Tags: architecture

The New York City Department of Transportation has announced the winner of its reNEWable Times Square design competition, aimed to temporarily “refresh and revive” the streetscape of newly pedestrianized Times Square while plans for permanent reconstruction proceed (construction is slated for 1012). 

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/9051621]

An illustrative lecture by William Reed AIA, an architect at the Integrative Design Collaborative as well as Regenesis, Inc. and Delving Deeper who is a nati0nally recognized expert on the practice of sustainable design, delivered in March as part of the Boston Society of Architects lecture series. 

The Architectural League of New York has just mounted an exhibit called ‘The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010‘ about architecture, planning, and development in New York City since 2001.

This installment chronicles the transformation the physical city in light of the convergence of an array of powerful forces: the events of 9/11, the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg Administration, the volatility of global and local economies, advances in material and construction technologies, and a new interest among the public in contemporary architecture.

Tonight at the Center for Architecture, a panel discussion called Is it Architecture?  The Structure in Landscape.

Recent collaborations between architects, artists and landscape architects have begun to blur the boundaries between architecture, art and site. What does it mean to intervene in the environment with these projects?

Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront opens today at the MoMA.  The exhibit features architectural proposals transforming New York City’s harbor and coastline in response to sea level rise.  Last fall’s architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 brought together five interdisciplinary teams to produce plans, models, drawings and analytical models that now make up the show.

Now that the City of New York has decided to make the pedestrian plazas in Times Square permanent, the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), in partnership with the Times Square Alliance, has issued a Request for Proposals for conceptual designs of short-term “refreshes” of the plazas. 

Artist Luke Jerram is preparing an outdoor ‘acoustic pavilion’ called Aeolus, which will be built of hundreds of metal tubes acting as Aeolian harps.  Each tube will contain strings which will strike chords inside the structure as the wind passes over them, making the whole structure sing. 

The University of British Columbia is currently in construction of what it claims will be the “greenest building in North America”: its new $37 million Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability.  Making use of fuel cells, solar panels, solar hot water heaters, ground source heat pumps and biomass co-generation, the building will be a net energy producer and serve as a living laboratory for all of these technologies. 

Figment, the participatory public arts project on Governor’s Island, is preparing for its fourth annual summer event and has released its call for art and architecture proposals.  There are three open competitions:

1. Design an individual hole to compose part of an 18-hole mini-golf course.

A couple of exciting exhibitions and projects featuring the built and natural environments are currently underway at the MoMA and P.S.1.  The MoMA exhibition, “In Situ: Architecture and Landscape”, opened last April and will be running through February 22nd. 

A design proposal that seemed almost inevitable: New York-based architects Terreform propose the employment of automated robots in reusing garbage sited within the Fresh Kills Landfill to construct buildings and islands.  The robots, refashioned from existing industrial equipment, would compact garbage into stackable units and be assembled like building blocks.

Gansam Architects’ G.lab* has designed a visitor’s center to host the 2.8 million annual visitors to Korea’s Suncheon wetlands, which, at more than 8,700 acres, make up the world’s fifth largest tidal flat.  The proposed design for a Suncheon International Wetlands Center structure is based on the imprints left by receding tides, and the 90,000 sq ft complex would be green-roofed, daylit and stilted above the wetlands so as to reduce impact on the ecosystem. 

Architecture and urbanism blog mammoth has compiled its review of the best architecture of the past decade.  It’s a refreshing list because of its inclusion of projects that stretch outside of what is typically considered ‘architecture’–the Large Hadron Collider, Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System, the MIT Media Lab’s City Car, the iPhone.

Web Ecoist showcases some incredible feats in green roof and, especially, green wall design around the world.  These are always fun and inspiring image galleries, even when the projects seem slightly misguided.  At their best, green roofs and walls not only serve as aesthetic amentities, but also provide insulation, purify air and reduce storm water runoff.

Renewable energy company Beautiful Earth Group has unveiled a containerized solar-powered charging station for electric vehicles (EVs) at a site in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  The station is built from recycled shipping containers and is topped with an array of 235-watt photovoltaic panels, which reach a total capacity of almost 6 kW. 

A recent New York Times piece features a valuable piece of NYC Parks property: the Alice Austen House, a National Historic Monument located in the Rosebank section of Staten Island.  Accompanying the story is an audio slide show narrated by caretaker and curator Paul Moakley, a freelance photo editor and photographer who maintains the house, museum and grounds in exchange for free accommodation in the house’s upstairs apartment.  

MIT students have developed a roofing tile that saves energy and heating and cooling costs by changing color depending on temperature.  The tile turns white to reflect heat during the summer and becomes transparent during cool months, revealing a heat-absorbing black backing. 

Plans have been announced by Bio Energy Investments Ltd (BEI) for the construction of BEI-Teesside, a biomass power station to be built on a brownfield site on the banks of the River Tees in the UK.  The striking design is by British firm Heatherwick studio. 

The New Yorker has published a list of the Ten Most Positive Architectural Events of 2009.  Highlights from the NYC-focused list include:

• the opening of the High Line on Manhattan’s west side;
• the pedestrianization of Broadway, a project transforming public space spearheaded by Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn;
• the publishing of two books on architecture and the city: 1) Wrestling with Moses by Anthony Flint on the historic struggle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, and 2)Twenty Minutes in Manhattan by Michael Sorkin on the author’s changing experience of the city as manifested in his daily walk from his home in Greenwich Village to his studio in Chelsea;
• Cooper Union’s opening of 41 Cooper Square, a new academic building making Cooper Union NYC’s first LEED Platinum certified school.

Eli Cohen gave a terrific talk Monday night on his work, as director of Ayala Water and Ecology, using plants to remove pollutants and contaminants from water, soil and air.  We’re grateful to the huge crowd that poured into the Arsenal gallery for the event, to Laura Starr and Yamit Perez for putting us in touch with Eli and, of course, to Eli himself for sharing his work and his thoughts.