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Monday, January 12, 2015

Arch Daily NYC

Video: Santiago Calatrava On His Design For Ground Zero’s Only Non-Secular Building

In a film for the BBC Magazine, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava talks through his designs for the new St. Nicholas Church – the only non-secular building on the  Memorial site. The building, which broke ground last year, has been described by Calatrava as a ”tiny jewel” for lower Manhattan, comprising of a white Vermont marble shrine sat beneath a translucent central cupola that is illuminated from within. The new church, of Greek Orthodox denomination, replaces a church of the same name which was destroyed during the attacks of . It is sited close to its original location on 130 Liberty Street, overlooking the National September 11 Memorial park and museum. With the building set to open in early 2016, Calatrava discusses the key conceptual ideas and references behind its unique, controversial design.

Chefs Club by Food & Wine / Rockwell Group

© Emily Andrews
Architects: Rockwell Group
Location: The Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street, , NY 10012, 
Area: 6000.0 ft2
Year: 2014
Photographs: Emily Andrews

Northwest Corner Building / Moneo Brock Studio

© Michael Moran
Architects: Rafael Moneo Arquitecto + Moneo Brock Studio
Location: Broadway y 120th Streett, , NY 10010, 
Design Architect: Rafael Moneo Valles Arquitecto, Belen Moneo and Jeff Brock
Moneo Brock Studio Project Team: Benjamin Llana, Spencer Leaf, Andrés Barron
Associate Architect: Davis Brody Bond, New York, NY, U.S.A. William Paxson, Partner-in-Charge
Dbba Project Team: Mayine Lynn Yu, David Haft, Fernando Hausch-Fen, Gene Sparling, Mario Samara, Clover Linne, Dohhee Zhoung, Veronique Ross, y James Paxson
Project Management: Columbia University Facilities – Capital Project Management
Area: 188000.0 ft2
Year: 2010
Photographs: Michael Moran

Lincoln Memorial and Flatiron to Join LEGO® Architecture Series

© LEGO®
LEGO® has unveiled the latest buildings to join their architecture series: the Lincoln Memorial and the  Flatiron Building. Both will be released in 2015.
The Lincoln Memorial, a national monument honoring the 16th President of the United States, was designed by Henry Bacon and features a sculpture of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French. The Flatiron Building, originally known as the Fuller Building, is a landmark Manhattan skyscraper designed by Daniel Burnham Frederick Dinkelberg.
The news was released following the grand opening of a new LEGO® Brand Store adjacent to the Flatiron.
More images of the new LEGO® sets, after the break. 

New York’s Storefront Launches “Street Architecture” Competition

Courtesy of Storefront
On the occasion of Ideas City 2015, the biennial Festival created to explore the future city and to effect change, Storefront for Art and Architecture, along with the New Museum and the City Department of Transportation, is launching a competition for the design and construction of an outdoor structure—a work of “Street Architecture” that facilitates new forms of collective gathering and engagement with the city.

Why Are There Still No Built Traces of New York’s Tech Industry?

837 Washington Street. ImageImage via  YIMBY
For many architects, the chance to make an impression on the landscape of New York City is a sign of distinction, an indication that they have “made the big time.” But it’s not just architects who have this desire: for decades, the city’s big industrial players have also striven to leave their mark. However in this article, originally posted on New York YIMBY as “How New York City is Robbing Itself of the Tech Industry’s Built Legacy,” Stephen Smith examines where it’s all gone wrong for the city’s latest industry players.
Strolling through the streets of Manhattan’s business neighborhoods, you can pick out the strata of the city’s built commercial heritage, deposited over generations by industries long gone. From the Garment District’s heavy pyramidal avenue office towers and side street lofts, dropped by the garment industry in the 1920s, to the modernist towers like Lever House and the Seagram Building, erected on Park and Fifth Avenues during the post-war years by the country’s giant consumer goods companies, each epoch of industry left the city with a layer of commercial architecture, enduring long after the businesses were acquired and the booms turned to bust.
But 50 or 100 years into the future, when our grandchildren and great-grandchildren stroll through the neighborhoods of Midtown South that are today thick with  and creative firms, they are not likely to find much left over from the likes of Facebook or Google. There will be no equivalent of Grand Central or Penn Station, Terminal City or the Hotel Pennsylvania, left over from the early 20th century railroad tycoons, or SoHo’s cast iron buildings, developed by speculators seeking to feed the growing textile and dry-goods trades of the late 19th century. Perhaps unique among New York’s large industries, the tech and creative tenants that have become the darlings of the current market cycle are leaving very little behind for future generations to admire.

INABA Frames Empire State Building with Animated “New York Light” Installation

© Zhonghan Huang
From the architect.
This holiday season, wedged between two  icons – the Flatiron and Empire State building – stands the #NewYorkLight public art installation by Brooklyn-based INABA. A magnificent place to experience the Manhattan grid, the installation frames a unique and uninterrupted view of the skyline due to the clearing of Madison Square Park.

In Defense of Santiago Calatrava

Florida Polytechnic Sciencie, Innovation and Technology Campus. Image © Alan Karchmer for 
In recent years, few architects have had a tougher time in the media than Santiago Calatrava. Whether it’s his repeated legal battles over leaking roofs and peeling facades, the unceremonious death of his Chicago Spire project, or the media firestorm over his New York Transportation Hub that is $2 billion over budget, Calatrava has become a poster boy for those who criticize the supposed arrogance of today’s architects. However, in an engaging article for FastCo Design, Karrie Jacobs responds to what seems to be “a concerted effort to shore up his reputation,” coming to the defense of this “unreconstructed aesthete.” Read the article in full here.

Interior Renders of Robert AM Stern’s 520 Park Avenue, NYC’s Most Expensive Apartment Building

© 2014 Zeckendorf Development LLC via 520parkavenue.com
This news article was originally published by 6sqft.
Robert A.M. Stern‘s 520 Park Avenue has already been called “the next 15 Central Park West,” and like its Stern predecessor, 520 is an ultra-luxury development with a stately façade wrapped in stone. Set to be completed in 2016, it will rise 51 stories high, but contain just 31 units, one of which is the $130 million penthouse, the city’s most expensive apartment. And though most of the attention has been on “the greatest apartment on the Upper East Side,” the fanfare has now shifted to the first batch of interior renderings for the building.
520 Park’s full website is now live, and not surprisingly, the residences have classic layouts, impressive Central Park views, and a host of high-end amenities.

Davis Brody Bond and KieranTimberlake Chosen to Design NYU Facility

US Embassy in London / KieranTimberlake Architects
As the culmination of a five-month selection process,  (NYU) has announced that Davis Brody Bond and KieranTimberlake will be designing its major new facility along Mercer Street between Houston and Bleecker in New York. The facility’s many uses will include classrooms, teaching spaces for performing arts, a state-of-the-art sports facility, and student and faculty housing.
Collectively, the team was chosen for its high profile portfolio, which includes projects like the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the U.S. Embassy in London, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the 1983-2006 restoration and expansion of the New York Public Library.

Mariner Harbor Branch Library / A*PT ARCHITECTURE

© Albert Vecerka / Esto
Architects: A*PT ARCHITECTURE
Location: Mariners Harbor, Staten Island, NY, 
Design Team: Anna Torriani, AIA; Lorenzo Pagnamenta, AIA; Wasmiya Tan; Raffaele Stefani; Damien Romanens; Nam Suk Oh; Juan Carlos Salas Ballestin; Caterina Inderbitzin; Petya Ivanova; Felix Lederberger; Roxane Bervini; Anais Iglesias; Nuria Forques.
Area: 10000.0 ft2
Year: 2014
Photographs: Albert Vecerka / Esto

Stereotank Designs Heart-Beating Urban Drum for Times Square

© 
Come February 9,  City will be celebrating the opening of its seventh annual Valentine’s Day installation in Times Square. As part of Times Square Alliance’s heart design competition, Brooklyn- based and Venezuelan-born firm Stereotank will be constructing a heart-beating urban drum in hopes that it will bring together New Yorkers through music. 

Studio Gang Tapped to Extend American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History. Image Courtesy of Wikipedia
Chicago’s Studio Gang Architects have been selected to design a new Center for Science, Education and Innovation for the American Museum of Natural History in . Named after its largest donor, the $325 million Gilder Center will include 218,000-square-feet of existing and new space. It is slated to open on Columbus Avenue at 79th Street on the west side of the Museum campus, in conjunction with its 150th anniversary in 2019–2020.

SHoP Architects Reveal Restoration Plan for New York’s Seaport District

© 
SHoP Architects have revealed a mixed use proposal to pedestrianize New York City’s historic Seaport District. Extending the  grid out into the waterfront, the scheme seeks to harmonize pedestrian infrastructure and increase access to the shoreline, while proposing a 500-foot luxury residential tower by developer Howard Hughes Corporation that would jut out into the harbor. More about the proposal, after the break.

Why New York Shouldn’t be a City for the One Percent

View above Central Park looking south towards “Billionaire’s Row” towers, with Midtown towers in background and various Financial District and Downtown Brooklyn Towers in far background. Image Courtesy of CityRealty
In recent years, it’s been difficult to miss the spate of supertall, super-thin towers on the rise in Manhattan. Everyone knows the individual projects: , One57, the Nordstrom Tower, the MoMA Tower. But, when a real estate company released renders of the New York skyline in 2018, it forced New Yorkers to consider for the first time the combined effect of all this new real estate. In this opinion article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “On New York’s Skyscraper Boom and the Failure of Trickle-Down Urbanism,” Joshua K Leon argues that the case for a city of the one percent doesn’t stand up under scrutiny.
What would a city owned by the one-percent look like?
New renderings for CityRealty get us part way there, illustrating how Manhattan may appear in 2018. The defining feature will be a bumper crop of especially tall, slender skyscrapers piercing the skyline like postmodern boxes, odd stalagmites, and upside-down syringes. What they share in common is sheer unadulterated scale and a core clientele of uncompromising plutocrats.

10 Points of a Bicycling Architecture

© Steven Fleming and Charlotte Morton
A revolution is occurring in street design. New York, arguably the world’s bellwether city, has let everyday citizens cycle for transport. They have done that by designating one lane on most Avenues to bicyclists only, with barriers to protect them from traffic.
Now hundreds of cities are rejigging to be bicycle-friendly, while in  there is a sense that more change is afoot. Many New Yorkers would prefer if their city were more likeCopenhagen where 40% of all trips are by bike. But then Copenhagen wants more as well. Where does this stop?
If you consider that we are talking about a mode of transport that whips our hearts into shape, funnels many more people down streets than can be funneled in cars, has no pollution, and costs governments and individuals an absolute pittance, you wont ask where it stops, but how close to 100% the bike modal share can possibly go and what we must do to achieve that.

The Room at Technicolor Postworks / Rafi Segal Architecture

© Kate Joyce
Architects: Rafi Segal Architecture
Location: , NY, 
Design Team: Rafi Segal A+U , Sara Segal
Project Manager: Bill Topazio (PostWorks)
Area: 1400.0 ft2
Photographs: Kate Joyce

New York’s $4 Billion Train Station Takes Shape

Screenshot. Image © Bedel Saget/The New York Times
Santiago Calatrava’s head-turning World Trade Center Transportation Hub has assumed its full form, nearly a decade after its design was revealed. In light of this, the New York Times has taken a critical look at just how the winged station’s budget soared. “Its colossal avian presence may yet guarantee the hub a place in the pantheon of civic design in New York. But it cannot escape another, more ignominious distinction as one of the most expensive and most delayed train stations ever built.” The complete report, here.

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