Quick Clicks> Piano, Plazas, Babbling, Budget Cuts
Updated plans for Columbia's Jerome L. Greene Science Center in Manhattanville (Via NY Observer)
Manhattanville’s Piano. While tallying who is the biggest landlord in New York (it’s still the church by a hair), The Observer uncovered a few new views of Renzo Piano’s Jerome L. Green Science Center at Columbia’s Manhattanville campus, seen here next to a train viaduct.
Pedestrianizing New York. The remaking of New York’s public spaces continues its forward march. Brownstoner has details on the planned pedestrian plaza on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn and StreetsBlog highlights DOT’s plans to create a permanent block-long Plaza de las Americas in Washington Heights.
Archi-babble. Witold Rybczynski talkes issue with architecture’s professional jargon in Slate, including a beginner’s guide to commonly used words from assemblage to gesamtkunstwerk. What’s your favorite word from the language of architecture?
Subway Squeeze. We’re not talking about your crowded commute, but New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to trim $100 million from transit. Transportation Nation and StreetsBlog have the details and implications for getting around New York.
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.
Celebrating Sustainability at Chicago's Art Institute
Party-goers holding court at Chicago's Art Institute (photos: Andrew Hensley)
On November 17, The Architect’s Newspaper and Buro Happold, along with our other event partners Dow Building Solutions, Graphisoft, American Hydrotech, and Adaptive Building Initiative, celebrated GreenBuild at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. Renzo Piano’s LEED certified building proved to be a stylish venue for the hundreds of architects, engineers, designers, and other assorted revelers. Click through for pictures of some of the evening’s hundreds of party-goers. It was quite the green scene! Read More
Alternative Whitney Proposal Designed to Attract Attention
An alternative proposal for a new building for the Whitney Museum of American Art (all images courtesy Axis Mundi)
Think Renzo Piano’s still preliminary design for a new Whitney Museum of American Art is too timid? How about this alternative scheme floated by the self proclaimed “architectural provocateurs” at Axis Mundi? According to a statement, the proposal is meant to be “as bold in spirit as the original Breuer building.” It’s bold all right.
The design calls for a structural exoskeleton, shaped by the sight lines and street grid of the city, imbedded with the circulation and mechanical systems. Column-free galleries would be suspended from the skeleton with distinctive projecting windows, reminiscent of Breuer’s at the Madison Avenue Whitney. The Axis Mundi proposal mentions nothing of costs, which is one of the biggest hurdles facing the Whitney, given the museum’s relatively modest endowment.
Axis Mundi has chased the news before. They previously promoted an alternative to Jean Nouvel’s proposed Tower Verre for MoMA, called the Vertical Neighborhood. Check out more images of their Whitney proposal after the jump. Read More
Advertising Jiujitsu
If you’re an architecture geek like us, you love playing Spot the Building while watching TV or at the movies. (The International, otherwise mediocre, is one of our favorites for this very reason.) That’s why this Cadillac commercial caught us so off guard when we saw it the other day. At first, we knew we recognized the “museum” at the start, even though it wasn’t actually one. In fact, it wasn’t even one building. Read More
Piano Bombed
(photos courtesy Fat Caps and Chrome)
Chicago is known for the combination of its excellent architecture and tough, gritty urban life. Both aspects of the city’s personality met briefly yesterday, when two graffiti crews tagged a long wall of the Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing at the Art Institute. While we would never endorse vandalism, there is no denying the visual power of the bright colors and riotous script dashed across Piano’s formal surfaces. The Art Institute, however, did not ponder the artistic merit of the tags. Read More
Brazil 2, Chicago 0
Chicago suffered another crushing defeat to the hands of Brazil: first its Olympic bid loss to Rio and now best new restaurant design to Sao Paulo. Wallpaper* announced the winners in its Design Awards 2010 competition yesterday afternoon. The Chicago restaurant, Terzo Piano, nestled on top of the new Renzo Piano’s addition to the Art Institute, was nominated in the Best New Restaurant category along with contenders from Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, and Portugal. It ultimately lost to Sao Paulo’s Amazonian-inspired Kaa. Read More
Manhattanville Ho!
Demolition of 3229 Broadway is currently underway in Manhattanville, proof of Columbia's determination to build something in the area, no matter what the courts say about pieces of its new campus the school does not control. (Courtesy Google Maps)
Last month’s court victory for opponents of Columbia University’s new campus in Manhattanville was not necessarily a defeat for the school’s planned 17-acre expansion, and not only because appeals remain. With roughly 94 percent of the area under its control, Columbia has said it plans to continue work on the campus, despite its insistence that it cannot be completed as planned without full control of all buildings therein. Last night, Columbia officials outlined their current approach to Manhattanville for the first time since the ruling at a hearing in Harlem on the future of eminent domain in the state (more on that in Issue 1!). Read More
Walkin by a Winter Renzo Land
The courtyard of the Renzo Piano-designed New York Times Building, utterly transformed by a foot of snow.
We’ve come to hate snow in the city, as it readily turns to gross, sock-soaking brown muck. But today, when we stumbled upon a scene straight out of Aspen, we were reminded just how beautiful and transformative the white stuff can be. Ducking into Muji for some last-minute holiday shopping on our way back from the Gehry theater press conference on 10th Avenue, we were delighted to find a mountain clearing where the courtyard of the Renzo Piano-designed Times building once was. From the birch trees to the unbesmirched snow, its the sort of sight you would struggle to find even in Central Park, let alone Midtown. Excuse us for getting sentimental—it must be the eggnog—but these are the sort of moments that remind us of the power and import of good architecture.
Koolhaas Flames Out, Shantytowns Inform
(photo: Alicia Nijdam/flickr)
The announcement that Rem Koolhaas would be the keynote speaker for the “Ecological Urbanism” conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), which took place over three days last weekend, raised eyebrows, especially among sustainability-minded architects, landscape architects, and planners. Koolhaas had never shown any particular interest in the subject, and the fire at his TVCC Tower in Beijing was interpreted by many as a symbol of an era that had come to an end, ushering in more sustainable and responsible practices. Read More
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