In this issue:
·Louis Armstrong House Museum Expands Across Lot
·21st Century Tools Revamp Metropolitan Museum of Art
·CyberDoorman At Your Service
·The Alexander Rises in Midtown
·Institute’s a Matter of NanoScience
·Louisville’s Slugger of a Skyscraper
·A Housing First for Greater Boston

Louis Armstrong House Museum Expands Across Lot
After a national search, NY-based Caples Jefferson Architects has been selected to design the Visitors Center for the Louis Armstrong House Museum (a NYC and national historic landmark) in Corona, Queens. The Visitors Center is across an empty lot, donated to Queens College in 1986 by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, from the museum. In 2006, NY State awarded Queens College and the City University of New York (CUNY) $5 million to design and construct the center, and this July the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs awarded an additional $5 million to the project. Expected to open in three years, the new center will offer concerts, lectures, exhibitions, community events, and other services and programs.

21st Century Tools Revamp Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Following a $75 million, three-year renovation and complete reconfiguration by CT-based Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art re-opened. The 25,000-square-foot center includes the museum’s first art study room designed for teaching with original artworks, studio facilities, and a lecture hall. All classrooms and lecture rooms are equipped to document and archive lectures and presentations, and to support distance-learning and video-conferencing. High-speed communication networks will enable students, artists, and teachers to have access to educators, students, and other museums worldwide. The firm has directed the master planning for the museum since 1967.

CyberDoorman At Your Service

441 East 57th Street.

FLAnk

Positioned in an enclave between two circa 1920’s brick co-op buildings on Sutton Place is 441 East 57th Street, now under construction by design/developer firm, FLAnk. When completed in 2008, the luxury 15-story residential condo will contain four duplexes, a triplex, and a penthouse. The building boasts light from three sides, with a façade edged in anodized metal in fritted glass, employing 51 panel typologies totaling over 1,500 framed “puzzle pieces.” Amenities abound in this “smart” building — including entries controlled by a “CyberDoorman” that is operated via a key fob or biometric thumbprint reader.

The Alexander Rises in Midtown

The Alexander.

Sydness Architects

The Alexander, a 24-story, 88-unit luxury residential building, designed by Sydness Architects, is under construction on the corner of Second Avenue and 49th Street. To respect the scale of the residential block’s masonry-clad, low-scale buildings, a 19-story curved glass tower bookended by panels of tan-colored terra cotta will rise from a five-story podium. Shops will comprise the podium’s first two glass-clad levels, with large terraced apartments on the next three levels clad in deep red terra cotta panels. The building is scheduled to open in 2009.

Institute’s a Matter of NanoScience

The central courtyard of California NanoSystems Institute.

Rafael Viñoly Architects

Rafael Viñoly Architects reports the December opening of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) on the UCLA campus. Located on the Court of Sciences, CNSI is a seven-story building housing laboratories for nanotechnology, a multidisciplinary field addressing the control of matter on a molecular level. The building is partially below grade and is sited on a narrow, steep lot adjacent to a parking structure. At first considered an obstacle, the parking structure became inspiration for the design with three floors constructed over part of it. The entrance lobby connects the parking structure to the research floors through a zigzag network of suspended bridges and stairs in the building’s central courtyard, realizing the client’s goals of interdisciplinary cooperation and socialization.

Louisville’s Slugger of a Skyscraper

Museum Plaza.

REX

Construction has begun on Museum Plaza, a $490 million tower in Louisville, KY, that will transform the city’s skyline. Designed by NY-based REX, the 62-story skyscraper combines the arts, commerce, and residences in one cultural center with 165 luxury condominiums, 300,000 square feet of class-A office space, a 260-room Westin Hotel, and the University of Louisville Master of Fine Arts program. An island, located 24 stories up, will be a hub of activity with a 35,000-square-foot, world-class contemporary arts center, a luxury spa, pool and fitness center, a condo club, ballroom, restaurants, and retail. In addition, the plaza will feature a new three-acre public park with connections to the Muhammad Ali Center and riverfront.

A Housing First for Greater Boston

303 Third Street.

Cetra/Ruddy

NY-based Cetra/Ruddy recently celebrated the topping out of 303 Third Street in Cambridge, MA, the first residential community in the Boston area marketed with the University Residential Community at MIT (URC). The 605,000-square-foot project consists of 292 residential apartments and 167 co-ops, sited around a landscaped courtyard reminiscent of the university quads of Harvard and MIT. The apartments are marketed exclusively to the URC community consisting of Harvard, MIT, and Massachusetts General Hospital faculty, staff, and alumni. Cetra/Ruddy designed amenities one would find “on campus” including: a club/library; flexible meeting spaces for lectures, community activities, and business meetings; and a private dining club.