The OCULUS Committee and AIA New York Chapter will be hosting an event celebrating the release of the newest edition of the AIA Guide to New York City on 06.02.10. In memory of author Norval White, FAIA, e-Oculus will be publishing a special tribute issue to coincide with the celebration. We are seeking personal anecdotes, images, and remembrances — any and all are welcome. Please e-mail them to eoculus@aiany.org by Friday, 05.14.10.

In this issue:
· Congresswoman Maloney Talks Transit
· Modernism Is Hurt by the Cuddle Factor
· Collection of American Design Reveals Purpose, Profit
· Ballon Reappraises Mayor Lindsay
· Sensual Sustainability Grows in Shanghai
· Five Proposals for NYC’s Shoreline Blur Land & Sea

Event: Meet and Greet with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.22.10
Speaker: Carolyn Maloney — Congresswoman, 14th District
Sponsors: AIANY; AIA Queens

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.

Michael Toolan

For his first program, Jay Bond, AIANY’s new policy director, invited Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney to address her legislative agenda as it pertains to the city’s massive infrastructure projects. “That she joined us early Monday morning after the historic vote on the health care bill,” said Bond, “is a testament to her commitment to her constituents and the city she represents.” Maloney represents the 14th District, on the East Side of Manhattan and western part of Queens. Whether or not you live in her district, you are almost certainly affected by the ambitious infrastructure projects — the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access, and the Outerboard Detour Roadway — taking place on both sides of the East River.

“We have to invest in our infrastructure and if we don’t go forward we’re going backwards,” stated Maloney. For New Yorkers, we are literally “digging our way out of the recession.” Building the Second Avenue Subway, which she called “a sad urban story,” eliciting both chuckles and sighs from the audience, has been one of her top priorities since she was first elected to Congress. Lexington Avenue subway riders commute on the most overcrowded line in the nation. The full-length subway, which will run from 125th Street to Lower Manhattan, will alleviate congestion and reach underserved East Side neighborhoods.

The East Side Access is underway and will create new tunnels and reuse existing ones to transport approximately 160,000 LIRR passengers, including 5,000 residents of western Queens, directly into Grand Central Station. A new station in Sunnyside is expected to act as a catalyst for economic development and growth in Long Island City, as well.

“We look jealously to the West Side of Manhattan,” Maloney noted. One project that could enhance the quality of life on the East Side is the Outerboard Detour Roadway (ODR). Along with a coalition of elected officials, she is urging the State Department of Environmental Conservation to extend the permits to retain the caissons in the East River, a holdover from when the FDR Drive was repaired. The development of the ODR — running roughly from the Con Ed site to the UN — will create parkland and trails for pedestrians and cyclists. She openly invited the Chapter to get involved in the planning.

Since architecture is tied to construction, one of the hardest hit sectors in today’s economy, Maloney stated she is seeing massive construction projects abroad funded by the Department of Defense. “NY sends a lot of money to the federal government,” she said, “and we need to get our share of the jobs.” NY-based architects need to become pre-qualified for these projects and Maloney invited a representative from the procurement department to come to the Center to go over the process with her.

Linda G. Miller is a NYC-based freelance writer and publicist, and a contributing editor to e-Oculus and OCULUS.

Event: Modernism by Choice: The Economy, Politics, and Sustainability of Preservation
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.20.10
Speakers: Grahm Balkany — Director, Gropius in Chicago Coalition; Jorge Hernandez — Architect, Co-Founder, Friends of Miami Marine Stadium; Michael Calafati, AIA — Principal, Historic Building Architects, Trenton, and Chair, AIA-NJ Historic Resources Committee; Victor Sidy, AIA — Dean, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; John Szabo — Director, Atlanta Public Library System
Moderators: Theodore Prudon, FAIA — President, DOCOMOMO US; Lisa Ackerman — Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, World Monuments Fund (WMF)
Repspondents: Frank Sanchis — Senior Vice-President, Municipal Art Society; Carl Stein, FAIA — Elemental Architecture, formerly of Marcel Breuer and Associates
Organizers: Center for Architecture in collaboration with WMF; DOCOMOMO US; DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State

Demolition of the Baumgarten Pavilion, 01.20.10.

©Grahm Balkany

Headlines about preservation battles don’t scream as loudly here as in England, but maybe they should. Like Sarasota’s Riverview High School and an alarming number of other Paul Rudolph buildings, as documented in the Center’s “Modernism at Risk” exhibition, an entire medical campus master-planned by Walter Gropius is slipping away. The news is better at other sites: Taliesin West is safe while enduring recurrent renovations; Hilario Candela’s Miami Marine Stadium has outlasted “demolition by neglect” and marshaled support; Eero Saarinen’s Bell Laboratories has a fighting chance of respectful re-use; and Breuer’s Central Public Library in Atlanta isn’t going anywhere, even if it doesn’t remain a library. But the experience of Grahm Balkany’s Gropius in Chicago Coalition provides a cautionary tale for anyone who values Modernism’s ideals and built legacy. The key to preservation: education, education, education.

Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital campus included a total of 29 buildings, Balkany said, “more than half of great merit”; the Kaplan Pavilion, in particular, recalls the Dessau Bauhaus. Officially credited to several Chicago and Cambridge firms, the campus expressed the work and thought of Gropius — not just a hospital site in his eyes, but “an opportunity to create an entirely new neighborhood prototype for the U.S.” — and of his protégé Reginald Isaacs. Landscaping by Lester Collins, Hideo Sasaki, and others helped make the area a green enclave on the South Side.

Coveting the site for the 2016 Olympic Village, the city acquired the property, established demolition plans, and ignored the Coalition’s arguments that the Gropius campus, together with IIT’s Mies van der Rohe campus a few blocks away, created a uniquely valuable “Bauhaus District.” The case for preservation had multiple strengths: the hospital was functioning; the Olympics were awarded to Rio de Janeiro; and a host of commentators weighed in to support Balkany’s group, including the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council, which unanimously backed nomination of the campus to the National Register of Historic Places. Nevertheless, in October the city began demolishing buildings and clear-cutting the landscape. A plaque honoring Gropius, among other features, is now gone; all but one building are to follow.

Continues…

Event: Annual Gil Oberfield Memorial Lecture — American Design in the MoMA Collection
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.25.10
Speakers: Russell Flinchum — Author, American Design
Organizers: AIANY Interiors Committee
Sponsor: Gensler

Courtesy Museum of Modern Art

During the seventh annual Gil Oberfield lecture, Russell Flinchum — archivist, author, and curator — presented the content and thesis of his latest publication, American Design (The Museum of Modern Art/5 Continents, 2008), which he describes as an unrivaled research experience that was “a delight to have written.” An investigation into MoMA’s collection of American design, Flinchum’s book extracts the most representative pieces, albeit not always the most iconic, to determine what exactly is American about American design.

With a penchant for labor saving devices and a fascination with process, 20th-century American designers engendered functionalism and consumerism. “American design is commercial design from its inception,” Flinchum stated. Even Henry Ford’s popular Model T was outmoded when stylistic preference began to encroach upon a consumer population. As freedom of choice prevailed and multiple body styles became available, American auto enthusiasts embraced a culture of design, which spread to an entire nation.

In a post-war era, Ekco Housewares Co. began to produce kitchen tools that responded to consumer needs with innovations such as stainless steel to prevent rust, and the inclusion of a hole in the utensil handle by which to hang it from a nail. According to Flinchum, all-American designs are intrinsically compromises since they are consumer products and must yield a profit. A divergence from contemporary European design products, streamlined American designs of the 1930s left MoMA curators suspicious and reluctant to include American products into their collection. Later, enlightened by the purposeful aesthetic and prevalent usability of American design, the museum opened its door to welcome products of designers including Charles and Ray Eames, Henry Dreyfuss, Richard Kelly, and Russel Wright.

An enthusiast of American design and a champion of its merits, Flinchum has substantiated his premise that American design is inclusive of the objects that anchor our lives, such as the Trimline telephone and the Leatherman multi-tool prototype, worthy of their place in The Museum of Modern Art.

Jacqueline Pezzillo, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, is the communications manager at Davis Brody Bond Aedas and a regular contributor to e-Oculus.

Event: The New Urbanism of Mayor Lindsay: The Downtown Scene
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.31.10
Speakers: Hilary Ballon, Ph.D. — Deputy Vice Chancellor, NYU Abu Dhabi, & University Professor of Art History and Archaeology, NYU
Organizers: AIANY; NYU Grey Art Gallery; Fales Library

John Lindsay campaigning for mayor in Jamaica, Queens, 1965.

Photograph by Katrina Thomas, courtesy of the photographer, via the Museum of the City of New York

Contrary to assumptions about The New Urbanism as advocated later by Andrés Duany, FAIA, a new kind of urbanism (uncapitalized) was brewing in the heady days under Mayor John Lindsay. An approach to policy that brings architects into public service and recognizes the critical effects of design on the quality of life, these concepts are now familiar enough in city-planning circles to seem transparent. However, when Lindsay took office in 1966, in the twilight of the Robert Moses era, they were innovations. They are among the many changes that appear, through historical excavations of Hilary Ballon, Ph.D., to be valuable long after the Lindsay era was dead and buried. Ballon’s work on Moses (editing Robert Moses and the Modern City along with Kenneth Jackson) did a great deal to complicate and rescue the reputation of that pivotal figure; she is now bringing a comparably balanced perspective to a very different metropolitan icon.

Mentioning the phrase “quality of life” in the same breath with Lindsay’s name is a guaranteed provocation for those who associate him with transit and garbage strikes and rising crime rates. Lindsay’s leadership is overdue for a reappraisal; it’s about to get one not only from Ballon, but from the Museum of the City of New York, which will mount an exhibition called “The Lindsay Years” this May, along with a day-long symposium, a book edited by Sam Roberts of the Times, and a WNET documentary. Lindsay couldn’t deflect every social storm that battered NY, but some of his less-heralded accomplishments helped the city eventually become, once again, not only governable but worth inhabiting.

Lindsay took the heat for, among other things, a host of problems he’d inherited from predecessor Robert Wagner. Largely unrecognized in this picture is the paradigm shift he generated by making the design of public spaces an institutional priority. “Moses didn’t regard design as a matter of public policy,” Ballon noted. At the peak of his power, even some of the strongest legacies of “the good Moses,” such as his myriad playgrounds, took a cookie-cutter approach to design. Under Lindsay, whose campaign made urban design a prominent component of his platform, the city got Richard Dattner, FAIA’s Adventure Playground, a park-use policy under August Heckscher and Thomas Hoving, Hon. AIA, that made Central Park a “space for happenings,” and an explicit recognition of pedestrians’ right to street space. We got Battery Park City, built on downtown landfill, with new rules preserving visual corridors and pedestrian paths. Most important in the long run, we got the City Planning Commission’s Urban Design Group, an architectural and infrastructural brain trust that pioneered tools such as bonus zoning and air-rights transfer, all guided by a philosophy of using zoning, as Ballon said, “to create public benefits, not just restrict harms.”

Though Moses was largely defanged by then, it must be noted, we also nearly got his long-planned Lower Manhattan Expressway (LoMEx). Lindsay first campaigned against it, but after taking office reversed course and supported it, assigning the Urban Design Group to come up with a plan less intrusive than Moses’s massive elevated roadway. The group brought architect Shadrach Woods back to NY from housing-project work in France in 1968, “committed,” as Richard Buford’s invitation letter declared, “to the proposition that the expressway not be a scar on the body of the city.” Woods produced feasibility studies incorporating immense sociological data on SoHo residents and businesses, all aimed at mitigating neighborhood conflicts and preserving the area’s cast-iron architecture. Even in attempting to implement LoMEx, Ballon noted, Lindsay’s team thought progressively about how it might be a positive influence, a mixed-use project including replacement housing, not just another neighborhood-killing car conduit like the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

Veterans of Lindsay’s City Hall and the Urban Design Group spoke spontaneously as well, including Jordan Gruzen, FAIA; Terrance Williams; Lance Jay Brown, FAIA; and former mayoral chief of staff Jay Kriegel. All recalled the era as a formative period in their careers and an unsung heyday in the city’s development. Ballon quoted Ada Louise Huxtable, Hon. AIA, writing of Lindsay’s group in a 1971 Times piece with her customary prescience, hailing “a revolution going on in American cities: in conceptual, legal, and administrative aspects of zoning that sets such innovative patterns of land use that it will change whole parts of cities as we know them. Don’t write off the revolution because it is being made by men in business suits at City Hall.”

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OCULUS, Icon, Content, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.

Event: The Sensual City
Location: Center for Architecture, 03.12.10
Speakers: Jacques Ferrier — Principal, Jacques Ferrier Architectures
Organizer: Center for Architecture

France Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.

©Jacques Ferrier architectures/image Ferrier Production

French architect Jacques Ferrier doesn’t believe in the term “sustainable architecture,” instead embracing the idea of “architecture for a sustainable society,” he explained. It may seem like a fine distinction, but it’s key to understanding his approach. Consider, for example, his eponymous firm’s design of the France Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, which opens next month.

The pavilion was designed as a reaction against the architecture of some of Shanghai’s satellite cities, which focus more on energy-efficiency than beauty, Ferrier noted, as he showed a photo of one with boxy buildings and a bland, empty park. “Even if these buildings are really efficient in terms of energy, these are cities without quality,” he remarked.

By contrast, the France Pavilion will offer a vision of the “Sensual City,” both through its exhibitions on the topic and through the architecture itself, which is surrounded by a pool of water and features a lush vertical garden that acts as a brise-soleil. A steel frame grid is clad with glass-reinforced concrete elements that look like a light white mesh on the exterior, which provides structural support and allows natural light to penetrate. The design sprang from the “idea of a new urbanism where there is no clear difference, no clear limit between architecture and landscape,” according to Ferrier. As visitors enter a courtyard waiting area, breezes from the pool and shadows will offer a rejuvenating sense of coolness during a warm time of year, while music and the views and smells of the vertical garden will engage the senses. Once visitors make their way into the building and through the exhibitions, they will emerge onto a verdant rooftop, a reinterpretation of the traditional French garden.

The pavilion also features solar panels, like many other of the firm’s projects, such as a sailing museum in Lorient, France, and an office building in Grenoble. Beyond the panels’ obvious benefits for energy generation, their aesthetic possibilities intrigue Ferrier, too. His firm received a grant to research new types of solar panels, whose wide range of colors offer appealing design choices, he remarked. It’s an emphasis that embodies well his firm’s focus on architecture that’s sustainable in a way that’s highly aesthetic, not ascetic.

Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for OCULUS, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, and Wired, among other publications.

Event: Preview of “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront”
Location: Museum of Modern Art, 03.23.10
Speaker: Barry Bergdoll — The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art
Organizer: Museum of Modern Art

Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio’s New Urban Ground transforms Lower Manhattan with an infrastructural ecology.

Courtesy Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio

If calculations are correct, the sea-level around NYC will rise two feet within the next 50 years, and up to four or six feet within the century. Many parts of the city and surrounding areas could be swallowed. Whether or not one believes in climate change, natural disasters, such as hurricanes, could easily overwhelm the city’s current infrastructure. MoMA and P.S.1 teamed up to find solutions for New York Harbor by hosting an “architects-in-resident” program at P.S.1 (11.16.09-01.08.10).

On View through 10.11.10 at MoMA, “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront” features the resulting five proposals, in the form of elaborate drawings and articulate models, for five different zones around the harbor. Organizer Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, said that the multi-disciplinary teams “came to us not with projects, but philosophies.” They were instructed to design without the constraints of property lines or governing administrations. The five proposals shouldn’t be viewed as a master plan, Bergdoll explained, since they aren’t meant to be executed altogether.

Zone 0: A New Urban Ground, includes Lower Manhattan and the northern edge of the Upper Bay. Architecture Research Office/ARO and dlandstudio imagined a combination of “hard” and “soft” solutions, reclaiming nature by creating wetlands and parks and paving streets with a cast-concrete mesh and plants that act as a sponge to absorb tidewater. Rather than employ a traditional barrier such as a seawall, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis/LTL Architects embraced the ambiguity of the shoreline in Zone 1: Water Proving Ground, which includes the Northwest Palisade Bay/Hudson River area in NJ (Liberty State Park/Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty). By sculpting an existing landfill, the team created four protective “raised fingers” that foster areas for parks, aquaculture, recreation, and research.

Occupied by an oil-tank farm and military pier, Zone 2: Working Waterline, includes the Southwest Palisade Bay/Kill van Kull area (Bayonne, NJ, Bayonne Piers, and northern Staten Island). Matthew Baird Architects’ proposal acknowledges that changing shipping routes due to shifts in the Arctic could “reshape the economy of New York Harbor as much as higher sea levels will reshape the contours of the land.” They employ a land berm for protection, an elevated “solar path” for vehicles and pedestrians, and a new glass recycling facility to produce large “jacks” that can be stacked underwater to create a reef. nARCHITECTS tackled Zone 3: New Aqueous City: A Zoning Ordinance for a Regional Metropolis, which includes the South Palisade Bay/Verrazano Narrows area (eastern Staten Island, Bay Ridge, and Sunset Park). In this proposal, the city and water co-exist through habitable piers and a connecting network of ferries. A manmade archipelago and inflatable storm barriers allow the shore to build natural resilience to storm surges.

SCAPE/LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE proposes revitalizing an old oyster reef in Zone 4: Oyster-Tecture, which includes the controversial Northeast Palisade Bay/Buttermilk Channel and Gowanus Canal area (Governors Island and Red Hook). A field of piles and a web of “fuzzy rope” provide seeding ground for oysters, which naturally create reefs and clean the harbor water. Someday, residents might even be able to enjoy an oyster dinner by the shore.

A recurring theme in this exhibition is “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Working against nature by physically blocking the water will not breed success; instead, infrastructure and architecture should embrace the sea and establish harmony. These projects are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg; but Bergoll hopes that they will foster an ongoing dialogue: the exhibition’s website describes the projects in detail and is open for public comment.

Murrye Bernard, LEED AP, is a freelance architectural writer and a contributing editor to e-Oculus.

(Continued from above)

Miami’s Marine Stadium, whose attractions included speedboat racing and concerts, offers a happier story. Closed since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but structurally sound, this origami-like design by Cuban architect Hilario Candela of the local firm Pancoast, Ferendino, Grafton, Skeels, and Burnham brings the forms of Pier Luigi Nervi, Max and Enrique Borges, Oscar Niemeyer, and others to Biscayne Bay on a vast scale. Amid conflicting estimates of renovation costs and an attempt at demolition using Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, Jorge Hernandez reported, the community has rallied along with the WMF, Docomomo, and others to oppose a “heavy-handed…. ridiculous” retail-oriented plan that would remove the stadium, then a second plan preserving only the grandstand. The inseparable grandstand-basin combination attained local historic designation without the approval of the city as owner; further engineering studies, charrettes, and the election of a preservation-minded mayor all point to eventual success in preserving this icon of borderless hemispheric culture.

In Holmdel, NJ, Eero Saarinen’s elliptical Bell Labs research complex strikes a deliberately lower profile — original occupant AT&T preferred to hunker down out of public view — but helped set the standards for sleek corporate campuses in its day. AT&T’s successor Alcatel-Lucent moved out in 2007, and potential developer Preferred Unlimited planned to raze the buildings in favor of high-end residential, a corporate park, or other profitable uses. Maximized ratables outweigh historic and architectural considerations for township officials, commented Michael Calafati, AIA, and NJ’s higher-level governance is weak, but the restoration question at least remains open. New developer Somerset has welcomed a preservation charrette; Calafati describes the firm as “not perfect, but one we can have a conversation with.”

The afternoon panel, “Sustaining Operations in a Modern Building,” struck more confident notes, discussing the ongoing experiments with roof-panel materials and successive structural renovations at Scottsdale’s Taliesin West and the robust inverted ziggurat of Atlanta’s Marcel Breuer library. Ahead of its time in anticipating the broadened functions of a post-Carnegie-era library as well as defying local preferences for columns and coziness, the building provides essential community space at a transit-accessible downtown location. It is a flak magnet over issues unrelated to its operations (e.g., gatherings of the homeless), and Fulton County voters passed a 2008 bond referendum calling for an alternate central site along with branch expansions, but the amount has been reduced, says director John Szabo, who believes finances ensure any replacement is “a long way from happening.” Even if it does, Breuer’s building will be a candidate for conversion to an academic facility or museum, though vigilance and stepped-up public relations are critical.

Much of the day’s discussion analyzed why some preservation efforts capture the public’s imagination, and why Chicago’s never quite did. Panelists agreed that popular enthusiasm is essential to save a building. The Olympic bid had many Chicagoans wearing “rose-painted” glasses; hospitals in general can inspire more fear than affection; Chicago development invokes the tendencies for clout to outweigh reason and accountability. Despite Chicagoans’ famous knowledgeability about their architectural local heroes, many were unaware of Gropius’s involvement. Others simply “hate Modernism.”

One recurring theme was whether Modernist buildings are, as one questioner put it, “cuddly.” To part of the population, they never will be, and their other attributes (being breathtaking, structurally honest, well-programmed, or provocative) won’t matter. The difficult yet essential task, said Carl Stein, is educating citizens to distinguish between truly Modernist buildings — serious in intention, purposeful in advancing ideas, active in social contexts — and mere object-buildings in a modern style. Particularly as mid-century and later works approach the 50-year standard for landmark eligibility (a standard that many found open to rethinking), Stein emphasized a frank awareness that “one reason Modernism has been under heavy attack is… the idea we can solve things by conscious action.” What these buildings are up against is often not just an antipathy to bèton brut but a deeper antipathy to rationality itself.

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OCULUS, Icon, Content, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.