On View> Contemporary Cartographies Asks Artists to Reimagine Maps in New Forms
Kevin Van Aelst’s Apple Globe. (Courtesy Lehman College)
Contemporary Cartographies
Lehman College Art Gallery
250 Bedford Park Blvd., Bronx, NY
Through May 11
Lehman College’s Contemporary Cartographies exhibition, curated by Susan Hoeltzel and Yuneikys Villalonga, showcases a group of contemporary artists working with and displaying maps in a variety of mediums and forms. Some artists have adapted existing maps to create new objects or displays while others have created either traditional or abstract maps out of unique materials. The maps in this exhibition may describe or expand on geographic forms or accepted boarders, while others narrate imagined or conceptual landscapes.
Surprise Cuts Could Devastate Detroit Parks System
a vintage postcard depicting Detroit’s belle isle (Courtesy catherine of chicago via flickr)
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing announced Friday that the city will close 51 parks. The Detroit Free Press’ Matt Helms has the full list of parks here, including an additional 37 parks that will receive limited maintenance.
The closures are the result of massive cuts to the city’s parks and recreation budget due to the City Council’s rejection this week of a plan to lease Belle Isle to the state. Details of the council’s decision were evidently worked out late Thursday night, so the devastating cuts came as a surprise to many residents. The move recalls closures announced, but avoided, in 2010.
A Look at Grand Central Past and Present
Inside Grand Central Terminal. (Courtesy The Library of Congress)
As New Yorkers celebrate Grand Central’s Centennial, many might have forgotten, or perhaps never even knew, that the train terminal almost suffered the same fate as Penn Station and was nearly demolished in the late 1960s. This controversy made historic preservation a critical part of the conversation about development and the future of New York City.
Grand Central “was a gift to preservation and left a legacy. By its influence, it will save other buildings in the future,” said Frank Prial, Associate Partner at Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, the firm responsible for the restoration of Grand Central. “It is our poster child for preservation.”
A Panoramic View of London From the Top of The Shard
London viewed from the top of the Shard. (Courtesy The Guardian)
It’s been a good year for breathtaking views of cities around the world so far. Today the observation deck at the top of Renzo Piano’s Shard Tower in London opened to the public after London Mayor Boris Johnson cut the ribbon on the 800-foot-high platform. To celebrate, The Guardian has launched an interactive panorama of London taken from the top of the Shard, some 1,150 feet above the city streets, complete with the wooshing sound you very well might hear if you were actually perched atop the tower. The panorama also features stories and statistics about buildings and places throughout the city as you pan and zoom for the rest of the evening.
Video> Water Main Break Floods Manhattan’s Subway System
A water main break at Madison Square Park. (Courtesy Jamie Hodin / @jamiehodin)
Earlier today, a 36-inch water main burst in Manhattan, sending water skyward into 23rd Street and Broadway at Madison Square Park. The 98-year pipe flooded the intersection with several inches of water, enough to breach the subway vents to the N, Q, and R line trains, sending a waterfall into the station and shutting down service. According to CBS New York, a total of three feet of water made it into the station. The MTA released a video showing the dramatic waterfall, a chilling reminder just how fragile New York’s vital infrastructure can be and making us wish that a few more of those designer-subway-grates by the like of Rogers Marvel and others were installed throughout the city.
Happy 100th, Grand Central! Festivities Mark Centennial of Manhattan Landmark
A LEGO model of Grand Central Terminal built for the station’s 100th birthday. (Courtesy Kevin Ortiz / @MTA_NYCT_Vocero)
Happy Birthday Grand Central Terminal! Today the 49-acre train station is turning 100 and celebrating this grand ‘ole affair with performances, events, and even a LEGO model of the Beaux-Arts style station itself, courtesy the LEGOLAND Discovery Center Westchester Station Master’s Office. Designed by Reed & Stern and Warren & Wetmore, the station is believed to be the largest station by number (44) of platforms in the world.
In honor of the Centennial, some of the retail shops and restaurants are even dropping their prices to 1913 levels, so commuters can grab a piece of cheesecake at the Oyster Bar for 19 cents. The New York Times also fired up its own time machine, posting the original supplement from 1913 when Grand Central first opened to the public. (You can download the PDF here.)
CANstruction 2013 New York Kicks Off at the World Financial Center
Ted Moudis Associates’ “Target Hunger” (Courtesy of Nicole Anderson/AN)
Starting last night at the Lower Manhattan’s Brookfield Place World Financial Center, 24 teams of architects, engineers, and MTA employees stacked cans into the small hours of the morning for the 20th Annual NYC CANstruction Competition. Large amorphous structures—some abstract, others more recognizable—emerged out of more than 80,000 cans of food.
The firms were given 24-hours to build their sculptures, which will then go on display for 11 days at the World Financial Center, and later dismantled and donated to City Harvest to provide food for the hungry. Last year, the competition yielded 90,000 cans of food, and Lisa Sposato, Associate Director of Food Sourcing Donor Relations at City Harvest, said they’ve already received 35,000 pounds of cans. Unfortunately Hurricane Sandy delayed the competition, and a few teams had to drop out, but several of them donated their cans of food.
St. Louis’ Last Gasometer is No More
The last gasometer in St. Louis bites the dust. (Courtesy Michael R. Allen / Preservation Research Office)
A collection of strange industrial relics in St. Louis has gone the way of many before it, as the city’s last gasometer has fallen.
Gasometers are storage devices for natural and coal gas, built during the 20th century but abandoned after 2000 when underground storage became the preferred method. The Laclede Gas Company Pumping Station at 3615 Chevrolet, built around 1920, was the area’s last. Michael R. Allen wrote an epitaph for the bygone piece of infrastructure, providing a remembrance that asks, are industrial relics worth preserving?
Basically silos for gas, the structures leave behind industrial skeletons that are sometimes stunning, always intriguing — a Flickr group devoted to their documentation has more than 1,000 entries. They are more common in Europe than in the U.S., but Laclede’s St. Louis structures were the most notable on this side of the Atlantic. In Vienna they are celebrated, with four architectural teams currently converting four gasometers for new uses.
Developer Eyes Chicago Post Office for Casino, Retail Center
Chicago’s old Main Post Office. (Ian Freimuth / flickr)
Could that hulking behemoth, Chicago’s Main Post Office, see new life at last? According to the Sun-Times’ David Roeder, developer Bill Davies is betting on it, and he has brought Antunovich Associates to the table. If talk of a downtown casino has any merit, the Post Office could be the right place for it.
The massive 1921 building (expanded in 1932) comprises 2.5 million square feet downtown, looming over Congress Parkway. Davies’ fanciful plans for the facility have grabbed headlines since 2009, when the US Postal Service first put it on the auction block. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is still pushing the state legislature for a casino license, touting the potential revenue as a much-needed influx for school construction and repairs.
The New In Crowd: Architectural League’s 2013 Emerging Voices Announced
(Luis Garcia)
Reflecting the various currents of contemporary architecture and urbanism, the Architectural League of New York has announced its line-up for the 2013 Emerging Voices lecture series. The series showcases notable talent from across North America and is selected through a portfolio competition that emphasizes built work. The program has had a remarkable track record at identifying important architects. Past Emerging Voices have included Steven Holl, Morphosis, Jeanne Gang, and SHoP among many other boldface archinames.
Marlon Blackwell Weaves Plywood At The Crystal Bridges Museum
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(Timothy Hursley)
Marlon Blackwell uses ribbed ceiling to evoke craft while mitigating contemporary challenges at Arkansas museum.
The setting for the gift shop at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art seems idyllic—a vast glass wall opens onto a entry courtyard that gives way to a placid pond reflecting the Ozarks landscape. But to create a design for the 3,100 square-foot space in Bentonville, Arkansas, architect Marlon Blackwell had to overcome multiple hurdles. The first: a thicket of concrete columns supporting the green roof of the Moshe Safdie-designed building. Next: the west-facing glass wall, which made heat gain an issue. And finally: the very small budget (the total project cost was $644,000).
San Francisco Mayor Pledges Improved Transit
Inside T-Central’s Chinatown station (SFMTA)
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has seen some success in his time in office. But one element still remains a thorn in his side: MUNI, the city’s transit agency. In his State of the City address the other day (watch full speech below) Lee vowed to improve the notoriously late and overcrowded system, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. ”We need to modernize our system…to better match up with 21st century patterns of where people live, work, and shop,” said Lee.
A few remedies that Lee has suggested: the formation of a task force to help develop a plan for modernizing the system and dealing with the city’s growing population; expansion of BART, the Bay Area’s regional transit system; new work rule reforms; and a bevy of new technologies. ”Truly great cities have great transportation systems—Paris, New York, London, Tokyo,” Lee said. “I say San Francisco is pretty great, too, and deserves one as well.” The city is in fact adding a new transit line, the downtown T-Central, to help alleviate congestion problems. It’s slated to open in 2019. Check out images of the city’s upcoming line below.
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