Javits Convention Center to Expand and Improve, but Issues Remain
By Ernie Hutton, Assoc. AIA, AICP

Future expansion of the Javits Center. The existing building is outlined in red. To view a full pdf of the Javits Center Expansion project, go to the Javits Center website.
Courtesy javitscenter.com

Event: The Strategic Plan for the New York City Department of Buildings
Speakers: James P. Colgate, RA, Esq., Executive Architect; Benjamin Jones, Acting Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Operations Redesign; Deborah Taylor, AIA, LEED AP, Executive Director of Special Projects and the Materials and Equipment Acceptance Unit; Robert LiMandri, First Deputy Commissioner
Organizers: AIA New York Building Codes Committee
Location: Center for Architecture, 07.20.06

"It's really a Rubik's Cube," is how Bruce Fowle, FAIA, LEED AP, explained of the complex problem of rebuilding the Javits Convention Center in its existing but expanded location—maintaining operations throughout while more than doubling its size and adding new flat floor exhibition space, meeting rooms, new marshalling yard truck space, and the inevitable security gauntlet.

The plan, designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, FXFowle Architects, and A. Epstein and Sons International, features a major new pedestrian-friendly façade along 11th Avenue—a 100-foot-high multi-block entry that complements the city's recently approved Hudson Yards plan and zoning—and plazas and landscaping enhancing the 34th Street corridor.

Although many have called for a realignment of the center perpendicular to the river, Frances Huppert, FAIA, senior vice-president of the Empire State Development Corporation, explained that ESDC and Center officials rejected such a major shift due to lack of site control, cost, plus scheduling conflicts. Moving swiftly on the current concept, the General Project Plan (GPP) has just received approval and plans are moving forward for the first phase of design and construction, with initial work to begin this fall.

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New Practices Sideswipe Tradition
By Jessica Sheridan, Assoc. AIA

Films of the six winning entries along with all 48 entry portfolios are on display in the "New Practices New York: Six Young Firms Set Themselves Apart" exhibition.
Kristen Richards

Event: New Practices New York: Six Young Firms Set Themselves Apart exhibition
Designers: Curator: William Menking, founder & editor, The Architect's Newspaper; Exhibition Design: Christoff: Finio Architecture; Graphic Design: Jeanne Verdoux
Organizers: AIA New York Chapter, The Architect's Newspaper
Sponsors: Exhibition Underwriter: Häfele; Lead Sponsors: Fountainhead Construction, Delta Faucet Company, Delta & Brizo; Additional Sponsorship: Shaw and Young Metal Works
Location: Center for Architecture, 06.26-09.23.06

New practices are often restricted to small-scale projects and ideas competitions. Out of the 48 entries to the first annual New Practices Showcase competition, there is no shortage of loft, restaurant, and exhibition design. The success of the six winning entries lies in the unexpected interpretations and unique approaches to design.

Matthew Bremer, AIA, founder of Architecture in Formation, describes his firm's work as "a delicate balance between modesty and majesty." The House for a Butcher and an Art Denizen montages a wide range of materials creating a cinematic entry sequence along a granite wall and oak columns. Zakrzewski Hyde Architects responds to site conditions in all its projects. Internal and external spaces irregularly erode the solid mass of 302 Spring Street depending on light and views of the Hudson River.

G Tects' work relates electronic information technologies to architecture. The Home Broadcasting Window proposal "represents the public realm and restores privacy to the domestic environment" by placing electronic displays in front of windows in apartment buildings. The displays—organic light-emitting diodes sandwiched between two layers of glass—produce a moving image blocking views into apartments while remaining transparent to inhabitants looking out. Progressive technology also reigns in the work of Gage/Clemenceau Architects. The bone-like structure behind the Microsite Addition allows for a unique façade that integrates teardrop "perforations" instead of typical windows. Because the house is built on wetlands, the structure peels away from the floor touching the ground for a minimal footprint—just big enough for an entry.

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Majora Carter Greens the Ghetto
By Carolyn Sponza, AIA

Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects is acting as lead consultant to Sustainable South Bronx on the South Bronx Greenway project. This is one street as it exists with a rendering of its proposed future.
Courtesy Sustainable South Bronx

Event: The Municipal Art Society of New York Fourth Annual Evangeline Blashfield Award presentation
Organizers: Municipal Art Society (MAS)
Location: Guastavino's Restaurant, 08.01.06

MAS President Kent Barwick called Majora Carter a "guiding hand" in the quest for community-based planning, noting that his first meeting with Carter in 1998 occurred during a cleanup of 150 tires and 4 tons of garbage. Carter was recognized with the fourth Evangeline Blashfield Award, conferred annually for "ennoblement of civic life in New York." Though progress has been made, Carter implored the crowd to mobilize on future issues effecting quality of life across the city, ending with the words "we can do better… it's our choice."

Carter was spurred into action by the realities of her Hunts Point neighborhood, whose industrial heritage has left an urban fabric depleted of parkland, with approximately only 25% of the green space recommended by city planners. A 2005 MacArthur Fellow, she is founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization that bridges policy, development, and environmental issues, and has been instrumental in forcing the creation of the waterfront South Bronx Greenway, helping to raise over $30 million for its creation. In her introduction, Award Committee member Gail Gregg called Carter a "connector," linking her neighborhood with the funds necessary to transform gravel to green, ultimately improving quality of life in her community.

Architects Ahoy!
By Kristen Richards

Neck and neck.
Kristen Richards


Celebrating First Place (l-r): Bruce Stone, Manhattan Sailing Club liaison; Richard Gordon, Tactitian; Bruce McCarthur, Skipper, C.C. Pei, AIA, Partner, Pei Partnership Architects; Gerry Dolezar, Founder, Architect's Regatta; Joseph Fuller, Jr., AIA, Principal, Fuller & D'Angelo; John D'Angelo, ARA, 1st Crew, Fuller & D'Angelo.
Courtesy Pei Partnership Architects

Event: Annual ChallengeNY Architect's Regatta
Organizers: Gerry Dolezar
Location: North Cove, Batter Park City, 07.27.06

Even in the oppressive July afternoon heat and humidity and with dark storm clouds on the horizon, the spirits of almost 200 people gathered on the North Cove docks in Battery Park City couldn't be dampened. Fifteen J/24's (24-foot sailboats), provided by the Manhattan Sailing Club, bobbed in the water ready for the 6th Annual ChallengeNY Architect's Regatta.

Crews of architects—most unrecognizable in Bermuda shorts (who knew architects had knees?), caps, sunglasses—boarded their boats, hoisted their team pennants, and set sail. The rest of us boarded a launch to the Honorable William Wall, the Yacht Club's clubhouse-née-barge, moored in the cove between Liberty State Park and Ellis Island—a perfect setting for watching the races with beautiful views of the New York and New Jersey skylines, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty.

And race they did! With light wind, 8–10 knots, and an incoming tide, architects took to the water competing in two-mile-long courses. Word has it there were a few close calls and even one or two minor collisions, but nothing serious. Then it was back to the Yacht Club's dockside pontoon clubhouse to hand out awards just before the rains came.

First Place went to first-timers Pei Partnership/Fuller & D'Angelo/Associated Architects. Second Place was an unprecedented tie between Murphy Burnham & Buttrick Architects and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Each received a ChallengeNY perpetual trophy. But everyone left a winner: each team was asked to find or fabricate a humorous prize to present to the team finishing directly behind them—and there were some doozies! Teams left with awards such as a dummied up "Architect's Regatta for Dummies" book, a trophy "necklace" strung with over-sized Life Savers candies, and a nautical-themed bottle opener.

The regatta firms included: Allen + Kilcoyne; Bostwick Purcell; FXFOWLE; Gluckman Mayner; Gruzen Samton; HLW; HOK; Mancini Duffy; Pelli Clarke Pelli; Rogers Marvel; and Swanke Hayden Connell. (Some, who shall remain nameless, even brought in ringers from their out-of-town offices.)

The ChallengeNY Architect's Regatta, organized by marketing consultant Gerry Dolezar, is a charity race benefiting the non-profit Project City Kids, a free sailing program for kids. To join the fun next year, contact Dolezar at gdolezar@optonline.net. To see more photos from the event, see Sighted.

How the Other Billion Live
By Gregory Haley, AIA, AICP

Rocinha, a squatter community in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Robert Neuwirth

Event: This Will Kill That? A reading forum with Robert Neuwirth
Speaker: Robert Neuwirth, investigative reporter & author, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World
Organizers: Emerging New York Architects Committee, AIA NY Chapter
Location: Center for Architecture, 07.25.06

One billion of the world's urban dwellers are squatters, and this figure is projected to double within a generation. According to Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, the number foreshadows humanity's collective future in our ever-urbanizing world. The sheer number of people taking housing into their own hands is leading to massive urban development. If this is the future in the making, ad hoc practices of squatters will eclipse conventional development protocol, as developers cannot keep up with squatters' needs.

International organizations—such as the United Nations and The World Bank—have failed in addressing the needs of poor urban squatters due to a lack of direct communication and an inability to think beyond conventional practice. Neuwirth believes that the international population must engage directly with the squatters and empower them through guarantees of residence and political voice so they themselves can begin to contribute solutions to urban problems.

Gregory Haley, AIA, AICP, is a project architect and urban designer at Studio V Architects, and has taught architectural design studios at NYIT School of Architecture.

When in Provence…

Courtesy nARCHITECTS Windshape is an inhabitable outdoor environment in Lacoste, France, consisting of two pavilions that dynamically change with the Provençale wind. Designed by New York-based nARCHITECTS and a team of students from the Provence campus of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), Windshape will be on view through the end of August at the Galerie Pfriem in Lacoste. In each upper and lower pavilion, a web of string and plastic pipe emerges from limestone walls and terraces of the medieval hillside town, home of the ruin of the castle of the Marquis de Sade. The diaphanous structures continue the town's traditional masonry walls. In some places, a lighter interpretation of the stone walls suggests enclosures for events, while in an other, it frames the view of agricultural fields and vineyards below.

MoMA as Multiplex?

Courtesy MoMA The Museum of Modern Art and Creative Time jointly commissioned LA-based video artist Doug Aitken (his work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Whitney, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, among others) to produce public art in the shape of filmed sequences of five fictional characters as they move about the city. Inspired by the densely built environment of midtown Manhattan, the short films will be shot in 35mm film and projected onto five exterior walls—the MoMA's 53rd Street façades and those overlooking the Sculpture Garden—increasing the museum's exhibition space. Aitken calls his art "exploded cinema," an urbanized and modernized version of a drive-in theater. The Mayor's office sees it as magnet to attract the arts and culture community that is a vital component of the city's tourism industry. The films will be on view daily from January 16 to February 12, 2007, from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m., and will be visible from many public vantage points adjacent to the museum.

UDC Housing Exhibit—Virtually Revived
In 2005, the Center for Architecture exhibited housing projects developed under the auspices of the New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC). The exhibition, conceived by a group of architects, planners, policymakers, public advocates, and environmental psychologists, illustrated the UDC's mandate—to improve the physical environment for low- and moderate-income families. During its most prolific and creative years, from 1968 to 1975, the UDC built 33,000 housing units. Now, a virtual replication of "Policy and Design for Housing: Lessons of the UDC" can be viewed online. It includes current commentary about the agency and how lessons learned from its creative approaches can be applied to improve our present housing situation.

New York Law School Expands

Courtesy New York Law School The Washington, D.C., office of the SmithGroup will transform the New York Law School's campus in TriBeCa into a cohesive architectural complex. The centerpiece of the expansion will be a glass-enclosed, 200,000-square-foot, nine-level building—five stories above ground and four below—which will integrate with the school's existing three buildings and nearly double its current space. The new building will contain classrooms, student spaces, and an auditorium. The two-phased project, consisting of 216,000 square feet of new construction and 150,000 square feet of renovations to three existing buildings, is expected to be completed in 2010.

Aalto's Reading Room Renovation Draws Fire, Debate
The matter of renovating the Woodberry Poetry Room in Harvard University's Lamont Library, designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1949, with furnishing designed by the architect and his wife, Aino, has spurred strong arguments among members of the architecture, design, and preservation communities. These include Toshiko Mori, FAIA, the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture; Nancy M. Cline, the Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College; Sidney Verba, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library; David N. Fixler, AIA; and Frederic Schwartz, FAIA. DOCOMOMO US, which promotes the study, interpretation, and protection of architecture of the Modern Movement, is hosting an electronic forum for a debate about Woodberry. The debate goes online.

The Hit Factory—Condos that Rock Built

Courtesy Arpad Baksa Architect After 30 years of being the place to record chart-busting Rock, Hip-Hop, and R&B albums, the Hit Factory in Hell's Kitchen, a victim of changes in the music industry, will be transformed into high-end condominiums a rock star would love. Architect Arpad Baksa, AIA, will transform the seven-story building into 27 one-, two- and three-bedroom loft-style residences, including six penthouse duplexes with private terraces—ranging from 1,100 to 3,400 square feet. Prices will range from $1.1 million to $4 million and should be ready for occupancy in early 2007. The lobby will house the original Hit Factory signage and display gold and platinum albums by artists who recorded there, such as Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon, and Barbra Streisand.

World Trade Center Memorial to Dig Foundation
The first major construction contract for the World Trade Center Memorial has been awarded to E.E. Cruz of Holmdel, NJ, for foundations and footings. The $17 million contract was awarded by the WTC Memorial Foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). The work will begin later this month and will be completed in 2007. Site preparatory work on the Michael Arad/Peter Walker-designed Memorial—"Reflecting Absence"—began last March.

Foundation Hosts Hot Summer
By Erin McCluskey, Program Manager, Center for Architecture Foundation

Brooklyn Bridge Worker; photo taken during Architecture & Design Day Camp
Michael Bashner, age 7

Children designing at FamilyDay@theCenter
Rodrigo Muniz

From designing toys for tigers, to bridges and space ships, the fun level of New York City's children was boosted through two summertime programs hosted by the Center for Architecture Foundation.

Lions & Archives & Art (oh my!)—a Family Day held July 29—was a mini-design fair with educators from the six institutions featured in the "City of Culture: New Architecture for the Arts" exhibition, currently on view at the Center. Each organization offered a different hands-on activity. At the Queens Botanical Garden table, kids met their design clients (worms) and set to work designing hotels for them. Using stickers and 3-D renderings, kids redecorated the Bowery to reflect the artistic influence of the New Museum. The Bronx Zoo asked kids to imagine enrichment activities to engage captive tigers who are easily bored in zoos. Snug Harbor brought boxes and house elements and let kids go to town on their buildings. There was also a mandala-making workshop with the Weeksville Heritage Center, and streetscape photography with the Lincoln Center Institute.

This year's Architecture & Design Day Camp, entitled "Street Smarts," incorporated walking tours, photography, model building projects, drawing, and collage work, all themed around New York City neighborhoods and places. In its second year, the program hosted 22 kids over a two-week period. One highlight of the program was a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, followed by bridge designing at the Center. After visiting South Street Seaport, the group designed boats and infill buildings for the historic district. Other projects included documentation of Bleecker Street, and designing a prospective children's garden for LaGuardia Park, located across the street from the Center.

Fall activities hosted by the Center for Architecture Foundation include upcoming Family Days on 09.09.06 and 09.16.06. Save the date!

In Remembrance: Rolf Myller
By Bruce S. Fowle, FAIA, LEED

Architect Rolf Myller died March 23, 2006, at the age of 79. Many knew Rolf as a design critic in the early 1960s at Pratt Institute where he taught a second-year studio. His former student, Suzanne Wertz, remembers: "He was a perceptive and challenging design critic—holding us to very high design and aesthetic standards. He would encourage a student's strong concept, the unusual bold stroke, the unexpected humanity or humorous surprise—he was a romantic. He loved interacting with the students and, along with his wife Lois, hosted fun gatherings at his apartment. He was a mentor to many students, and several of us have remained friends of Rolf and Lois for over 44 years."

Both Suzanne and I had the pleasure of working for Rolf—although in different capacities. Suzanne was in his small practice in the mid 1960s when he designed some outstanding houses, affordable row houses, a country club, and various institutional buildings. Teamed with his long-time associate, Henry Szwarce, he entered the international Roosevelt Memorial competition in Washington, DC, and finished in second place. The main element of the scheme was a wonderful sculpture of FDR that Rolf had modeled himself.

Rolf was also part of a three-firm venture called Myller Snibbe Tafel Architects and Planners Associated that had been established for the purpose of designing the SUNY campus at Geneseo, NY. His partners were Richard Snibbe, FAIA, and Edgar Tafel, FAIA I worked there from 1964 until 1968. It was an odd trilogy—Snibbe and Myller had come from Edward Stone's office, and Tafel was a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright—but it worked. The master plan for the campus (a former teacher's college) was artfully conceived. The buildings were divided between the partners, but each design was true to the established campus vocabulary, while still carrying its own architect's identity. Rolf, who was the free spirit among them, stretched it to the limit—particularly with his Administration Building that featured a non-conforming random window pattern and charming elements of surprise and delight.

Rolf had many interests and talents. He wrote and illustrated several children's books—the most popular being How Big Is a Foot (1962). His adult books included Sweet and Sour: Uncle Rolf's Guide to Eating in New York's Chinatown (1991), and Fantasex: A Book of Erotic Games for the Adult Couple (1975), for which he smartly used the pen name Rolf Milonas.

His long suffering with Parkinson's cut his career short and robbed us all of much of his potential greatness. Remarkably, he never lost his wonderful spirit and zest for life. I will never forget the day he told me that he couldn't draw anymore—and he didn't know what to do with himself. It was the only time I ever heard him complain.

"Melancholia 1," 2005
Richard Clements

08.28.06–09.16.06
Goldsmiths: MFA 2007 Survey

An exhibition celebrating the impact Goldsmiths College and the London art scene have made on the art world, this show will include works by 14 artists from Goldsmiths' first year class, exploring themes that range from the myth of British chivalry to existentialist studies of businessmen and why rock music might be better than contemporary art.

White Box; 525 West 26th Street