtesy Environmental Defense Fund/Isabelle SIlverman)
What’s your building burning? Some 10,000 buildings in New York City are stuck on the dirty stuff—heavy heating oils—to keep warm, which is polluting the air across the city. But as of the first of this month, the city has begun to phase out these feuls in favor of more environmentally-friendly and health-conscious alternatives. As part of plaNYC’s initiative to remake New York City with the cleanest air of any major U.S. city, NYC Clean Heat aims to achieve a 50 percent reduction in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by the end of 2013.
Mayor’s Challenge Seeks the Next Big Idea for City Life
With nine million dollars total in prizes up for grabs, The Mayor’s Challenge simply asks for innovations in city life, a subject that’s been a growing concern for countless architects, planners, and governments worldwide. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the competition last week calling for individual designers and teams to address urban challenges from sustainability to citizen empowerment. ”Every day, mayors around America are tackling increasingly complex problems with fewer and fewer resources,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Our cities are uniquely positioned to inspire and foster the innovation, creativity, and solutions needed to improve people’s lives and move America forward.”
Quick Clicks> Archi-Photos, Julius Shulman, Birds, and Solar Trash
Photos of Ben Van Berkel's New Amsterdam Pavillion can't do it justice. (AN/Stoelker)
Don’t Shoot! The New Republic‘s Sarah Goldhagen takes on architectural photography. Her piece doesn’t exactly add much new material to a debate that’s as old as photography itself. Much of the piece reads like sage advice from the art history professor who tells students to get their butts down to The Met because the slides don’t come close to the real thing. Still, she’s no-holds-barred on much maligned medium: “They lie” and “photographs and the photographers who take them unwittingly and willfully misrepresent”, etc.
Shoot! Once you get through Goldhagen’s piece, then segue on to Architect for advice from PR maven Elizabeth Kubany on how to hire an architectural photographer. Mixed in with standard practice procedures (have a preproduction meeting) Kubany dips into current trends, which she refers to as “point of view” photography, i.e.-”chilly modernist perfection” is out “less tidy perspective” is in. Even Goldhagen will love it.
Shulman! Enough talking about architectural photography, it’s time to take a look at some classics. AN‘s own Sam Lubell just published a book with Douglas Woods, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: Birth of a Modern Metropolis. (If you’re in New York this evening, stop by the Rizzoli Bookstore — 31 W 57th St. — at 5:30 for a book signing with Sam!) Architizer has a preview.
Killer buildings. LEED certification may have to go the way of the birds. At least that’s the way some conservation groups see it. With millions of migrating birds crashing into tall buildings, The Chicago Tribune reports that an extra layer of netting may help LEED buildings stay sensitive to their environmental mission.
Solar Heap. The ever morphing PlaNYC has realized yet another initiative. Mayor Bloomberg announced the latest version today (the law requires the plan be updated every four years) and old city landfills get slated for new use. Not another park, not new bike lanes—we’re talking solar panel fields. DNA’s got the details.
One Billion Gallons One Drop at a Time
(Photo by flickr user eflon used under a Creative Commons license.)
New York City Council passed legislation Wednesday that aims to save the city one billion gallons of drinking water a year. Four bills slated to be implemented by summer 2012 will curb bottled water usage, reduce leaks, refine water efficiency standards, and ban some water-inefficient equipment.
NYC Snatches Sustainability Czar from PDX
There are few places better for the Bloomberg administration to look for a new head for the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainabilty than Portland, that utopia of urban green living. (To some, it borders on zealotry.) Today the administration announced that David Bragdon, the president of Metro, the City of Roses’ land-use and management body, will be replacing the recently departed Rohit Aggarwala. He has his work cut out for him, as his predecessor was the chief architect of the city’s lauded PlaNYC 2030 plan, though it appears the office is in capable hands. Read More
Bloomy: Paint It White
Al Gore, Mayor Bloomberg, and others put a final coat on a new white roof for a warehouse in Long Island City. (Courtesy Office of the Mayor)
New Yorkers, grab your paint brushes and rollers. That’s the message from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as he and Mr. Global Warming himself, Al Gore, kicked off NYC Cool Roofs, part of the city’s new service program that gets volunteers to paint city roofs white. A cheaper and less intensive alternative to green roofs, white roofs help keep buildings cool by reflecting the suns rays back from whence they came—though they don’t address stormwater issues like their verdant cousins. Read More
Advertise on The Architect's Newspaper.
Archives
Categories
Architecture
Design
East Coast
Midwest
National
Planning
Shft+Alt+Del
Sustainability
Transportation
West Coast
