The Architect’s Newspaper — which, if you don’t already subscribe yet, you should; they have reviews of lectures fer chrissake’s (Moneo and dal Co in the most recent issue) and where are you going to find that kind of editorial rigor these days? Metropolis? Hah! — has a new online offering, a roundup of competitions. Some even pay money. Opportunities range from below-market-rate housing in Norwalk (CT) to chronometers for Timex’s 150th anniversary.
The new diaspora, TriBeCa skate punks.
After a good year or two of advertisement on its facade and one notice as being the hot new thing, 36 Hudson Street, henceforth known as the Mohawk Atelier, commenced construction this week. It is being developed by Joseph Pell Lombardi, who has done realtively innocuous residential conversions forever. Excepting the social/economic practice of this work, critical judgement of these buildings is difficult since often the only visible intervention is the window and entry detailing, a variable highly dependent on budget. In some instances the work is exquisite. The other major component of his work tends to be the inevitable penthouse additions, which are fairly pedestrian, glass clad affairs, with enough humility to be stepped back and largely invisible. I’ll reserve any comments of the current out of the ground work he has going, since I can’t directly recall the sites, but will do a walk by and report back. But the big neighborhood news to report is how the new scaffolding at the Atelier will affect the street life of the most precious skate/BMX scene in the universe, which is centered exlusively around the steel platform on the Hudson side of the bulding. After ten years of watching the sad spectacle of the skate punks around the Cube and concluding New York has the world’s most incompetent skaters, I was duly impressed by the three foot (and less!) rail slides, grinds, or whatever else you call it when you hop a bike up on the corner of a solid surface, travel a very short distance and then almost fall on your face, produced by the very carefully attired youth of TriBeCa. I fear the already abysmal quality of extreme sports in the area will sink a little further, as the ravages of high-end redevelopment claim yet another precious stretch of streetscape in which not-criminal skaters can display their wares. Oh, the humanity.
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Another fancy glass turnstile.
The MTA announced preliminary plans of a new transit ‘center’ at Fulton Street today (to be accompanied by a presentation this afternoon; link at left). And, surprise! It’s a vaguely organic shape of shimmery glass. The initial renderings (see the MTA docs for details) highlighted the glass box more than the ‘oculus’ that surmounts it. It looks like someone spruced up the renderings to make them look a little more happy, though in point of fact, the site (narrow streets, lots of shade) will likely make it difficult to perceive the bulk of the glass ‘egg’ piercing through the roof unless you are seeing it from the inside. And that is probably a good thing. I’m not entirely averse to glass blobs, but selling it as a way to pull light into the passageways underground? That’s some snake oil there. Just make the hole in the roof bigger. A breakout of the costs of the elements would have been helpful, given the $750 million price tag (it may be in the MTA docs, maddeningly posted as individual chapter PDF’s), if only to find out what a really nice front door costs. And note this is a far cry from the underground boulevard / regional hub imagined in the early days of post-9/11 planning (which showed a single, massive passageway that spanned the full distance from the PATH station to the 2/3 platform). ‘Expanded passageways’ and some new connections are promised, but the details are vague. So to recap: $3.2 billion dollars is allocated for rebuilding a regional tranist station that was just rebuilt, and to add some elevators and two new tunnels for the subway lines in the area. This is not to say that public funds shouldn’t be spent on capital improvement (even if there isn’t a demonstrated ROI; there a number of intangible reasons that can justify the outlay), but that only nominal infrastructure improvement is being provided by this project, and, aside from the formal exercises, isn’t visionary in any way. People have (and should want) to use the subway. If an excess (in the best way) of investment is going be allowed (even though if the budget was $0 ridership would not diminish), shouldn’t we aspire to more than a big skylight?
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Of course it’s significant? Didn’t you see us ignoring it all those years?
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working hard to eschew their rep that they exist solely to validate the surly prejudices of blue-haired Southern gentlewomen against modernism by adding 2 Columbus Circle to its endangered buildings list. The American Crafts Musuem (ACM), recently rechristened the Musuem for Arts and Design (MAD), a strategically incisive move that really clarifies their mission, is proving to be particularly astute at PR as well:
“It’s not a usable building in its current form, unless you plan on using it as a tomb. It’s a mausoleum is what it is,” museum Director Holly Hotchner said yesterday.
This is not the kind of statement that gets the preservation sorts off your back. And they have a right to be angry sometimes. But there is a practical issue about when something becomes ‘significant.’ For buildings that are over 100, 200 years old, mere survival can become a marker of distinction. But when you push the goalposts back to 25 years, you reach well inside the expected lifecylce of any building. Take a look around today at anything new going up. Are you prepared to fight for its preservation only 20 years from now? And since most preservation codes see the envelope as sacred (mostly since they have had little legal success mandating control over the interior spaces), and that modern building practices aren’t nearly as stable as those that produced the post and beam, brick structures that the Trust has been trying to save for the past three decades, there is an additional issue of being forced to preserve assembly techniques that we are only now discovering shouldn’t have been attempted in the first place. Should owners be forced to absorb additional maintenance cost to preserve an failing exterior system? Since this has happened once with a Stone building, shouldn’t we pause to consider that modern design that merits preservation must succeed as a building as well?
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Downtown to Jane Jacobs: Drop Dead.
The Daily News reports that the number one concern of downtown residents is a lack of on-street parking. It is true that a disproportionate number of spaces are allocated to city employees (giving them untaxed, uncalculated benefit that is worth $6,000 a year in some areas) relative to other neighborhoods. [Insert boilerplate rant about the foolishness of owning a car in Manhattan]. Some people even consider it a luxury that they can live car free. Anyway, note to downtown residents: I hear there’s plenty of parking in Westchester County. Give it a look see.
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Thousands of architecture fans, now out of pocket.*
Hot on the heels of Lock’s nifty new venture, Archinect goes and gets itself a face lift. Sporting the Media Temple Mafia treatment, it stands as the best resource of however you want to call the ‘Not-Architectural Record’ crowd. Almost ten years after Princeton Archtiectural Press gave it a go with Architecture Online (a private dial-up BBS that was a little too leading edge in aspiration), it looks like architecture fans may finally have something of an online community. Given the pace of launches this week, we may be witnessing a mini-bubble. Except, this being architecture, no one is going to make any money.
*I was told once that the phrase ‘out of pocket’ referred to a prostitute who operated without a pimp. The former (and lamented by some) tagline of Archinect was “Pimpin’ architecture since 1997.”
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Paulson Ex Machina.
Everyone one goes home happy, and in the shade. Goldman Sachs is apparently moving quickly to secure the goodwill of the BPCA (Battery Park City Authority), CB1, PS 234, and any other acronym-rich semi-public authority by issuing a catch-all million dollar payoff. Follow the money: Goldman wants to build a new tower on this side of the Hudson, since apparently they won’t be using much of the one just across the border in Jersey City. The BPCA requires “every building constructed under its auspices include ample community space” which is news to us, unless Applebee’s and the UA Battery Park is considered ‘community space.’ Goldman, which likes its facilities tighter than some unmentionable part of a nun, wants no part of this quasi-socialist mandate (or they really don’t want an Applebee’s). Just across the (West) street, Scott Resnick is looking to build one of those nasty residential towers a la Costas Kondylis, and PS 234 is jazzed up cause they want their kids to be able to play in the sunlight or something. They are looking for a Community Center (which is inevitably a non-partisan haven from real estate finagling), but the razor thin margin on $2,000/sq ft. condos is making it a tough nut to crack. In steps the beneficent GS, which needs some good press this week. They write a check for a nice, round, million dollars, which, given the stated desire for a 18,000 sq ft of Community Center, means that a whopping $55/sq ft is being donated. Since GS is building as of right, and the BPCA never met a developer they wouldn’t bend over for, it’s still an order of magnitude more than Resnick has offered: the final sale cost for his site has yet to be revealed, and the implicit subsidy from the city (given the rumored below market agreement in place) makes one large large seem positively misery.
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FutureShack.
So far not garnering any local coverage (near as I can tell) the Washington Post does a fair job of writing up a new exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, as part of their Solos series. This installment is modular, highly portable housing unit by Sean Godsell entitled FutureShack. Based primarily on shipping containers (what is it with architects [though, really, you need to see this which looks like the Semoitext(e) series got VC money circa 1999] and shipping containters? They really aren’t scaled to human inhabitation. I know this because I tried to make something out of one too), it attempts to address mass production, portability, ease of assembly, etc. Won some awards too. The Post notes that not everyone sees it as the mysterious grail of housing for the impoverished (you know, it’s not the lack of $15,000 in savings that prevents those who make $2 a day from obtaining housing, it’s the lack of decent design options.). And the name should indicate that the author perhaps isn’t quite perfectly in tune with those who are similarly interested in this problem. Aside from his absurd claim that a portable generator for air conditioning will solve the problem of heat gain in building a house out of steel, I think it presumptive to criticize other aspects of its functionality until I see it, since it’s just across town. So see for yourself, and I’ll try to get back with an update (maybe I’ll wait until August to test the passive ventilation).
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$690/sq ft.
That’s not the going rate for some up and coming condo development in Brooklyn, that is the land cost the Zeckendorfs paid for what is “considered by many developers one of the most valuable sites in Manhattan” reports the Times. Given that residential properties that fetch over $2,000/sq ft still manage to raise eyebrows, by the time the Ceasar Pelli towers (sigh) soil the Central Park skyline, is anyone willing to put an over/under on what units on this site can fetch (note that the number quoted isn’t even the final site acquisition cost, since there are some long-term tenants to buy out, taxes, and lawywers, lawyers, lawyers to pay)? $3,000? Four? At those numbers, a tiny Manhattan studio (300 sq ft) runs close to a million bucks. It’s gross no matter how you slice it. Gross in a way that makes you stop in your tracks and wonder why people don’t try to blow up this town every day.