AN has heard on good authority that three high level architects from AECOM have left that firm to open a Los Angeles office of SOM. SOM’s major west coast presence has long been in its San Francisco office. This story has been updated, please click here to read the full story.
Will Cornell stand by SOM to build NYC Tech Campus?
Inside the proposed Cornell campus.
Multiple factors helped the Cornell/Technion team win what is shaping up to be Mayor Bloomberg’s favorite super-scale legacy project. Stanford, the only real competition, withdrew; a windfall of a $350 million donation blew in; local Cornell alums pulled out the stops with petitions. High on that list is SOM’s preliminary design proposing a net-zero building and a permeable landscape, developed with Field Operations, woven in, over, and into multiple structures lending an interactive and public character to the entire campus.
This wholly sustainable, radically accessible design plan has become a signature of the project as the city ambitiously strives to become an East Coast high tech start-up incubator bar none. And yet it is unclear if SOM will remain on the job.
Cornell Wins: Next Stop Roosevelt Island
SOM's plan for Cornell's tech campus on Roosevelt Island.
With his hand essentially forced by a hasty withdraw of Stanford on Friday, and the hugely enticing carrot of a $350 million gift from Duty-Free billionaire and Cornell alum Charles Feeney, Mayor Bloomberg announced on Monday that the Cornell team will be building the NYC Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island. The terms “game changer” and “transformative” were bandied about with regularity throughout the mayor’s midday press conference, which was streamed live on the net to the delight of Cornell’s partnering campus, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. The Israeli students’ digitally lapsed cheering added a techy touch.
UCSB Names Dream Team For New Student Housing Complex
Aerial view of the UCSB campus
Why can’t every school be like the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB)? First it’s located on a lush, sun-soaked site overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And then this: the school just named a team led by SOM and including Daly Genik, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, Kieran Timberlake and WRNS Studios to design the San Joaquin Apartments, a new student housing complex. The project will include two apartment buildings housing a total of 1,000 students; a 600 car mixed-use parking structure; a new dining commons and a renovated 78,000 square foot neighborhood center. Other big names on the shortlist had included Brooks+Scarpa, Machado and Silvetti, AC Martin, Stanley Saitowitz, Lake Flato, Moore Ruble Yudell, Frederick Fisher and Partners, and several more. Stay tuned for info and images in the coming months.
SOM, with Kung Fu Panda, Wins Nanjing Waterfront Competition
(all images courtesy SOM/MIR Renderings)
Today, SOM announced it has been selected by Beijing-based MCCC Real Estate to redesign the Nanjing waterfront. The redevelopment will extend two-kilometers from the Yangtze River levee to the old city wall. The plan calls for renovating existing rail bridges and an old power station into new cultural and commercial spaces, preserving existing trees, and adding a hotel and other amenities along a renovated shipping canal. The plan also calls for remediating waterways for public access and recreation.
Archtober Building of the Day #3: Seven World Trade Center
Seven World Trade Center at right. (Courtesy Center for Architecture)
The view from LaGuardia Place includes the symphony of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s 7 World Trade Center at 250 Greenwich Street and its ever-rising companion, One World Trade Center, beyond. I see the buildings every day from the Center for Architecture, and have become a fan of 7 WTC’c magical properties, both geometric and optical. It is a building made out of reflections, refractions, inflections, and colors, expressed in glass and stainless steel.
Five Top Firms Looking for Summer Interns
As spring rolls around, deadlines loom for coveted summer internships. AN has collected a list of five prestigious firms that are looking for their 2011 class of interns. Good luck!
Manufacturers Trust Gets Yellow Light
Manufacturers Trust Company Building in 1955 (Courtesy Municipal Art Society)
“Sometimes the best way to restore a historic structure is to reuse it.” The comment came from Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Robert Tierney at the conclusion of Tuesday’s landmarks hearing on revisions proposed by Vornado Realty for interiors of the recently landmarked Manufacturers Trust Building on Fifth Avenue. The statement summed up the mood of the commission with regard to changes in the space, originally designed by Gordon Bunschaft, which include dividing the first floor to make space for two retail tenants. Most of the commission picked apart the specifics while maintaining that the architects from SOM overseeing the renovation were generally on the right track.
Bunshaft Goes Big-Box While Bertoia Goes Missing?
Forever (Landmarked) 21? (Neoscape)
The rumors about Gordon Bunshaft’s landmarked Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust Bank building being transformed into a big-box retail store have been flying around for a while now. In March, Vornado Realty Trust reportedly entered talks to buy the five-story building at 510 Fifth Avenue. Now, we’ve turned up a rendering by 3-D illustration firm Neoscape showing the building as the type of landmark only your high school daughter could love: a Forever 21.
But wait, it gets worse. Until this month the building has been occupied by Chase Bank, and while the changes made to the building for security reasons were lamentable, at least we could rest easy knowing that its site-specific Harry Bertoia sculpture—a 70-foot screen composed of 800 bronze plates—was safe. But not anymore. An AN tipster clued us in today: “Half of it is laying on the otherwise vacant 2nd floor. So far, all I’ve got from Chase is an assurance ‘it’s not going in the dumpster.’”
We confirmed the awful truth:
Breaking Bricks at Moynihan Station
Moynihan Station Rendering (Courtesy Moynihan Station Development Corporation)
Moynihan Station might not be welcoming its first passengers for years to come, but a heavy-hitting group of officials gathered at the James A. Farley Post Office to sledge-hammer a cinder block wall and declare Phase I ground officially broken.
CHA Wrecking Ball Returns
The Harold Ickes Homes as reconceived by Destefano + Partners
The last five families were moved out of the Harold Ickes Homes at the end of March, one of the latest clusters of high rise public housing the city is clearing as a part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s “Plan for Transformation.” Dozens of highrise towers have been demolished across the across the city, opening vast tracts of land for mixed-income and in some cases mixed-used development. While few would dispute that the large-scale warehousing of the poor in these projects helped to create major urban problems, the nearly total erasure of these areas seems as blunt as the urban renewal tactics through which they were originally built. Read More
Freedom At 200 Feet
Construction on One World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower, has reached 200 feet above street level.
The Port Authority announced today that steel erection for One World Trade Center has reached the 20th floor, or 200 feet above street level. For this particular project, that means that 8,000 tons of structural steel have been installed by DCM Erectors—700 tons more than all the steel in the Eiffel Tower. Currently, ironworkers are installing 16 giant steel nodes, some as big as 175 tons, which will act as joints between the framing of the podium and the rest of the tower. From here on out construction should move much faster, and completion is expected in 2013. The first 20 floors required very complex framing, whereas the remainder of the erection will be standard office floors. You can view more images of the construction at the Port Authority’s Flickr page.
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