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05.01.07
The AIA Convention is upon us. May 2-5, San Antonio will be overrun with architects and designers, many from NYC! Check out the Around the AIA + Center for Architecture section for an overview of all NY-based speakers and events.
- Jessica Sheridan, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP
In this issue:
·Powerhouse Finalists Compare Notes
·Back to Basics: Mies’s Sustainable Crown Hall
·War and Architecture
·Carpenter’s Thousand Points of Light
·A Systems Approach to the Green Skyscraper
·Post-Modernism: R.I.P.
·Challenging the Glass Box
·Hidden Splendor South of Chambers Street
·Ability Not Disability
Event: Powerhouse: New Housing New York — Panel Discussion with Finalist Teams
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.16.07
Speakers: Richard Cook, AIA — Cook+Fox; Sam Marks — WHEDCO; Colin Cathcart, AIA — Kiss+Cathcart; Robert Rogers, AIA — Rogers Marvel; Alexander Taylor — BRP Development
Moderators: Holly Leicht & Lance Jay Brown, FAIA
Organizers: AIANY; New Housing New York Steering Committee; NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development; additional support: AIANY Housing Committee
Sponsors: National Endowment for the Arts; Enterprise Community Partners; AIANY Housing Committee
New Housing New York finalist teams (l-r): BRP Bluestone Rogers Marvel; The Legacy Collaborative; WHEDCo Durst Cook+Fox.
Courtesy AIANY
The New Housing New York (NHNY) Legacy competition asked architects and developers to push the limits of their design and practice modes. To what extent could interdisciplinary teams collaborate in greater depth, spend less, build greener, inspire the community, and set a replicable precedent at this 60,000-square-foot site in the Bronx? The fruits of the competition lie not only in the winning design by Phipps Rose Dattner Grimshaw, but in the plurality of sustainable, urban, affordable proposals generated by the five finalist teams.
Richard Cook, AIA, of Cook+Fox, discussed the undulating “oxbow” design his team devised in order to endow the long, narrow site with a sense of public/private circulation. He identified an inherent tension between an adaptable urban housing template and a response to the specific site conditions. The result draws upon his firm’s increasing use of sustainable design strategies to maximize natural light and ventilation while minimizing solar gain.
The 13-story slab proposed by Kiss + Cathcart with Magnusson Architecture and Planning expressed the concept of a “green building” with live vegetation growing on a planted façade. Articulated bands of “townhouses in the sky” would afford residents a clear view of the passing seasons, while a single-loaded corridor scheme would allow cross-ventilation and a more open feeling. Ground-level retail space would cluster near the northern side of the site, while health and recreation facilities would be grouped at the southern side.
Robert Rogers, AIA, of Rogers Marvel Architects, outlined the “thematic condition of health” that permeates his team’s proposal, from cultural enrichment to physical health and financial security. Together with Alexander Taylor of BRP Development, he articulated the desire to “land on the street with consequential community facilities” such as dance and exercise studios and a food co-op. Concave slabs clad in modular brick and masonry panels would create a complementary pattern of open and enclosed space. A co-generation plant, meandering gardens, and a carefully planned ventilation system would conserve resources and boost the quality of life.
Noting that the city possesses few remaining land parcels to offer for future new housing developments, Sam Marks, a director at the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCO, which teamed with Cook+Fox), wondered whether a future competition could focus on retrofitting existing buildings. Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, defined the replicability of the NHNY exercise as a question of continued collaboration: “Can you replicate the act of will that it takes to bring this kind of event about?”
Powerhouse: New Housing New York is on view at the Center for Architecture through 06.16.07. See On View: At the Center for Architecture for more information.
Gideon Fink Shapiro is a writer and researcher at Gabellini Sheppard Associates, and contributes to several design publications.
Event: Crown Hall — A Study in a Building’s Sustainable Evolution
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.26.07
Speaker: Nico Kienzl — Director, Atelier Ten, NY Office
Organizers: AIANY Committee on the Environment; AIANY Historic Buildings Committee
Crown Hall at IIT in Chicago.
Courtesy AIANY
Mies van der Rohe’s S.R. Crown Hall is much more than a symbol of Modern architectural aesthetics. After evaluating the building, monitoring temperature and humidity, and studying original drawings, Atelier Ten realized that Mies’s design helped foster a sustainable environment — before sustainability was topical. It was renovations in the 1970s and 80s that decreased the quality and effectiveness of the interior.
The landscaping originally called for many more trees along the south and west façades to prevent the sun from penetrating the building. A whole row of trees was cut down to make room for a widened driveway in the 1970s. Mies’s design called for zoned radiant floors. As the controls began to wear, the building channeled all of the zones into one lever with one control. When first constructed, students could adjust blinds and operate vents to prevent glare and control natural airflow. Now in disrepair, neither is possible. Furthermore, when the air conditioning system was installed in the late 70s, the same diffusers for heat were used. The narrow shape does not disperse the cool air; instead it pushes it directly downward. Students located below the diffusers are cold, while their neighbors are warm.
Recently, the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) hired Atelier Ten to explore how the comfort problems in the building could be improved without altering the building’s appearance. Replanting trees, rezoning the radiant floors, and fixing the operability of the vents and blinds could restore the success of Mies’s design. With a few extra moves, such as replacing the diffusers to spread out cool air and installing new lights similar to those that Mies intended, much of the work did not require innovation and 50% of the building’s energy was saved.
The most substantial difference between 1956, when Crown Hall was completed, and now, is the number of students (up to 350 from 200) and the use of computers by every student. The uniform light created by the original sandblasted glass along the bottom half of the building and clear glass along the top is perfect for hand drawing at a drafting table. Unfortunately, it creates glare on computer screens. Atelier Ten saw an opportunity to improve the sustainability of the building. Installing double-pane, acid-etched glass coated with an energy-efficient sealant saved more energy. By incorporating daylight controls, and zoning lighting so inner lights turn off when the building is not in use, students’ comfort would be improved and the glow of the building at night would be preserved (of utmost importance to preservationists). Ultimately, Atelier Ten hopes to improve comfort, reduce energy consumption, and restore Crown Hall’s original architectural details,
according to Nico Kienzi, the director of the NY
Office.
Event: Book Launch/Beatriz Colomina
Location: Labyrinth Books, 04.05.07
Speaker: Beatriz Colomina — professor of history and theory, Director of Graduate Studies, Ph.D. Program, Founding Director, Program in Media and Modernity, Princeton University, & author, Domesticity at War (MIT Press)
Moderator: Rachel Schauer — contributor, e-OCULUS
Organizer: Labyrinth Books
Domesticity at War, by Beatriz Colomina.
Holding up her recently published book, Domesticity at War, professor and theorist Beatriz Colomina explained that the cover image of a quaint, 1950s suburban living room, complete with fireplace and television, is actually a fallout shelter. This is exemplary of the impact of war on domesticity. From the Eameses’ use of plywood military products to the “dial-a-view” window scenes for underground shelters, Colomina’s new work explores the relationship between American architecture and war culture during and following World War II.
War propaganda encouraged Americans to celebrate their country by saving face in the public realm. A key symbol of patriotism was the suburban lawn, whose maintenance became a civic duty for those on the home front. Featured in advertisements at the time as a green paradise, the lawn was a form of therapy promoting hygiene, happiness, and health. However, lurking below its surface was a battlefield — a site of full-fledged attack on moles, worms, and other insects potentially devastating perfectly manicured blades of grass. Homeowners, in an effort to protect the lawn from infection or invasion, were told to use weaponry more common to war than the household. How do you get rid of that pesky mole? Knock it out with your spade, or better yet, gas it!
As warfare tactics transformed from WWII to the Cold War, so too did the obsession with health. The home’s interior came to reflect a new focus on the psychological, rather than physical, well-being of the family, offering refuge from hostile tensions on the outside. Where once it was a sanitary problem, the kitchen now served as a prime laboratory to cure mental woes. An ad in House Beautiful magazine exclaimed: “It wasn’t a psychiatrist Mother wanted — it was a new kitchen!”
While the changing definitions of public and private space are nothing new, Domesticity at War takes this relationship to the next level by tracing how it has been and will be influenced directly by war. As Colomina says in the closing of her book, “War does not end. It evolves, and architecture with it.”
Rachel Schauer is concentrating her studies on architecture and communications at New York University Gallatin School. She also is e-OCULUS’ graphic designer.
Event: Environmental Refractions
Location: The Cooper Union, 04.10.07
Speaker: James Carpenter — principal & founder, James Carpenter Design Associates
Organizer: The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union
Glass panels with blue reflectors create the effect that 7WTC is merging with the sky.
Jessica Sheridan
Light conveys information and defines our surroundings. The work of James Carpenter, principal and founder of James Carpenter Design Associates, explores perceptions of light in transmission, reflection, and refraction, often abstracting images brought in from outside (sun, sky, water, trees). Carpenter discussed a few of his early projects as part of the Feltman Lectures, a series dedicated to advancing lighting design through the exploration of practical, philosophical, and aesthetic attributes of light and illumination.
The Luminous Glass Bridge was designed to enrich and awaken users’ perception of nature. A chapel in Indianapolis is a meditative environment created through structural glass prisms that split the visible spectrum into the blue to yellow range. A glass screen for the Rachofsky Residence, designed by Richard Meier, FAIA, is virtually structure-free. The edge of the glass is revealed, and privacy is created on one side constructed of glass with heightened reflectivity.
Carpenter’s interests predominantly focus on daylight rather than artificial light, but he has begun to integrate LED technology in his projects since it reacts similarly to natural light. He explored both realms in the enclosure, lobby, and podium light wall in 7 World Trade Center. The façade enclosure celebrates the incredible quality of light in Manhattan, according to Carpenter. The 8-inch-deep skin is composed of glass panels with blue stainless steel reflectors at the sill, creating an effect that the building is merging with sky. The base of the building enclosure is constructed of two permeable layers that conceal a Consolidated Edison sub-station. The first layer blocks views during the day, and at night a stainless steel scrim reflects light from LED sources — proving that our perception is easily altered through the abstraction of light.
Murrye Bernard, Assoc. AIA, is a designer with TEK Architects and Director of Forward, the quarterly publication of AIA’s National Associates Committee.
Event: Designing the Green Skyscraper: A Mixed Greens Lecture
Location: The New York Academy of Sciences, 7WTC, 04.05.07
Speaker: Kenneth Yeang — principal, Llewelyn Davies Yeang, professor, Sheffield University, & author, Ecodesign (Hoboken: Academy Press, 2006)
Moderator: Carol Willis — founder, director, curator, The Skyscraper Museum
Organizers: The Skyscraper Museum; New York Academy of Sciences
The EDITT (Ecological Design In The Tropics) Tower is a fuzzy combination of organic and inorganic material.
Llewelyn Davies Yeang
A stack of kitchen plates is the basic model for today’s tall building: a series of modular concrete floors in succession, conducive to “instant compartmentalization” and the dreariness of the white-collar office, according to Malaysian principal, professor, and author Ken Yeang. The area in a typical medium-sized building (a 12-story tower on a 20,000-square-foot site) would be equivalent to six acres distributed horizontally. He conceives of skyscrapers as “no longer building design, but urban design.” They pose an opportunity to create a fluid, mixed-use community that meshes with the biological world instead of a solitary structure standing apart from it. “Everything in nature is a combination of the biotic and the abiotic,” he observes. “Look at what we build as human beings… everything [in a typical building] is inorganic except you and me and the bugs!”
Concentrating a multi-acre community on a small footprint, Yeang says, calls for architects “to make the design as humane as possible.” Aesthetically as well as functionally, his work favors fuzziness and irregularities over the “pristine edge” of most corporate towers. His buildings invite in the foliage and sunlight. One of his favorites, the bougainvillea-covered Menara Boustead building in Kuala Lumpur, he terms “the hairiest building in Southeast Asia.” With spiraling and intertwining spaces blending built structures with vegetation, his eco-cells, sky parks, multi-story voids, and sunny-side placement of service cores are all designed to optimize passive energy conservation — an important approach in the tropical climates where he usually works.
Many of Yeang’s designs remain unrealized; he acknowledges the cost premiums involved, giving figures on the high side of recent estimates for LEED-rated buildings, and recommends that anyone building a vertical garden be prepared, like any gardener, to invest resources in tending it. (For greening NYC buildings, he recommends hardy non-flowering species and operable external skins to protect plantings from high wind.) He views the current LEED system as valuable for public awareness of green design, but seriously incomplete as a means of analyzing the full set of interdependencies that constitute a bio-integrative system.
Yeang’s practical design decisions derive from a set of interlocking analyses, using mathematical partition matrices to organize the inputs and outputs of biological and built systems. His commitment to green design runs well beyond a generalized intention to conserve resources; he interprets the principle of biomimicry in organized and consistent ways, comparing buildings within a wider ecologic system to prosthetic limbs attached to a living organism. Even the most sophisticated artificial arms or hearts still require external energy sources, and the ideal prosthesis would run on bodily energy alone. Similarly, what he calls the “truly green building,” one taking all its operational energy inputs passively from nature, does not yet exist, but Yeang’s ideas are bringing that organic/inorganic balancing act closer to realization.
Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in Oculus, Icon, Content, and other publications.
Event: Critical Modernism — Is It Possible?
Location: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (GSAPP), 04.09.07
Speaker: Charles Jencks — author, Critical Modernism: Where is Post-Modernism Going? What is Post-Modernism? (Wiley)
Introduction: Mark Wigley — Dean, Columbia GSAPP
Organizer: Columbia University GSAPP
Courtesy Columbia University GSAPP
On the cover of Charles Jencks’s new edition of What is Post-Modernism? (the first new edition in 11 years), the first director of the Museum of Modern Art Alfred Barr’s chart of modern artistic movements comes apart, literally, in the image of a windbreaker emblazoned with Barr’s interconnected bubbles being unzipped. Revealed beneath is the work’s new title, Critical Modernism: Where Is Post-Modernism Going? The book’s title change reflects Jencks’s new attitude toward the movement: “Post-Modernism, like old soldiers, died slowly.” And he mourns its passing.
Author, critic, and landscape designer, Jencks was one of the earliest exponents of Post-Modernism. Critical Modernism surveys the culture and politics of the movement, and chronicles its demise. The beginning of the end was the appropriation of Post-Modern architecture by the entertainment industry in the mid-1980s. “For a moment at least it was an interesting avant-garde,” Jencks remarked.
Critical Modernism, on the other hand, attempts to “face reality” when “most Modernism is uncritical.” Art and architecture is grounded in the actuality that: arctic ice is retreating; the earth is warming, modern economics is globalizing; political culture is breeding skepticism; and fear of terrorism is growing.
It is a movement of personal posturing (think Rem Koolhaas’s tough-guy persona), pluralism (James Stirling’s Neue Staatsgalerie), black humor (Damien Hirst), and noble though feeble gestures (green architecture), in Jencks’s view. Ultimately, Jencks praises the iconographic and iconologic possibilities of forms drawn from science and mathematics — the square deformations in the Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery designed by Toyo Ito, FAIA, the images of DNA Jencks has incorporated in his own work, and the natural fractals in everything from pine cones to pineapples.
Elon Danziger, Assoc. AIA, is a project manager at Silberstang Lasky Architects. He studied architecture in Virginia and Mendrisio, Switzerland.
Event: Daylight and the City: Day Lighting in New York City Part 2, 1961 to Present
Location: Center for Architecture, 04.18.07
Speakers: Margaret Maile — design historian and Matthew Tanteri — daylighting consultant, Tanteri+Associates
Panelists: John An — principal daylighting, shading design, and lighting energy analyst, Atelier Ten; Florian Idenburg — project architect for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC, SANAA
Moderator: Margaret Maile
Organizer: New York Section of the IESNA
As a follow up to last fall’s Part 1 of Daylight and the City, Tanteri+Associates’ Margaret Maile, design historian, and Matthew Tanteri, daylighting consultant, reconvened with a group of panelists to discuss daylighting in modern NYC. Starting where they left off (the Seagram’s Building and the 1961 Zoning Ordinance), panelists discussed where we’ve come since then and how history has influenced daylighting strategies today. Though the “glass box” is still an icon of contemporary architecture, designers no longer treat it as a sealed, artificially lit, interior environment. Modern technology and trends towards sustainable design have changed the way we articulate building façades and address daylighting. Panelists debated about whether daylighting is an art of a science and whether occupants should be entitled to “daylight rights” in the same way that air rights are regulated. It was agreed that sun charts are
essential tools to evaluate the sun, despite more advanced technology available.
To illustrate a modern approach to daylighting in NYC, Florian Idenburg explained his strategies in the design of the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery. Early in the design process, his team conducted a zoning analysis of surrounding buildings to predict future sunlight patterns. The eight-story massing and expansive program occupies the entire zoning envelope. Three large galleries read as boxes that shift within the envelope in order to “let light in and people and art out.” Further strategies to admit daylight include the building’s permeable skin and integrated skylights that are grated to allow firefighter access. The grating itself was carefully selected and tested with a full size mock-up in order to allow the maximum penetration of daylight.
The modern condition and our love affair with the glass box continue to present challenges for daylighting, as designers grapple with issues of glare and thermal performance. Daylight is a major measure of success in a lighting strategy.
Murrye Bernard, Assoc. AIA, is a designer with TEK Architects and Director of Forward, the quarterly publication of AIA’s National Associates Committee.
Event: Downtown Third Thursdays Lecture: Forgotten Splendor: Restoring Downtown’s Historic Architecture
Location: Federal Hall, 04.19.07
Speaker: Mary Dierickx — preservationist & Principal, Mary B. Dierickx
Organizer: Downtown Alliance
Claremont Prep is one example of the recent wave of downtown buildings that have transformed their uses after renovation.
Carolyn Sponza
While new towers and planned transit hubs for downtown Manhattan have dominated the media over the past few years, a number of daring downtown restoration projects have been slipping quietly under the radar. According to preservationist Mary Dierickx, that may be intentional. At the Historic Front Street residential lofts, located at South Street Seaport, architects Cook+Fox purposely retained the distressed look of street elevations of 11 historic buildings, while inserting three new structures. In reference to the restoration of the retained façades, Dierickx said, “This is not an incredible ‘after’ project. The whole point was to keep [the buildings] looking old.”
Historic Front Street was subsidized in part by a combination of Liberty Bonds and historic preservation tax credits. Utilizing resources such as these, and post-9/11 support like the Lower Manhattan Emergency Preservation Fund, “helped kick off the preservation movement downtown,” said Dierickx. While Historic Front Street retained and updated its original use (with retail on street level and residential above), many current downtown restoration projects are undertaking wholesale use changes, such as the conversion of a former bank building on Broad Street into Claremont Prep private academy. The banking hall (with its murals) was restored to serve as a multi-purpose room for the K-8 school, while the original vaults were converted into annex space for the cafeteria. Expect to see more creative downtown conversions like this one under construction in the next few years, proving that while banking may become virtual, living cannot.
Carolyn Sponza, AIA, is an architect with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners and is the AIANY Chapter Vice President of Professional Development.
Event: Symposium On Inclusive Design: Accessible Residential Environments
Location: New York School of Interior Design, 03.31-04.01.07
Speakers: Patricia Moore, PhD — MooreDesign Associates & Adjunct Professor, Arizona State University; Jordana Maisel — MUP Director of Outreach and Policy Studies, Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access, University at Buffalo; Eleanor Smith — Director, Concrete Change, Atlanta, GA; Todd Brickhouse — Todd Brickhouse Accessibility Associates; Bruce Hannah — industrial designer and Principal, Hannah Design; Danise Levine — Assistant Director, IDEA Center; Patricia Rizzo — Lead Researcher and Residential Program Manager, Lighting Research Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Rosemarie Rossetti, PhD — Rossetti Enterprises; Valerie Fletcher — Executive Director, Adaptive Environments; Mary Jo Peterson — Mary Jo Peterson; Linda Volpe — Compliance Specialist, Accessibility Services, United Spinal Association
Organizers: New York School of Interior Design
Designers can help enable differently-abled populations from the aging to people with physical limitations. Patricia Moore, PhD, kicked off a symposium on Inclusive Design discussing what life is like as an 85-year-old woman. After going “undercover” for three years, her experiences led to a better understanding of the needs of the elderly. Outlined in her book, Disguised: A True Story, Moore recommends that designers create simple yet flexible spaces. Low physical effort is key and independence leads to the highest quality of life for the aging.
Designers can empower the aging through straightforward design, according to Mary Jo Peterson, a leader in Universal Design for the kitchen and bath. As memory fades, visual storage can help someone keep track of where things belong. Forget touch controls, and install the old mainstay — doorknobs. Technology can be complicated, and the screens can be difficult to read with diminished sight. Task lighting, handles with openings, and continuous counters at one height are also basic yet helpful techniques.
After being bound to a wheelchair, Rosemarie Rossetti, PhD, is building a home for herself and her husband. The “Universal Design Living Laboratory.” contains ramps, an elevator, low counters in the kitchen and bathrooms, and a sprinkler system throughout the house. The house will be available for tours and shows and will display design techniques that help them maintain active lifestyles.
Universal Design is about designing for the end user. Life is unpredictable, and that is an important factor for designers to consider.
Anne Lefferson, IIDA, is a designer at Brennan Beer Gorman Monk.
Jean Nouvel, Hon. FAIA, gives a tour of 40 Mercer Street, under construction.
Rick Bell, FAIA
Architect Jean Nouvel, Hon. FAIA, was honored April 9, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of NYU’s Maison Française. The celebration, at NYU’s Kimmel Center, also started the weeklong celebration of the AIA New York Chapter’s Architecture Week, marking the sesquicentennial of the American Institute of Architects. After a brief introduction by Francine Goldenhar, director of the Maison Française, Nouvel spoke of architecture in general and of his recent work.
Earlier in the day he conducted a walk-through of the 40 Mercer Street residential tower, nearing completion on Grand Street. During the tour he spoke of the importance of the Manhattan light, of the city view, and of integrating the new structure into SoHo’s streetscape. The 40 Mercer Street tower, and the anticipated project next to Gehry Partner’s IAC on Eleventh Avenue, articulately speak for themselves. The Mercer Street project reflects an urbane dialogue about nature re-inserted in urban architecture, not unlike his Musée du Quai Branly. Its arcade and lobby respond to Mayor Bloomberg’s call for a million new city trees. The residential tower façade refracts light, engaging the colors of the city and the adjacent roofscapes. Nouvel, clad in black, spoke eloquently about the urban context, and of helping create a new wave of environmentally appropriate structures and a new vogue for glass housing. I, for one, was ready to move in.
His subsequent remarks at NYU, based on notes taken hastily by this writer, are excerpted below and in the word document link:
“Architecture is an expansion of our world at a time when our world is getting smaller. The global economy is expanding the promulgation of an architecture without context. We must resist the urbanization of zones and grids. We must establish sensitive poetic relics, an analysis of the art of creation that is specific to rain, sea and mountain.”
“Architecture means transformation, organizing the retention of what is already here. How does one create a vibration that evokes the hidden dimension of the past? This is surely a task for poetry, since only poetry can produce the metaphysic of the instant.”
“Architecture is a vehicle for permanence changed by life, to be impressionable and impress, to absorb and emit. Explanation is the duty; questioning is a necessity of evolution. I will conclude this introduction to my projects with a paradox by Paul Valéry: ‘contradictions generate spirit.’ ”
Click here [jeannouvel.doc]to download the full text of Nouvel’s remarks.
A lot of money is being raised to fund Mayor Bloomberg’s plaNYC 2030. Included in the plan is a Sustainable Mobility and Regional Transportation (SMART) organization to raise funds and issue revenue bonds to improve transportation. A NYC Energy Planning Board will centralize planning for the city’s energy supply and demand initiatives. However, nowhere in the plan does it mention raising funds to maintain the open spaces the Mayor is planning to create or rehabilitate.
The Mayor wants every person to live within a 10-minute (or 1/2 mile) walk from a park. Schoolyards will become accessible as public playgrounds. Asphalted areas will be converted into multi-use turf fields, and lights will be installed for evening use. High-quality competition fields will be made available to athletic teams across the city, as well. A new public plaza will be enhanced or created in every community. Underutilized destination parks (there are several throughout the five boroughs) will be completed. He plans on expanding the Greenstreets program, created in 1986 to replace paved traffic triangles and medians with shrubs and flowers, by planting 250,000 trees citywide.
Simply providing parks does not mean that people will use them. Often parks deteriorate from lack of use. What will make people visit parks, if they are not already in use? I’m sure in some cases, cleaning up a park and providing better lighting at night will help. But in many cases, improved surveillance and police presence is needed. For example, High Bridge Park is on the Mayor’s list of destinations to be improved. I recently helped clean that park as part of NY Cares’ Hands On New York Day. After so many rolling paper packages, plastic cocaine bags, and a number of syringes, I certainly would not feel safe spending a day wandering through the meandering pathways without extra safety measures in place.
Part of the problem with the Mayor’s plan for open space is that the list of initiatives does little to spur the city’s inhabitants. After a park is cleaned up or constructed, will there be any community outreach? Better yet, why aren’t community members being involved in the clean-up/construction? If locals are involved in improving their own communities, there will be a better chance that they will embrace and inhabit the parks. The Mayor has proposed many good ideas, but a follow-through plan is critical.
In this issue:
·Affordable Housing in Bronx Is UP
·Museum-within-a-museum: New Light Shed on Greek and Roman Art
·Cooper-Hewitt Renovates
·Randall’s Island Sports New Look
·Water Heals at Medical College
·Boris Godounov Plays Princeton
·On the Boards in Baltimore
Affordable Housing in Bronx Is UP
500 East 165 Street in the Bronx.
Magnusson Architecture and Planning
Ground was broken for a new affordable housing project, designed by Magnusson Architecture and Planning (MAP), in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Developed by a joint venture of L&M Equity Participants, Nos Quedamos, and Melrose Associates, the building will rise eight stories on a corner of 165th Street and Third Avenue. Because of the site’s location on a main thoroughfare, MAP plans for a dramatic façade and an articulated corner entry with a setback to create public open space in front of the building. The steep slope of the site inspired a partially double height atrium space that allows light to move through the building and affords views from the street to a landscaped courtyard. Funded through New York State’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the project will create 128 units of affordable housing for residents earning up to 60% of Area Median Income (AMI), and approximately 4,500 square feet of commercial space.
Museum-within-a-museum: New Light Shed on Greek and Roman Art
Cubiculum (bedroom) from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor.
Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
After more than five years of construction, the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now open to the public. Billed as a “museum-within-the-museum,” the long-awaited opening concludes the completion of a 15-year redesign project headed by Kevin Roche, FAIA. Returning to public view are the Met’s collection of classical art and thousands of long-stored works from the museum’s collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman art — on display in a peristyle court with a two-story atrium evoking that of a large Roman villa. The McKim, Mead, and White atrium previously displayed Roman art for 20 years before being converted into a cafeteria. Although the new design introduces several features, it remains faithful to the architects’ original concept — classically inspired architecture — and a glass roof that allows the objects below to be viewed in natural daylight
Cooper-Hewitt Renovates
On the heels of an ambitious capital campaign, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has raised $33 million for the renovation of its home in the landmark Andrew Carnegie Mansion. The Design Architect Selection Committee, which includes the museum’s executive architect, Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, unanimously chose Richard Gluckman, FAIA, principal of Gluckman Mayner Architects, to develop the interior renovation. Through renovation and re-programming portions of the Carnegie Mansion and the adjacent Miller and Fox townhouses owned by the museum, the project expects to increase the museum’s total exhibition space from approximately 10,000 to 18,000 square feet.
Gluckman will design a new 7,000-square-foot flexible gallery and stairway to connect floors — which will be expanded with an additional 1,000 square feet of gallery space — forming a juxtaposition between 21st century design and the mansion’s Georgian style. The renovation program, which follows a two-year master planning process conducted by Beyer Blinder Belle, will advance in stages, with the design development by Gluckman to be conducted in the coming months. The renovation of the Miller and Fox townhouses will begin in spring 2008, followed by the renovation of the Carnegie Mansion, beginning in summer 2009.
Randall’s Island Sports New Look
The main quad planned for Randall’s Island.
Courtesy Levien & Company
Levien & Company is project manager for the Randall’s Island Sports Development Project, one of the largest public works projects in recent NYC history. The $127 million project will contain 64 state-of-the-art athletic fields, attendant roadways, parking, pedestrian pathways, lighting, landscaping, and comfort stations to be built on the island’s 300 acres. In response to a growing need for quality sports and recreation facilities in the city, the non-profit Randall’s Island Sports Foundation (RISF) created a public-private partnership with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation. Together, they commissioned a master plan prepared by M. Paul Friedberg and Partners and Ricardo Zurita Architecture & Planning for Randall’s and Ward’s Islands. Already implemented is construction of the Icahn Track & Field Stadium (designed by Hillier), and in the development stage are a new and expanded Sportime Tennis Center and 27-acre
Aquatic Entertainment Complex.
Water Heals at Medical College
Weill Greenberg Center.
Polshek Partnership Architects
Sited on the Upper East Side, the newly completed 330,000-square-foot, 15-story Weill Greenberg Center for ambulatory care takes its place among the college’s array of different architectural styles. Guided by the principle that the building’s design is integral to the healing process, Polshek Partnership Architects created a series of interior water features, including a 60-foot-long water wall, a 100-foot-long stream, and a reflecting pool. An interior vehicle drop-off that opens directly onto the ground floor lobby (complete with valet parking) facilitates patient arrivals and departures. A white ceramic fritted glass curtain wall cut into undulating vertical facets allows soft light to permeate the interior while assuring patient privacy. It also reflects the gothic motif of the original New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center across York Avenue.
Boris Godounov Plays Princeton
Set design for “Boris Godunov.”
RUR Architecture
Jesse Reiser, AIA, principal of Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture, led a team of graduate students at Princeton University’s School of Architecture in designing the set for the world premiere of Alexander Pushkin’s 1825 play, “Boris Godunov.” The interdisciplinary set design involved the concept, design, and production of the sets using legendary theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold’s notes and other source materials as the basis for a new interpretation. For the design of the sets, Meyerhold’s concept of the “biomechanical theatre” was extrapolated to fit a 21st century paradigm.
On the Boards in Baltimore
Master plan for the Market Center Urban Renewal Area.
Cooper, Robertson & Partners
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dunn recently unveiled Cooper, Robertson & Partners’ urban design plans for Lexington Square, a mixed-use urban retail destination and residential project. The three-city-block, $250 million redevelopment project has been designed to revitalize the Market Center Urban Renewal Area of Baltimore’s Westside. Two 14-story residential towers containing 400 residential rental apartments, 300,000 square feet of retail space, and 900 enclosed parking spaces comprise the project that is slated to begin construction in Spring 2008.
In this issue:
·AIA Teams Up with Google Earth
·AIANY Members to Speak at GSD
·Big Apple Tour of San Antonio
AIA Teams Up with Google Earth
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) launched two new AIA layers in Google Earth with the software’s recent upgrade: Blueprint for America and America’s Favorite Architecture. Marking AIA’s 150th anniversary, the AIA and Google Earth partnership demonstrates architecture’s impact on the world to more than 200 million Google Earth users.
America’s Favorite Architecture layer features the American public’s favorite structures, as selected by a Harris Interactive poll announced earlier this year. Google Earth users can now see newly-created 3-D models of the ballparks, bridges, buildings, and memorials that characterize architecture and comment on the poll results.
The Blueprint for America documents community service efforts funded by the AIA, in which AIA members donate their time and expertise to collaborate with community leaders and local citizens to address issues such as homelessness, sustainable communities, and downtown revitalization. Clicking on the Blueprint for America layer enables users to explore how AIA members and local citizens are working together to resolve real issues in their communities.
To learn more, either go to the websites, or watch the AIA/Google Earth YouTube video available online here.
AIANY Members to Speak at GSD
The Summer 2007 Executive Education program held by the Harvard Graduate School of Design comprises some 40 workshops covering design, real estate, business development, management, planning, and technologies. AIA New York Chapter member speakers include Randolph Croxton, FAIA; William Pedersen, FAIA; Walter Chatham, FAIA; Stephen Kliment, FAIA; Gregory Beck; Raymond Bordwell, AIA; J David Hoglund FAIA; Robert A. Klein, AIA; and Paul Milana, AIA. For details, visit the website or telephone: 617.384.7214.
Big Apple Tour of San Antonio
By Jeremy Edmunds, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP
While forgetting the Alamo may be forgivable, missing the array of programs your peers are serving up later this week is not. Come support your fellow New Yorkers who are presenting or moderating 25 programs at the AIA Convention. Topics range from spicing up your presentations to improving your writing skills to choosing technologies to deliver your projects. New Practices New York will be exhibited; a reception for AIANYS will celebrate new Fellows and Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, this year’s Topaz Award Winner. AIAS and Architect magazine will throw parties Thursday evening. The Council of Architectural Component Executives (CACE) will host a luncheon on Friday highlighting reasons to come to NYC in August. Friday evening the new Fellows will receive their medallions at the Alamo.
A full list of events and seminar handouts (to conserve this year’s convention is paperless!) are available online. Following is a list of all programs with NY-based speakers and significant events by day and time. Enjoy!
Wednesday, 5/2
8:00 AM-12:00 PM
· WE02 The Human Connection: Bring Your Presentations to Life!, Carol Doscher; Rich Swingle
· WE14 Tall Buildings at Work: The New High Performance Office, David White with Vidar Lerum, PhD, Assoc. AIA; Eui-Sung Yi
8:30 AM-5:30 PM
· WE25 Integrating Green Design with Historic Preservation — NWA, Roy R. Pachecano, AIA, APA, NCARB; David J. Pfeffer, Esq. with Brian Chandler; APA, Stephen Colley, AIA
1:00-5:00 PM
· WE33 Sustainable Lighting Challenges, Barbara Cianci Horton with James Benya; Gilbert Lang Mathews, Esq.
· WE35 Writing for Success in Architecture Practice: Improved Tools and Techniques for Clear Communication, Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
6:30-9:00 PM
· New Practices New York Exhibition opening at Blue Star Arts, 101 Bowie St., San Antonio, TX
Thursday, 5/3
10:00-10:50am
· AIA Candidate Speeches and Regional Caucuses
1:30-3:00 PM
· TH04 Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design, Robin Guenther, FAIA, with Kira Gould, Assoc. AIA; Sandy Mendler
· TH08 Sustaining Our Elderly, Mitch Green with Jeffrey W. Anderzhon, FAIA; Ingrid Fraley, IIDA
· TH17 Creating Sustainable Psychological and Physiological Designs, Vincent Smith with Lisa Krumins; Barbara Lyons Stewart, AIA
3:00-4:30 PM
· E10 AIA Honors and Awards Ceremony
4:00-5:30 PM
· TH34 Greening Affordable Housing: New Innovations from the Field, William Stein, AIA, LEED AP with Bruce Hampton, AIA, LEED AP; Bill Roschen, AIA; Walker Wells, AICP, LEED AP
· TH48 Sustainability, Design, and Innovation, Susan Szenasy with Kira Gould, Assoc. AIA; Lance Hosey, AIA, LEED AP; Henry Siegel, FAIA
· TH49 Drivers of Change: Energy, Water, and Climate Change, Fiona Cousins, PE, LEED AP, Jessica Strauss, AIA, LEED AP
· TH51 AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Forum
6:30-9:00 PM
· AIA New York State Reception at Aztec on the River, 201 East Commerce Street
Friday, 5/4
8:15-9:45 AM
· FR08 Lessons Learned from the ArchVoices Essay Competition, Elizabeth Donoff with Matt Ostanik, AIA, CSI
· FR09 Innovation and Sustainability in Blast — Resistant Design, Robert Smilowitz, PhD, PE, with Ken Hays; Kevin O’Connor, AIA, LEED AP; Morgan R. Williams, AIA
· FR18 Designing for Aging Baby Boomers as Opposed to Seniors: What’s the Difference?, Priscilla Wallace with Steven Wayne Goggans, AIA; Paul Morris, FASLA; Judy Schriener
10:00-11:30 AM
· Gold Medalist and Topaz Award presentations
1:30-3:00 PM
· FR30 New York New Visions: Success or Failure?, Alexander Garvin, APA; Rosalie Genevro; Mark E. Ginsberg, FAIA, APA; Mark Strauss, FAIA, AICP
· FR36 New York City Builds on Its Legacy, Laurie Kerr, LEED AP; Karen K. Lee, MD, MHSc, FRCPC; Deborah Taylor, AIA, LEED AP
· FR39 Advocacy Tactics for a Sustainable Endgame: The Politics of Sustainability, Jeremy S. Edmunds, Assoc. AIA, PE, LEED AP with Ron Faucheux, PhD, Esq.; John Norquist, Hon. AIA; Ambassador Richard N. Swett, FAIA
· FR43 Sustainable Communities in Our Nation’s Regions: AIA Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design, J. Max Bond Jr., FAIA; Lance Jay Brown, FAIA with Constance Bodurow, Assoc. AIA, AICP
· FR47 Sustainable Design Perspectives after the Disaster, Marianne Cusato, CNU with Robert J. Berkebile, FAIA; Walker Wells, AICP, LEED AP
4:00-5:30 PM
· FR66 Making a Difference: AIA 2007 Young Architect Award Recipient’s Discussion
· FR74 Deconstructing Sustainable Interiors, Susan Szenasy with Jeff Barber, AIA, LEED AP; Carlie Bullock-Jones Thompson; Tom Paladino; Kendall P. Wilson, AIA, IIDA, LEED AP
6:00-7:00 PM
· FR80 The Viridian Loan Fund: Bringing Green Roofs to Affordable Housing, Leslie Hoffman
6:00-7:30 PM
· Fellows’ Investiture at the Alamo
6:00-8:00 PM
· New Practices at Blue Star Arts, 101 Bowie St., San Antonio, TX
7:30-11:30 PM
· E30 Fiesta! San Antonio Host Chapter Party at LaVillita
Saturday, 5/5
8:15-9:45 AM
· SA07 Resilient Green Design Teams and Processes, Kathleen Bakewell, Assoc. AIA; Gerry Lang, AIA
· SA13 Designing the Sustainable Workplace in the Civic Environment, Barbara A. Nadel, FAIA with Edward A. Feiner, FAIA; Gary Haney, AIA, NCARB; Thom Mayne, FAIA
· SA17 Design Issues and Considerations for Improving Sustainable Roofs, Douglas Stieve, AIA with Christopher W. Giffin, AIA; Richard S. Koziol, AIA, NCARB
11:30 AM-1:00 PM
· SA26 Professional Practice in the 21st Century, James Sawyer, AIA with James P. Cramer, Hon. AIA, IIDA
1:30-3:00 PM
· SA50 AIA Institute Honor Awards for Architecture
Jeremy Edmunds, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, is moderator of “Advocacy Tactics for a Sustainable Endgame: the Politics of Sustainability” on Friday May 3rd at 1:30 PM.
Part of Mayor Bloomberg's plaNYC 2030 is to institute congestion pricing below 86th Street. What's your opinion?
Note: Results from this poll are non-scientific.
The Second Avenue Subway project broke ground for the fourth time last week. What did you think of the ceremony?
Note: Results from this poll are non-scientific.
Richard Meier, FAIA, has opened his Queens warehouse to the public. To peer into models no longer in use, from early houses to the Jubilee Church and the J. Paul Getty Museum, visitors may make appointments to visit on Fridays. Call 212.967.6060.
Terrence E. O’Neal, AIA, 2006 President of AIANYS, accepted on behalf of AIANYS the Component Excellence Outstanding Single Program Award for Government Affairs from AIA National for last year’s Spring Symposium: “One New York State: Urban Policy and Regional Design”…
The James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation has awarded two mid-career research grant awards: the Kress Mid-Career Grant, for John Matteo’s proposal, Preservation Engineering — A New Curriculum, and a Fitch Research Grant in memory of late Trustee, Richard Blinder, for Samuel Gruber’s study, Saving American Synagogues: Preservation materials pertaining to the history, architecture and religious significance of older American synagogues…
The AIA announced the 2007 COTE Top Ten Green Projects, including New York firms Steven Holl Architects (Whitney Water Purification Facility, New Haven, CT); and Croxton Collaborative Architects (Willingboro Master Plan & Public Library, Willingboro, NJ). Honorable mention winners included Polshek Partnership Architects (William J. Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, AR); and Kiss + Cathcart Architects (Stillwell Avenue Terminal Train Shed, NY, NY)…
The 2007 AIA Housing Awards were recently announced. The only NY-based project to win an award is the House at the Shawangunks, New Paltz, NY, by PA-based Bohlin Cywinski Jackson…
This year’s Community Planner Awards celebrate active community residents. Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park, advocate for the city’s environmental justice movement, and community-planning activist, was honored with the second annual Yolanda Garcia Community Planner Award. A lifetime achievement award was presented to community board veteran Wilma Maynard of Bedford Stuyvesant. Certificates of honorable mention were given to Damaris Reyes of the Lower East Side, Harry Bubbins of Mott Haven, and Laura Hoffman of Greenpoint…
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is the 2007 International Architecture Award winner for Bridging the Rift on the Israel/Jordan border…
Nancy Aber Goshow, AIA, Managing Principal of Goshow Architects, has been appointed the North Eastern Regional Director of Women Construction Owners and Executives, a national advocacy group…
Polshek Partnership Architects founder James Stewart Polshek, FAIA, has assumed a new role in the firm as Senior Design Counsel and has, consequently, given up his partnership interest…
The National Endowment for the Arts is now accepting applications for a new Design Director to replace Jeff Speck, who is stepping down in May. The vacancy announcement can be found on the agency’s website…
04.26.07: Celebrating the SMPS-NY 11th Annual Honor Awardees (l-r): Scholarship: Mary Li, Baruch College Junior, Marketing major, Graphic Design minor; Marketing Champion: Guy Geier, AIA, IIDA, LEED AP, Principal, FXFowle Architects; Public Sector: Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY Executive Director; Media: Tom Stabile, Editor-in-Chief, New York Construction Magazine; Special Industry Award: Scott Lauer, Founder, Board President, openhousenewyork (OHNY); Marketing Mentor: Richard Staub, President, Richard Staub Marketing Services, Oculus contributing editor; Marketing Achievement: Susan Steinberg, Senior Marketing/Business Development Manager, Langan Engineering & Environmental Services (not present).
Kristen Richards
04.25.07: A gathering at the White Horse Tavern in memory of Jane Jacobs on the anniversary of her passing (l-r): Alex Washburn, AIA, newly appointed NYC Chief Urban Designer; organizer Lisa Chamberlain, architecture and real estate journalist; Darren Walker, VP, Rockefeller Foundation (which will award the Foundation’s inaugural Jane Jacobs Medal in June); and organizer Shin-pei Tsay, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects.
Kristen Richards
Oculus 2007 Editorial Calendar
If you have ideas, projects, opinions — or perhaps a burning desire to write about a topic below — we’d like to hear from you! Deadlines for submitting suggestions are indicated; projects/topics may be anywhere, but architects must be New York-based. Send suggestions to Kristen Richards.
06.01.07 Fall 2007: Collaboration
09.07.07 Winter 2007-08: Power & Patronage
5.18.07 Submission: Architect Magazine R+D Awards
New technologies are revolutionizing architecture processes. The R+D awards honor innovative materials and systems at every scale — from HVAC and structural systems, to curtain-wall and ceiling-panel assemblies, to discrete building materials such as wood composites and textiles.
06.01.07 Submission: Schedium
The AIA NY Chapter’s Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) invites drawing portfolio submissions as part of its new program, Schedium, intended to celebrate the drawing abilities of emerging architects. Artists selected from the portfolio competition may be asked to participate in a live drawing series. International practitioners are welcome. Eligibility is limited to those with an architecture degree or international equivalent, who have received an architecture degree after 01.01.91 or received their architectural license after 01.01.97, whichever is less restrictive. Four winners will receive a $1,000 stipend plus additional benefits.
06.01.07 Submission: Best Firm to Work For
The 2007 Best Firm to Work For Summit (October 4-5, 2007) recognizes the top architecture (and engineering firms in a separate category) based on the results of employee surveys. In addition to an awards reception, the two-day event will focus on Best Practices in AEC Firm Management, Hiring and Retention Strategies, The Physical and the Cultural Environment of the Workplace, Employee Compensation and Benefits, and The Organizational Structure of the Firm.
Gallery Hours
Monday–Friday: 9:00am–8:00pm, Saturday: 11:00am–5:00pm, Sunday: CLOSED
Join an Architalker for a Hosted Tour of Center for Architecture
Exhibitions
Join us for free Architalker-hosted tours of the Center for Architecture exhibitions Fridays at 4:00pm. To join one of these tours, meet in the Public Resource Area on the ground floor of the Center for Architecture.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
April 9-July 7, 2007
2007 AIA New York Chapter Design Awards
Galleries: Kohn Pedersen Fox Gallery, HLW Gallery, South Gallery, Edgar A. Tafel Hall
A showcase of the 2007 award-winning projects in three categories-Architecture, Interiors, and Projects. Selected from hundreds of international, national and local submissions, these projects spotlight the extraordinary achievements in architectural design excellence happening in New York City and around the world.
Exhibition and Graphic Design: Graham Hanson Design
Organized by: AIA New York Chapter and the AIA New York Chapter Design Awards Committee
Benefactor: DIRTT,
Oldcastle Glass
Patron:
HOK,
Microsol Resources,
F.J. Sciame Construction,
Laticrete International,
Trespa
Lead Sponsor: Certified of New York, Inc., Columbia, KI, Langan, Mancini Duffy, Richter + Ratner, Syska & Hennessy
Sponsors:
Atkinson Koven Feinberg; Bauerschmidt & Sons, Inc.; Bentley Prince Street; Beyer Blinder Belle: Architects and Planners; Cosentini Associates; Costas Kondylis & Partners; Forest City Ratner Companies; FXFOWLE ARCHITECTS; Gensler; Gilsanz Murray Steficek; Haworth; Hopkins Foodservice Specialists, Inc.; The I. Grace Company, Inc.; Ingram, Yuzek, Gainen, Caroll & Bertolotti; Lutron; Mechoshade Systems; New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies: The Real Estate Institute; Perkins + Will; Peter Marino Architect; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Steelcase, Inc.; Studio Daniel Libeskind; Swanke Hayden Connell Architects; Thornton-Tomasetti Group; Turner Construction
April 12–June 23, 2007
NY 150+: A Timeline
Ideas, Civic Institutions, and Futures
Galleries: Gerald D. Hines Gallery
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the American Institute of Architects in New York City, the AIA New York Chapter will feature an exhibition charting the transformation of the city and the profession from 1857 through the present and into the future. Genetic lines tracing the founding of the institute will intersect with various democratic and social movements and the architecture of New York’s civic structures.
Curator: Diane Lewis
Organized by: Organized by the AIA New York Chapter and the Center for Architecture Foundation
Exhibition Underwriters:
*opening presented by Ibex
The exhibition is supported in part by an Arnold W. Brunner grant from the AIA New York Chapter
Additional support is provided by: Peter Schubert, AIA; FXFOWLE ARCHITECTS
March 22 to June 16, 2007
POWERHOUSE
New Housing New York
Galleries: Street Gallery, Public Resource Center, Judith and Walter Hunt Gallery, Mezzanine Gallery
Winning proposal
Phipps Rose Dattner Grimshaw
Related Events
Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 6:00 – 8:00pm, CES 1.5, HSW
NHNY: Best Practices for Affordable Sustainable Housing -
What worked, what didn’t?
Making Green Design More Accessible
TBD, CES 1.5, HSW
Power House illuminates the people, projects, and public policies that fuel the affordable housing landscape in New York City.
As New York City’s first juried design competition for affordable, sustainable housing, the New Housing New York Legacy Project (NHNY) is generating creative, replicable approaches to urban development. The exhibition focuses on the NHNY competition and sets it within the context of the city’s efforts to preserve and development sustainable, financially viable residences for low- and middle-income New Yorkers. The show’s emphasis is on the future of housing in the city, as represented by the competition winner, Phipps Rose Dattner Grimshaw (Phipps Houses / Jonathan Rose Companies / Dattner Architects / Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners), the four finalists, and the development mechanisms put in place by Mayor Bloomberg’s 10-year New Housing Marketplace initiative and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Building on the 2004 New Housing New York Ideas Competition, the 2006 two-stage contest will result in construction of the winning design on a 40,000 square-foot Bronx site, which is valued at $4.3 million and was donated by The City of New York.
For the full list of finalists click here
Curator: Abby Bussel
Exhibition and Graphic Design: Casey Maher
Organized by: AIA New York Chapter,
New Housing New York Steering Committee and the
City of New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development with the additional support of the Center for Architecture Foundation and the AIA New York Chapter Housing Committee
Exhibition Underwriters:
Exhibition Patron:
For more information on the New Housing New York Legacy Project click
href="http://www.aiany.org/NHNY/Legacy_About.html">here
NHNY is a partnership between the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, the City of New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Additional support is provided by the Center for Architecture Foundation, and City University of New York.
The NHNY Legacy Project is sponsored by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the National Endowment for the Arts, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., an AIA National Blueprint Grant, JP Morgan Chase, and Citibank.
March 22 — June 2, 2007
Making Housing Home
Photographs with residents of New York City housing developments
Galleries: Library
Norma’s House
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
This photographic exhibition explores how people inhabit housing to create homes in two of New York City’s affordable housing developments, each of which were developed to provide good homes for all. Because units of housing are in essence homes for families, this project takes an interior look at what architecture can allow and support, to afford the crucial process of making space for oneself within designed spaces and housing markets. If social housing reflects the social covenant of our society, what is it to which every citizen is entitled? What does it take for a life to flourish and can a building help or hinder this process? What becomes of designed spaces once they are inhabited?
An Installation by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
Exhibition underwriters: Related Apartment Preservation, 42nd Street Development Corporation, Barbara Stanton
Organized with: Center for Human Environments, Housing Environments Research Group, The Graduate Center, CUNY
SOM’s Burj Dubai.
Courtesy Skyscraper Museum
Through 8.07
World’s Tallest Building: Burj Dubai
This exhibition places Burj Dubai in both the historical context of the competition for the world’s tallest building and in the contemporary arena of Dubai’s explosive growth. A collective effort of 90 designers in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with a team of consultants, the design and construction of the tower is the focus. Architectural models, drawings and computer animations, wind-tunnel models, construction photographs and videos, animations of elevators and façade machinery, and a section of the curtain-wall, among other items are on view.
The Skyscraper Museum
39 Battery Place NYC
Student proposal for a community natatorium in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Karen Kuo and Glen Ho, courtesy Pratt Institute
05.07.07 through 05.18.07
Pratt Institute at Cyprus House
Pratt Institute graduate students in architecture will exhibit a variety of proposals for a new community natatorium (narrow valley) in Nicosia, capital of the Republic of Cyprus — the last divided capital in Europe. Architectural models, drawings, and computer simulations illustrating the students’ proposals will be on display with historical research and site documentation obtained by the students during the conceptual phase of their designs. The 10 students were directed in their studies by Pratt Professor Theoharis David, FAIA.
Cyprus House, Consulate of The Republic of Cyprus
13 East 40th Street, NYC
eCalendar includes an interactive listing of architectural events around NYC. Click the link to go to to eCalendar on the Web.
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Looking for help? See resumes posed on the AIA New York Chapter website.
Callison: A World of Design Opportunity
Callison is an international architecture firm focused on excellence, in design and client service. The New York office, which services the Retail, Corporate Workplace and Mixed Use markets, seeks talented:
Project Managers
Project Architects
Designers
Interior Designers
We offer competitive salary, full medical and dental / vision, 401(k) / profit sharing, transit subsidies, and a great location! See how you can join us on our journey by visiting us at www.callison.com Email resumes to employment@callison.com
We are an Affirmative Action/EEO Employer who values workplace diversity.
PROJECT MANAGER
RAND Engineering & Architecture seeks architect to manage large, multifaceted projects (exterior/interior, M/E/P, structural) for residential and commercial buildings. Review plans, coordinate tasks/schedules, client interaction. Strong design, project planning, communication skills required. Resume, salary requirements: hr@randpc.com.
BUILDING SURVEYS
RAND Engineering & Architecture seeks architect (RA preferred) to conduct building surveys for exterior/interior building systems, prepare reports for capital improvement planning. Knowledge of NYC Building Code, strong writing skills required. Resume, salary requirements to hr@randpc.com. www.randpc.com.
PSAC II RFP notice
The NYC Department of Design and Construction has issued a two-stage RFP for design of the City’s second Public Safety Answering Center, a 400,000 s.f. facility to improve response to E911 calls. The RFP is available on the DDC website (www.nyc.gov/ddc) under “Doing Business with DDC”.
Junior Architect:
Cover Letter, Resume, 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format)
E-mail to hrtechnical@som.com
SOM is seeking junior level architects to work in the Long Island branch of the New York office for involvement in both large and small scale projects. Applicants should have interest in a full range of project responsibilities with a particular focus in the application of building science in the design process and developing overall project documentation.
Applicants must hold a 5-year professional degree or Master’s degree in Architecture. Knowledge in AutoCAD required. LEED accreditation and knowledge in BIM platforms, such as Revit, and analytical software tools, such as Ecotect and Simulex, are considered a plus.
Please send a cover letter noting clearly your intent to apply for the Long Island office, resume, and 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format) to:
Human Resources
SOM
14 Wall Street, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10005
ATTN: Wendy Chang
Or you may email all files to hrtechnical@som.com (.pdf or .jpg only, 5MB message size limit)
No phone calls. Work samples will not be returned.
Intermediate Architect:
Cover Letter, Resume, 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format)
E-mail to hrtechnical@som.com
SOM is seeking intermediate level architects to work in the Long Island branch of the New York office for involvement in both large and small scale projects. Applicants should have interest in a full range of project responsibilities with a particular focus in the application of building science in the design process and developing overall project documentation.
Applicants must hold a 5-year professional degree or Master’s degree in Architecture and have 3 to 8 years of professional experience. Knowledge in AutoCAD required. LEED accreditation and knowledge in BIM platforms, such as Revit, and analytical software tools, such as Ecotect and Simulex, are considered a plus.
Please send a cover letter noting clearly your intent to apply for the Long Island office, resume, and 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format) to:
Human Resources
SOM
14 Wall Street, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10005
ATTN: Wendy Chang
Or you may email all files to hrtechnical@som.com (.pdf or .jpg only, 5MB message size limit)
No phone calls. Work samples will not be returned.
Intermediate Architect:
Cover Letter, Resume, 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format)
E-mail to hrtechnical@som.com
SOM is seeking intermediate level architects for involvement in both large and small scale projects. Applicants should have interest in a full range of project responsibilities including the investigation of innovative building systems, materials research and sustainable initiatives in the design process.
Applicants must hold a 5 year professional degree or Master’s degree in Architecture and have 3 to 8 years of professional experience. Knowledge in AutoCAD, 3d Studio Max and/or Rhino required. LEED accreditation and knowledge in BIM platforms, such as Revit, and analytical software and simulation tools, such as Ecotect and Simulex, are considered a plus.
Please send a cover Letter, Resume, and 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format) to:
Human Resources
SOM
14 Wall Street, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10005
ATTN: Wendy Chang
Or you may email all files to hrtechnical@som.com (.pdf or .jpg only, 5MB message size limit)
No phone calls. Work samples will not be returned.
Senior Architect:
Cover Letter, Resume, 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format)
E-mail to hrtechnical@som.com
SOM is seeking senior level architects for involvement in both large and small scale projects. Applicants should have experience in a full range of project responsibilities. Applicants should also have interest in the application of building science in the design process including investigating and developing materials, innovative building systems solutions, systems integration/interoperability and sustainable design initiatives.
Applicants must hold a 5-year professional degree or Master’s degree in Architecture and have minimum of 5 years of professional experience. Knowledge in AutoCAD, 3d Studio Max and/or Rhino required. LEED accreditation and knowledge in BIM platforms, such as Revit, and analytical software and simulation tools, such as Ecotect and Simulex, are considered a plus.
Please send a cover Letter, Resume, and 1-2 work samples (8 1/2″ x 11″ .pdf or hardcopy format) to:
Human Resources
SOM
14 Wall Street, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10005
ATTN: Wendy Chang
Or you may email all files to hrtechnical@som.com (.pdf or .jpg only, 5MB message size limit)
No phone calls. Work samples will not be returned.
Project Manager
Empyrean International is a global leader of the contemporary and modernist prefab movement. We have 57 years experience in the design and construction of imaginative one-of-a-kind custom houses, including Deck House, Acorn, and the Dwell Homes by Empyrean.
We are searching for a Project Manager for our New York City area office to work with clients who want unique architecture inspired by their site and by the way they live.
We want a person who:
· Is excited by contemporary and modernist architecture
· Can manage projects from design through construction
· can work in a team environment with designers, builders, and clients
· Can support, but not have to create, construction drawings and details
· Communicates comfortably and clearly in writing and in person — including the effective use of computers and the internet and is highly organized
Additional specific skills/tasks include…
Maintain Project Status Reports and Timelines, Hands-on understanding of materials and methods used in residential construction, Make site visits and assist with the various types of permitting issues In short, act as a liason between the client and our internal sales and design functions
Empyrean International offers balanced compensation (salary and performance bonus), excellent benefits, high income potential, architectural innovation, and a team-oriented open working environment.
Respond to: rsmjob@empyreanapf.com
www.empyreanapf.com
Empyrean International
Michael Rogers
930 Main St
852 Main St
Acton, MA 01720
Phone: 978 263 7000
mrogers@emp-apf.com
http://www.empyreanapf.com
Intermediate Architect
AAI Architects, P.C., an affiliate of Adamson Associates, is looking to expand their New York office.
AAI is currently involved in the redevelopment and reconstruction of the World Trade Center Site in association with design architects Foster and Partners, Richard Rogers Partnership, and Maki and Associates.
As the architect of record, AAI is required to support and assist the efforts of multiple design architects, consultants and stakeholders from concept phase through to project completion.
We are looking for motivated, intermediate level architects with a minimum of 5 years of experience, who have excellent communication and problem solving skills as well as an appreciation and sensitivity to architectural design issues. Candidates will need to possess strengths in the area of architectural detailing, contract documents, and the coordination of complex building disciplines and systems. Proficiency with AutoCAD is required and experience with Revit is a bonus.
Salary will be commensurate with experience.
Resumes can be sent by e-mail to nzigomanis@adamson-associates.com
Position: Director of Sustainability
NYC-based dynamic Real Estate firm with diverse portfolio of existing buildings and projects under development seeks candidate for position of Director of Sustainability. Candidate must have background in Architecture/Engineering w/prior experience in implementing sustainability and green design strategies in existing and new buildings. Must be able to communicate, educate, and work with in house staff and joint venture partners on the benefits and implementation of green design practices.
Contact: Jacob Buksbaum, Director of Design and Construction
E mail: jbuksbaum@timeequities.com
Web site: www.timeequities.com
Real Estate Development
NY/NJ area developer seeks an intermediate architect interested in moving from architectural practice into real estate development. The position reports directly to our SVP of Development. We will consider candidates with the following qualifications.
· B. Arch or BA/BS plus M.Arch.
· 8-10 years experience
· Demonstrable project management/design/technical skills.
· Excellent verbal/written communication
· High level proficiency in MS Word, Excel, MS Project/Suretrack
Please send a resume and cover letter to david@streetwood.com.
ARCHITECT LEVEL 2
MTA New York City Transit
Responsibilities: Under direction, incumbents may supervise a capital construction project of great technical complexity and/or one that will have a significant impact on TA operations/infrastructure; Relative to design, incumbents may serve as architectural team leaders on a project of similar complexity or potential impact. Additionally, you may become a contributor for one of NYC Transit’s planned System Expansion Projects.
Requirements: A valid New York State registration as an Architect and five years of full-time experience in Architecture including experience as a major contributor or a project leader.
Desired Skills: Candidates should possess an in depth knowledge of the capital construction process in design and construction, and possess an overall ability to function effectively within that process by applying the standards of project management while utilizing effective oral and written communication skills.
Ms. Valerie Tookes
HR Departmental Operations
2 Broadway Room D21.13
New York, NY 10004
or e-mail cpmre@nyct.com
(Include the 003953 NYAIA as the ‘Subject’)
Fax: 646-252-2256
Interior Designers and Interior Architects
Little, nationally recognized as a “Best Firm to Work For” and one of the nation’s most progressive design firms, is seeking Interior Designers and Interior Architects for our nationally growing Workplace Studio in our Charlotte, NC, Office.
Our culture is energetic, collaborative and open. We value people who are fun to work with and who have a positive impact on everyone around them.
The individuals selected for these great opportunities will be responsible for engaging in strong client relationships, coordinating and motivating internal and external consultants and team members, developing and documenting design, providing construction administration and project management services on a wide variety of architectural and interior design projects and project types.
Great communication, organizational and project management skills are essential, as is a team-oriented, flexible attitude and a passion for high quality designed work projects.
Successful candidates will possess a bachelor’s degree in Interior Design or Architecture from an accredited school and 3+ years of experience (focused primarily on corporate work environments). Registration/licensure (or on the registration track) is required, as is proficiency in AutoCAD and/or Revit.
This is a great opportunity for you if you have exceptional communication skills, both graphically and verbally, including the ability to listen intently and respond with tangible and thought-provoking solutions, and you naturally establish great client relationships. You should also enjoy collaborating with others and rolling up your sleeves to support a collaborative approach to creative problem solving.
Little is dedicated to enhancing client performance by orchestrating the right mix of expertise, creativity and innovation to design new dimensions of success. Over 250 employees across the nation specialize in a variety of market types, including Community (Civic, College & University, Schools), Retail (Store Design, Supermarkets, Shopping Centers, Corporate Rollout, Build to Suit) and Workplace (Financial, Interior Architecture, Office), and deliver results beyond architecture through a complete array of diversified architectural consulting services such as: Architecture, Engineering, Interior Architecture, Land Development Services, Graphic Design, FM Strategies (Facilities Planning and Space Management Consulting), Building Technology Applications and Skyscraper Digital services (Computer Animation and Internet Application services). Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Little has locations in Dallas, TX; Detroit, MI; Irvine, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Orlando, FL; Durham,
NC; and Washington D.C.
We are proud to offer outstanding benefits, compensation, and growth opportunities. To learn more about Little, please visit us at www.littleonline.com.
Little is an Equal Opportunity Employer by choice.
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