Edward Durell Stone-Designed School Could Make Way For Luxury Tower
Edward Durell Stone’s PS 199. (Courtesy Google Maps)
New York City’s financially-strapped Department of Education is seeking to cash in on a 99,000 square foot lot on 70th Street just west of Broadway, but a local elementary school and the legacy of one of America’s first Modernists stand in the way. If the Department gets its way, the three-story P.S. 199, designed in 1963 by Edward Durell Stone, will be sold to developers and replaced by a 340-foot-tall luxury residential tower in the already crowded Upper West Side neighborhood.
On View> Edgeless School at the Center for Architecture
Floating desks are part of the exhibition at the Center for Architecture. (Juliana Barton / Courtesy Center for Architecture)
Edgeless School: Design for Learning
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
Through January 19, 2013
Edgeless School investigates how technology is changing education and how architecture itself is changing as a result. The exhibition takes a look at 19 newly completed schools throughout the country (eight are in New York City and the majority of the rest are in the Pacific Northwest) and sorts them by their degree of “edgelessness.” The Ethical Culture Fieldston Middle School in the Bronx, for example, softens the distinction between the built environment and nature by embracing outdoor space and using a connection with nature as an educational tool. The L.B. Landry High School in New Orleans, LA, on the other hand, blurs conventional distinctions between constituencies by encouraging students, educators, parents, and architects to work together to create a building that is designed to further the school’s pedagogical goals.
Cincinnati Gets Ohio’s Third Platinum School
The North College HIll High School / Middle School recently became Ohio’s third LEED Platinum public school. (Courtesy SFA Architects)
As part of an ongoing relationship with the North College Hill school district in Cincinnati, fellow Cincinnatians SFA Architects helped the district consolidate its many facilities into the space of one city block. The combined Middle-High School building, completed in 2010, last week received LEED Platinum certification, making it the third public education facility in Ohio to earn the green building ranking system’s top honor.
The massive development planned at the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) was unanimously upheld by the New York City Council Land Use Committee on Thursday, and the Lower East Side might be getting a new school. Or not. City officials won’t decide whether to build the project—part the 1.65 million square foot development at SPURA—for at least another five years, claiming initially that the community did not need a new school. According to City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, the city will set aside 15,000 square feet in the new mixed-use buildings in case a school becomes necessary in the future. The city will also reevaluate the funding available to build it and will keep the potential space available until 2023.
New York’s Standard Oil Building Gets New Life
26 Broadway in Lower Manhattan
The landmarked Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway continues to undergo its transformation from the oil giant’s Carrère and Hastings-designed New York headquarters into a bustling school building. Last week, AN got a sneak peek at the third academic institution to be completed there, a 104,000-square-foot space occupying the building’s first, mezzanine, and second levels. It will add 677 high school seats to the Broadway Education Campus, which currently includes The Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women (on the 4th and 5th floors) and Lower Manhattan Community Middle School (on the 6th and 7th floors).
All three schools have been designed by John Ciardullo Associates Architects, who have worked extensively with the SCA over the past several decades. Perhaps that relationship is why Ciardullo was allowed to have a bit of fun with the campus.
Wilson Savastano Venezia′s Dukhan facade: TAKTL
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Prototype of a perforated Dukhan facade panel (TAKTL)
High-performance concrete creates new possibilities for a community college facade.
A new generation of concrete, called Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC), is changing the way architects and designers think about the material. Usually composed of cement, fine grain sand, silica fume, optimized admixture, and alkali-resistant glass fiber reinforcement, UHPC offers high ductility, strength, and durability with a fine surface appearance. A new UHPC product called TAKTL, launched last year, shows the many additional applications that are possible with the right material mix, including facade panels available through its sister company VECTR. Recently chosen by Milan-based Wilson Savastano Venezia Architecture Studio for its Dukhan Community College (DCC) project in Qatar, the company is in the research and development phase for perforated and solid panels to clad the school’s sculptural facade.
Continue reading after the jump.
All Planning Is Local
Stringer (far left) and Anthony Borelli, his planning director (far right), with last year's fellows. (Courtesy MBPO)
One of the roles played by the city’s 59 community boards—besides issuing liquor licenses—is to oversee local planning issues, and while the input of the board is only advisory, it tends to weigh in the decision making of the City Planning Commission (as was the case at Hudson Yards earlier this week) and the City Council. The only problem is, the boards have no professional planners on staff. Manhattan has been blessed with a great deal of help the past three years, however, thanks to a fellowship program begun by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and today he announced it will hopefully be expanding to the entire city by next year. Read More
Head of the Class
Indian Community School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Antoine Predock Architect, PC (Photo: Timothy Hursley)
The AIA just announced the projects that received the highest marks in this year’s Educational Facility Design Awards, and they’re a diverse class – the 13 winners run the gamut from urban to rural, elementary to university, built to unbuilt.
Sidwell It Is
The Sidwell Friends School, the country's first LEED Platinum grade school. (All images courtesy KTA.)
As if we haven’t written enough about Barack Obama or schools of late (what can we say, we’re in the tank with the rest of the press), we still can’t help but weigh in on the Obamas’ decision to send their daughters to the Sidwell Friends School. Sure, there’s been tons said already about the school’s Quaker values and its symbolic standing in D.C., even the hypocrisy of the choice.
But what really matters–and hopefully speaks volumes for the coming administration–is the school itself. No, not the teachers. We’re talking about the building, and the middle school in particular, which happens to be the first LEED Platinum grade school in the country. Read More
Getting Schooled
Leo A Daly's LAUSD High School #9
Last Thursday AN California Editor Sam Lubell (author… ahem… of this post) moderated the first in a series of panels hosted by the AIA/LA called Design Dialogues. The discussion centered around educational design, and panelists included Hraztan Zeitlian of Leo A Daly Architects, John Enright of Griffin Enright Architects, and John Friedman of John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects. Read More
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