|
Vocabulary > Arts > Towns, Cities, Suburbs
Ellis Island
Date taken: April 1938
Photographer: Hansel Mieth
Life Images
Ellis Island
Date taken: April 1938
Photographer: Hansel Mieth
Life Images
Discrimination In Washington Dc Schools
Date taken: January 1948
Photographer: Thomas Mcavoy
Life Images
A photo of a new housing development in San
Jose, CA, USA.
Photo by Sean O'Flaherty
Date : ?
Pasted from Wikipedia - 7 October 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_San_Jose_(crop).jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_San_Jose.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_the_United_States
World Trade Center remains
added c. 2004
http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/wtc/wtc-photos.htm
Architect David Childs
puts his hand behind the top of the design
for the
Freedom Tower to be built on the World Trade Centre site
The design for the world's tallest building
to replace the
World Trade Centre's twin towers
has been unveiled in New York.
Ananova
19.12.2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=474865
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
4.5.2005
Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg
and the lead developer at ground zero
acknowledged that the Freedom Tower
would have to be redesigned for security
concerns.
Pataki and Bloomberg Endorse Changes in
Ground Zero Tower
By PATRICK D. HEALY and CHARLES V. BAGLI
NYT
Published: May 5, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/nyregion/05rebuild.html?hp
The transportation hub for the World Trade
Center site.
NYT / Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
22.4.2005
Santiago Calatrava.
An Architect Embraces New York By
ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: April 23,
2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/arts/design/23cala.html?hp
Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty
Eyewitness
Rebuilding Ground Zero
The Guardian pp. 22-23
28.4.2006
Oliver Burkeman New York
A hastily arranged ceremony marked the official start of rebuilding at Ground
Zero yesterday morning
after months of tense negotiations cast doubt over the
project.
New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the state governor, George Pataki,
and
developer Larry Silverstein met builders at the site to inaugurate work on the
Freedom Tower,
one day after announcing that they had finally thrashed out an agreement.
The talks had centred on whether Mr Silverstein
— who bought the lease to the
World Trade Centre seven weeks before it was destroyed —
had he resources to
meet his commitments.
The new deal hands control of the lease to the Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey.
The entire project, involving four other skyscrapers,
will provide about 820,000
square metres (8.8m square feet) of office space at an estimated
cost of $6.3bn (£3.5bn), and is expected to be finished by 2012, though a
memorial should be in place by 2009.
“There are some issues that need to be resolved”, Mr Silverstein said,
“but my
focus, like that of all New Yorkers, is on getting the Freedom Tower under way.”
Not quite all New Yorkers agree, though.
The Freedom Tower “should be the last
building to be done, and should be built more modestly”,
said Susan Fainstein, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University.
“First, because it’s such an obvious target, and secondly,
in order to harden it
as a target, it’s become an architectural monstrosity.”
No private firms have committed to taking space in the tower. The Port Authority
has guaranteed that about
half of the available floors will be occupied by government agencies.
Into the valleys
The Guardian pp. 2-3
6 May 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/may/06/communities.ruralaffairs
hamlet
town
ghost town
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/us/12ghosttown.html
In Ireland, Ghosts of Towns That Never Were /
Ghost Estates > Valérie Anex photographs
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/in-ireland-ghosts-of-towns-that-never-were/
model towns
city
planners
developer
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/nyregion/melvyn-kaufman-developer-who-shaped-manhattans-streetscape-dies-at-87.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/business/developers-revive-closed-auto-plants.html
redevelopment plan
USA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/22/battersea-power-station-redevelopment
landmark
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/22/battersea-power-station-redevelopment
heritage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/12/dont-knock-down-battersea-power-station
Battersea power station, London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/12/dont-knock-down-battersea-power-station
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/22/battersea-power-station-redevelopment
cityscapes
skyscraper
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/nyregion/26empire.html
skyline
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/sep/21/aerial-views-of-new-york
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/nyregion/26empire.html
London's skyline > the Shard
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/30/shard-renzo-piano-london-bridge
London from above, at night
2008
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/london_from_above_at_night.html
street
high streets
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/28/high-streets
streetscapes
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/realestate/27scapesready.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/realestate/26scapesready.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/realestate/19scape.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/classifieds/realestate/columns/streetscapes/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/realestate/28scapes.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/realestate/18scapes.html
Astor House, built in 1836
NYC USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/realestate/27scapesready.html
New York City
Between 1938 and 1943, approximately 700,000 stark,
unsentimental black-and-white pictures of properties in all five boroughs,
known as tax photographs, were taken for the city,
both to make assessments and as an employment program
for the federal Works
Progress Administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/nyregion/13taxphotos.html
Mapping New York
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2009/dec/03/mapping-new-york
Bernard Ratzer's “Plan of the City of New York”
1770
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/nyregion/17map.html
National Archives and Records Administration
USA NARA
Pictures of the American City
http://www.archives.gov/research/american-cities/
cities at sea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/19/climatechange.greenbuilding
Holidaytown: images of Blackpool
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/jul/18/bolton.holidaytown?picture=335775486
on the Pelican Estate in Peckham, London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/30/london-gang-deaths-david-cameron
Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar,
east London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/jul/27/robin-hood-gardens-listed
Heygate housing estate in south London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/03/heygate-estate-south-london-hollywood
social housing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2009/oct/16/council-houses-heygate-estate
council estates
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2009/oct/16/council-houses-heygate-estate
council houses
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2009/oct/16/council-houses-heygate-estate
terraced houses
be listed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/jul/27/robin-hood-gardens-listed
sprawl / urban sprawl
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/to-rethink-sprawl-start-with-offices.html
suburbs / fringe suburb / suburbia
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-07-29-nosale_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-15-suburbia_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-03-immigrant-assimilation_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2006-08-03-suburbs-diversity_x.htm
suburbs
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4033449
http://society.guardian.co.uk/housing/story/0,7890,1114132,00.html
residential suburbs / suburban offices
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/to-rethink-sprawl-start-with-offices.html
suburban corporate landscapes
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/to-rethink-sprawl-start-with-offices.html
exurbs
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/national/15exurb.html
slumburbia
USA
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/
run-down
neighbourhoods
rezoning
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/nyregion/16rezone.html
gentrify
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/opinion/l22brooks.html
high-rise
inner cities
megalopolis
inhabitants
residents
locals
local amenities
high-tech house
/ the home of the future
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,13747,1123440,00.html
the Land
Registry
http://money.guardian.co.uk/houseprices/story/0,1456,1144008,00.html
landlord
tenant
park
public park >
Duke Farms, a 2,740-acre estate in Hillsborough, N.J., USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/arts/doris-dukes-farm-hillsborough-nj-opening-to-public.html
From Vacant to Vibrant
December 7, 2011
The New York Times
By NICK BUNKLEY
DETROIT — Shuttered auto plants have been a surprising beneficiary of the
gloomy economy, with developers buying as many closed plants over the last three
years as during the previous 26, according to the first comprehensive study of
plants closed by American automakers since 1979.
Helped by lower property values and a rash of closings that suddenly put many
more sites on the market, developers have bought 32 properties since 2008. Many
have welcomed smaller manufacturers as tenants, while some have been turned into
housing developments, offices and research centers. Eight are now schools or
colleges, the study found.
Over all, nearly half of the 263 plants that automakers have closed in the
United States have been revived in some form, according to the study, which was
commissioned by the Labor Department’s Office of Recovery for Auto Communities
and Workers.
The new developments have helped communities regain considerable tax revenue
lost when the plants closed, but only a fraction of the jobs that were lost.
Almost three-quarters of the closed plants had been one of their county’s top
three employers, and nearly one-third had more than 2,000 workers. In contrast,
55 percent of the repurposed sites have or will have fewer than 100 employees,
and only 17 percent have or will have more than 800 employees.
“These communities are often defined by these facilities in terms of employment
and of their identity, and there’s an emotional and psychological benefit” to
the new developments, said Jay Williams, executive director of the office.
Mr. Williams said the study could help communities with vacant plants understand
which approaches had been successful as well as provide hope that more
prosperous times might still be ahead. But he cautioned that with so many
closures, bringing in new users was not always feasible and the best use for
some sites might ultimately be green space. The study found that 135 former
plants remain unused, including 24 that closed more than two decades ago.
“They’re not all going to be repurposed,” he said. “Not every community is going
to find a pot of gold at the end of this pathway.”
The study, conducted for the Labor Department by the Center for Automotive
Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., found a plant’s location and the local economy
significantly influenced its fate after being closed. Sites near the coasts and
in the South are cited as having been most successful. All 14 former plants in
California and Texas have been repurposed, but in Michigan, the state most
affected by closures, only 43 of 105 have been.
The study identified regional cooperation, government financing or incentives,
and close proximity to mass transit and other transportation infrastructure as
common factors in plants that were redeveloped.
Part of a transmission plant in Batavia, Ohio, that closed in 2008 as part of
the Ford Motor Company’s restructuring became a new satellite campus for the
University of Cincinnati last year. The college and two manufacturing tenants
employ nearly 150 people and occupy about one-quarter of the plant, which had
1,700 workers under Ford. But local officials are happy that the site is
creating some jobs rather than staying empty, and they say having multiple,
smaller tenants there helps diversify the economy.
“It’s so far succeeded better than we could have hoped for,” said Andy Kuchta,
the economic development director for Clermont County, where the plant is
located. “It would have been a true blight on the community if it would have sat
there abandoned.”
The Ohio plant’s new owner, the Industrial Realty Group, is a firm based in
California that specializes in redeveloping closed factories. It has purchased
numerous former auto plants, as so many were cast aside in recent years, and
found new, generally smaller tenants, including a beer distributor, a fireworks
company and green manufacturers.
“These things are so big that finding a user for the entire building is like
finding a needle in a haystack,” said Stuart Lichter, the company’s president.
In many cases, redevelopment has not occurred quickly or easily even with local
efforts to move it along. Fifteen years after General Motors closed its minivan
plant on the Hudson River in North Tarrytown, N.Y., the 99-acre site about 20
miles from Manhattan remains empty. The village, which even changed its name to
Sleepy Hollow to help fill the void left by G.M. with tourists, is hopeful that
work on a $1 billion housing and commercial development could begin next year,
after previous plans fell through.
“We’re starting to get back on our feet and not be dependent on General Motors
anymore, but our downtown still has a lot of vacant properties,” the village
administrator, Anthony Giaccio, said. “It’s been many years that the village has
suffered from that.”
The study recommends that the government focus its efforts on regions with
numerous closed plants because those regions have more difficulty finding new
users. Counties with only one or two closed plants were successful in reviving
them nearly twice as often as counties with at least 10 such sites.
In Flint, Mich., the study lists only three of 24 sites abandoned by G.M. since
1979 as having a new use. A specialty pharmacy last year brought hundreds of
jobs to the site of the former Fisher Body 1 plant, where workers staged a
famous sit-down strike in the 1930s. But across town, the 452-acre former home
of G.M.’s sprawling Buick City complex remains deserted.
The Buick City site is among more than 7,000 acres of property owned by the
Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response Trust, which a bankruptcy
court judge created in March to sell off former G.M. assets. The trust owns 66
buildings totaling 44 million square feet of space in 14 states. Its Web site,
racertrust.org, lists 14 properties as fully or partly sold and three others as
under contract with a buyer, though none are in Flint.
“The need in Flint is to have new jobs and employment opportunities, so that
industrial corridor is critical for our community’s future,” said the city’s
mayor, Dayne Walling, “but we can only do so much to drive investment.”
From Vacant to Vibrant, NYT, 7.12.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/business/developers-revive-closed-auto-plants.html
To Rethink Sprawl, Start With Offices
November 25, 2011
The New York Times
By LOUISE A. MOZINGO
San Francisco
IN an era of concern about climate change, residential suburbs are the focus of
a new round of critiques, as low-density developments use more energy, water and
other resources. But so far there’s been little discussion of that other
archetype of sprawl, the suburban office.
Rethinking sprawl might begin much more effectively with these business
enclaves. They cover vast areas and are occupied by a few powerful entities,
corporations, which at some point will begin spending their ample reserves to
upgrade, expand or replace their facilities.
The bucolic business office is not a state-of-the-art workplace but rather a
decades-old model of corporate retreat. In 1942 the AT&T Bell Telephone
Laboratories moved from its offices in Lower Manhattan to a new, custom-designed
facility on 213 acres outside Summit, N.J.
The location provided space for laboratories and quiet for acoustical research,
and new features: parking lots that allowed scientists and engineers to drive
from their nearby suburban homes, a spacious cafeteria and lounge and, most
surprisingly, views from every window of a carefully tended pastoral landscape
designed by the Olmsted brothers, sons of the designer of Central Park.
Corporate management never saw the city center in the same way again. Bell Labs
initiated a tide of migration of white-collar workers, especially as state and
federal governments conveniently extended highways into the rural edge.
In metropolitan areas across America, corporate campuses for research and
development units proliferated and top executives ensconced themselves in
palatial estates like the Deere & Co. Administrative Center outside Moline, Ill.
Meanwhile, branch offices, small corporations and start-ups found footing in the
office parks that lined suburban highways and arterial roads, like those of
Silicon Valley in California and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.
Born in an era of seemingly limitless resources, this pastoral capitalism
restructured the landscape of metropolitan regions; today it accounts for well
over half the office space in the United States.
Yet suburban offices are even more unsustainably designed than residential
suburbs. Sidewalks extend only between office buildings and parking lots,
expanses of open space remain private and the spreading of offices over large
zones precludes effective mass transit.
These workplaces embody a new form of segregation, where civic space connecting
work to the shops, housing, recreation and transportation that cities used to
provide is entirely absent. Corporations have cut themselves off from
participation in a larger public realm.
Rethinking pastoral capitalism is integral to creating a connected, compact
metropolitan landscape that tackles rather than sidesteps a post-peak-oil
future. This requires three interrelated strategies. State and federal
governments should stop paying for new highway extensions that essentially
subsidize the conversion of agricultural land for development, including
corporate offices. Existing infrastructure needs maintenance and renewal, not
expansion.
Suburban jurisdictions that now require little of the next corporate campus
other than plentiful parking can demand more. For instance, they can use zoning
codes to require pedestrian, bicycle and mass-transit links to adjacent
residential developments. Add to the mix new public spaces, a greater diversity
of uses, and transit between multiple employment centers and residential
districts — not only to and from the downtown — and suburban corporate offices
could initiate a wave of reform.
While suburban offices will continue to exist, some corporations can re-occupy
city centers that they abandoned two generations ago. Development parcels,
vacant offices and economic subsidies lie waiting in cities like Cleveland,
Hartford, Raleigh, N.C., and Birmingham, Ala. These downtowns are well served by
transit and pedestrian connections, a mix of retail and service uses, and a
surprising amount of newly built and renovated housing where workers can live.
All three steps — a halt to agricultural land conversion, connecting dispersed
employment centers with alternative transit, and encouraging downtown
development — are needed to create renewed, civic-minded corporate workplaces
and, in the process, move toward sustainable cities. Even leaving aside climate
change, very soon the price of energy will make the dispersed, unconnected,
low-density city-building pattern impossibly costly. Those jurisdictions and
businesses that first create livable, workable, post-peak-oil metropolitan
regions are the ones that will win the future.
Louise A. Mozingo, a professor of landscape architecture and environmental
planning at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of “Pastoral
Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes.”
To Rethink Sprawl, Start With Offices, NYT,
25.11.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/to-rethink-sprawl-start-with-offices.html
The Death of the Fringe Suburb
November 25, 2011
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER
Washington
DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see
boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking
spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come
back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for
the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming
back, either.
By now, nearly five years after the housing crash, most Americans understand
that a mortgage meltdown was the catalyst for the Great Recession, facilitated
by underregulation of finance and reckless risk-taking. Less understood is the
divergence between center cities and inner-ring suburbs on one hand, and the
suburban fringe on the other.
It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that
caused the mortgage collapse.
In the late 1990s, high-end outer suburbs contained most of the expensive
housing in the United States, as measured by price per square foot, according to
data I analyzed from the Zillow real estate database. Today, the most expensive
housing is in the high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of the center
city and inner suburbs. Some of the most expensive neighborhoods in their
metropolitan areas are Capitol Hill in Seattle; Virginia Highland in Atlanta;
German Village in Columbus, Ohio, and Logan Circle in Washington. Considered
slums as recently as 30 years ago, they have been transformed by gentrification.
Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift — a reversal of what took
place in the 1950s, when drivable suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities
emptied and withered.
The shift is durable and lasting because of a major demographic event: the
convergence of the two largest generations in American history, the baby boomers
(born between 1946 and 1964) and the millennials (born between 1979 and 1996),
which today represent half of the total population.
Many boomers are now empty nesters and approaching retirement. Generally this
means that they will downsize their housing in the near future. Boomers want to
live in a walkable urban downtown, a suburban town center or a small town,
according to a recent survey by the National Association of Realtors.
The millennials are just now beginning to emerge from the nest — at least those
who can afford to live on their own. This coming-of-age cohort also favors urban
downtowns and suburban town centers — for lifestyle reasons and the convenience
of not having to own cars.
Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe
houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack
of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their
fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do
will reverse this.
Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the
land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than
they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to
maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale.
Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well
maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built
with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe
suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.
The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally
located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and
Chattanooga, Tenn. The transformation of suburbia can be seen in places like
Arlington County, Va., Bellevue, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif., where strip malls
have been bulldozed and replaced by higher-density mixed-use developments with
good transit connections.
Reinvesting in America’s built environment — which makes up a third of the
country’s assets — and reviving the construction trades are vital for lifting
our economic growth rate. (Disclosure: I am the president of Locus, a coalition
of real estate developers and investors and a project of Smart Growth America,
which supports walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented development.)
Some critics will say that investment in the built environment risks repeating
the mistake that caused the recession in the first place. That reasoning is as
faulty as saying that technology should have been neglected after the dot-com
bust, which precipitated the 2001 recession.
The cities and inner-ring suburbs that will be the foundation of the recovery
require significant investment at a time of government retrenchment. Bus and
light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements — what traffic
engineers dismissively call “alternative transportation” — are vital. So is the
repair of infrastructure like roads and bridges. Places as diverse as Los
Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Charlotte, Denver and Washington have
recently voted to pay for “alternative transportation,” mindful of the dividends
to be reaped. As Congress works to reauthorize highway and transit legislation,
it must give metropolitan areas greater flexibility for financing
transportation, rather than mandating that the vast bulk of the money can be
used only for roads.
For too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. Those retail centers and
subdivisions will never be worth what they cost to build. We have to stop
throwing good money after bad. It is time to instead build what the market
wants: mixed-income, walkable cities and suburbs that will support the knowledge
economy, promote environmental sustainability and create jobs.
Christopher B. Leinberger is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
and professor of practice in urban and regional planning
at the University of
Michigan.
The Death of the Fringe Suburb, NYT,
25.11.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html
After Four Decades, Finishing a Planned City
August 19, 2011
The New York Times
By C. J. HUGHES
THE last two empty parcels at Battery Park City have been developed, more
than four decades after this innovative neighborhood-from-scratch, built on fill
from the original World Trade Center site, was proposed.
Called Liberty Green and Liberty Luxe, the two buildings are red-brick rental
towers from Milstein Properties, which has built four other buildings in Battery
Park City. They are a block west of the West Side Highway on North End Avenue,
on side-by-side lots and in various stages of completion.
Liberty Green, a 22-story-high-rise with 191 studio to three-bedroom apartments,
is the farthest along. In May, tenants began moving in. In mid-July, about half
of the apartments, which range in price from $3,350 a month (studios) to $9,050
and up (three-bedrooms), were leased, according to Charles Zehren, a Milstein
spokesman. One-bedrooms start at $4,025; two-bedrooms are $6,600 and up. Renters
can get incentives of one month free on a one-year lease, and two free months on
a two-year lease.
Liberty Luxe next door, which will have 280 rental units over 32 stories, will
open this fall, Mr. Zehren said.
Though Milstein’s portfolio across the city is mainly rentals, its four other
Battery Park City properties, which all use the name “Liberty” — Liberty House,
Liberty Terrace, Liberty Court and Liberty View, totaling 1,300 units — are to
some degree hybrids. The landlord has set aside blocks of apartments in each one
of them as rentals, brokers said.
Both Liberty Green and Liberty Luxe were conceived as condominiums, too, with
the Marketing Directors, a brokerage firm, tapped to handle sales. Why Milstein
scotched plans to sell the units in the two new towers is unclear; a question to
that effect directed at the spokesman was not returned.
But Pierre Moran, an associate broker with DJK Residential, who has sold homes
in Battery Park City for 23 years, believes the change of plans came about
because buyers were turned off by Milstein’s prices, which would have been about
$1,300 a square foot, versus the $1,000 more typical in the area.
Mr. Moran, who took a few clients by the buildings, said he had been deterred by
the fact the agents there did not want to negotiate.
Stylewise, the exteriors of Liberty Green and Liberty Luxe blend with their
neighbors in Battery Park’s northern, newer section, with traditional facades
and sliding windows, similar to those at Tribeca Green, a Related Companies
rental across the street.
Like Tribeca Green, the two buildings have environmentally friendly features.
Since 2000, the Battery Park City Authority has mandated that new buildings in
the neighborhood be energy-efficient.
Cabinets and floors are made of bamboo, which can be harvested sustainably;
apartments have master cut-off switches so all lights can be turned off at once;
and rainwater is collected and reused.
What may differentiate Liberty Green and Luxe from their predecessors is a
52,000-square-foot community center under the base of both buildings, connected
by a plaza.
Created by Asphalt Green, the not-for-profit organization known for its Upper
East Side sports complex, the center will have a basketball court, a
5,000-square-foot fitness center and an auditorium, all of which can be accessed
from newly refurbished baseball fields on the complex’s eastern side, said Carol
Tweedy, the executive director of Asphalt Green.
There will also be a 25-yard pool, whose outlines are now visible; it will offer
free swim lessons for public-school students during the day, Ms. Tweedy said,
adding that the entire facility is supposed to open in November.
The completion of the skyline in Battery Park City comes at a crossroads moment
for the neighborhood, which was conceived in 1968 by the State of New York as a
way to redevelop a moribund shipping area. Trade Center dirt later filled in
rotting piers, though it was not until the 1980s that construction really ramped
up. Today the area has 34 residential buildings and a population of 13,000.
Many in the real estate community have complained about the development
arrangements, which require landlords to pay ground rents to the state. For
condo owners, that can mean common charges 15 percent higher than for comparable
units elsewhere, brokers say, adding that home sales can be hurt as a result.
(For renters, those extra fees are folded into monthly payments and may be less
noticeable.)
The rents can also vary wildly among properties, some of which went up during
recessionary periods and others in booms.
But in May, to help level the playing field, the authority decided to equalize
the ground rents in 11 of the dozens of buildings in Battery Park City, though
Liberty Green and Luxe were not among them.
Under the old system, residents could have paid $804 million over 30 years, but
under the new system, those fees will total $525 million, said Gayle Horwitz,
the authority president. “It was really important,” she said, “to bring
stability to the neighborhood.”
After Four Decades,
Finishing a Planned City, NYT, 19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/realestate/final-parcels-developed-in-battery-park-city-posting.html
Gas prices drive push to reinvent America's suburbs
29 July 2008
USA Today
By Haya El Nasser
MARICOPA, Ariz. — Mayor Tony Smith proudly waves a thank-you letter from a
major builder telling him that no city has ever reached out to him in his
30-year career the way Maricopa did.
What Maricopa has been doing is unusual, especially for a distant suburb.
This city about 35 miles south of Phoenix is asking builders not to develop just
isolated subdivisions behind walls, but whole communities that encourage walking
by including stores, schools and services nearby.
"The people of Maricopa don't want to be a bedroom community, a city of
rooftops," Smith says. "They want a self-sustained community."
Especially today. As gas prices hover around $4 a gallon, the nation's
far-flung suburbs — which have boomed because they could provide larger homes at
cheaper prices to those willing to drive farther — are losing their appeal.
Soaring energy costs and the foreclosure epidemic have jolted many Americans
into realizing that their lifestyles are at risk. For many, ever-lengthening
commutes in the search for affordable homes no longer make financial sense.
In Maricopa and elsewhere, a movement is underway to transform suburbs from
bedroom communities that sprang up during an era of cheap gasoline to lively,
more cosmopolitan places that mix houses with jobs, shops, restaurants, colleges
and entertainment.
Suburbs on the far edge of metro areas are turning aside strip malls and
creating new downtowns and neighborhoods that favor pedestrians. They're trying
to attract more employers and services such as hospitals, colleges and small
airports.
The appeal of urbanism is spreading to far suburbs such as Rancho Cucamonga,
Calif.(about 42 miles east of Los Angeles), and Huntersville, N.C., about 16
miles north of Charlotte. Centers that combine residential, retail, office and
entertainment are becoming popular far from urban centers.
Small historic towns on the edge of metropolitan areas such as Brighton, Colo.,
northeast of Denver, and Plainfield, Ill., southwest of Chicago, are emphasizing
their Main Streets and history to provide a sense of community outside the walls
of sprawling subdivisions.
Mass transit is being embraced by towns that wouldn't have been born without the
automobile. Here in Maricopa, the city introduced bus service to Phoenix and
Tempe this year, providing the first mass transit alternative to residents, many
of whom commute about 35 miles to Phoenix.
Such changes could have a profound effect on the way the nation develops as it
prepares to absorb an estimated 100 million more people by about 2040.
The scent of change is in the air in Maricopa, even in the way city officials
talk. Words such as "bedroom community" have become dirty words. "Green,"
"sustainable," "walkable," "mass transit," "conservation," "open space" and
"energy-efficient" punctuate the suburban dialogue.
"Absolutely, suburbs are not going to go away," says David Goldberg, spokesman
for Smart Growth America, a national coalition of groups pushing for
conservation and sustainable growth. "But the math is becoming very clear."
Until now, people were willing to drive increasingly far for a home they could
afford. "Drive-till-you-qualify collapsed," Goldberg says. "It's done. It's not
going to work as a housing strategy anymore."
Living costs soar
In the past year, as gas prices skyrocketed, the housing bubble burst and
transit ridership soared, the cost of living farther out for many Americans went
from manageable to pricey.
An analysis of real estate data by Fiserv Lending Solutions shows that home
prices have fallen more in towns and neighborhoods far from urban centers than
in close-in suburbs.
Developers traditionally have flocked to fields at the edge of metro areas to
avoid the stricter zoning rules and higher fees they face in older, more densely
populated communities. But that could be changing.
"The trends that pushed housing demand toward distant suburbs and rural areas
were not sustainable," says David Stiff, chief economist at Fiserv. "The problem
is that it can be two, three, four times as expensive to develop in close-in
neighborhoods vs. outlying neighborhoods, if there's any space at all."
If gas prices continue to climb or government provides incentives to build more
densely and closer in, development patterns should evolve, planners say.
"People respond to economic incentives," Stiff says. "Reducing commuting costs,
trying to be more environmentally conscious and trying to find the cheapest
housing affect decisions simultaneously."
"We're sort of stuck with retrofitting the suburbs," says Scott Bernstein, head
of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, which for years has urged that
transportation costs be a criterion for mortgage qualification. "That's not all
that bad. … There's nothing like a crisis to get people to try something."
Fresh ideas about development are spreading. A new website gives "walk" scores
for more than 2,500 neighborhoods in the 40 largest cities (walkscore.com).
Bernstein's group publishes a housing and transportation affordability index for
52 metropolitan areas (htaindex.cnt.org/).
Kenneth Himmel says now is "the perfect moment to be doing everything we're
talking about."
The developer of the Reston Town Center in Virginia, the Time Warner Center in
New York and City Place in West Palm Beach, Fla., says: "Some people will say,
'For $300,000 to $325,000, what are my options to live closer?' Maybe it's a
smaller home. … Do they want to drive or do they want to be five or 10 minutes
from their office? People will make the trade."
The new reality
The Phoenix area is legendary for sprawl. The city alone covers 517 square
miles. Surrounding it is 14,000 square miles (twice the size of New Jersey) of
desert dotted by seas of rooftops.
Foreclosures have hit the region hard — more than 5,500 the first six months of
this year. Home construction permits have slowed by more than half in many
communities. Still, building crews are grading tracts of land far from downtown.
Buckeye, more than 30 miles west of Phoenix, and Maricopa, a similar distance to
the south, are the suburbs that have the highest number of new single-family
home permits.
It's there that the seeds of change are taking root.
"We've got to get jobs to keep people from driving," says Buckeye Mayor Jackie
Meck, who worries that gas "could easily go to $8, $10" a gallon.
Meck and town manager Jeanine Guy say Buckeye's goal was never to be a bedroom
community but a gateway to California and the Pacific Rim. Already, developers
of a master-planned community on 1,100 acres 30 miles beyond Buckeye — 60 miles
from Phoenix — are rethinking their project because of fuel costs. They want to
turn it into a distribution center that would cut gas costs for truckers from
the West who are delivering goods to the Phoenix area.
In Maricopa, the city for the first time is encouraging builders to create
sustainable communities that use alternative forms of energy or are near jobs,
goods and services. Already, the city is home to Arizona's first ethanol plant
and a facility that uses recycled water to flush toilets. And there are the
commuter buses to downtown Phoenix and Tempe.
When gas prices inched toward $4 a gallon, Donna Nance bemoaned her 40-mile,
one-way commute to work her job as the court clerk in downtown Phoenix. Gas
would now cost her $60 a week, a blow for a single mom who had moved here to get
a house at a better price.
She considered moving closer, at the risk of giving up her three-bedroom,
single-family home and might have done it if Maricopa had not introduced
Phoenix-bound commuter buses in April. Nance, 43, now drives 7 miles to the bus
stop and enjoys the ride. Even if gas prices keep climbing, Nance says she has
no reason to leave.
"We hit a sweet spot starting a transit program here," Mayor Smith says.
It's a reflection of how some suburbs are trying to replace their "middle of
nowhere" image with a "there." "Maybe gas drops to $3 a gallon and people will
say we don't need to do this anymore," says Guy, the Buckeye town manager. "We
do."
Gas prices drive push to
reinvent America's suburbs, UT, 29.7.2008,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-07-29-nosale_N.htm
Compromise Is Reached on Harlem Rezoning
April 16, 2008
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The Bloomberg administration’s proposal to rezone
125th Street in Harlem cleared a major hurdle on Tuesday when the area’s three
City Council members signed off on a compromise plan that would limit the height
of new buildings, add moderately priced housing and provide financial aid to
businesses displaced by the rezoning.
The proposal was then approved by the Council’s Zoning and Franchises
Subcommittee in a 10-to-1 vote. The agreement between the City Planning
Commission and the council members, Inez E. Dickens, Robert Jackson and Melissa
Mark-Viverito, virtually assures the plan’s passage by the full City Council
later this month.
The rezoning of 24 blocks of Harlem, stretching from Broadway east to Second
Avenue, and from 124th to 126th Street, centers on 125th Street — a cultural
touchstone for African-Americans in the city and beyond. It has led to
widespread opposition in the neighborhood because of concerns that it will
change the character of the low-rise street and speed gentrification in the
area, including forcing out long-term businesses and low-income residents.
But Councilwoman Dickens, who represents central Harlem, and who led what she
and others involved described as contentious negotiations during the past three
weeks, said on Tuesday that the agreement would provide sufficient protection
for the neighborhood, which is among the poorest in the city.
“This has been one of the most challenging and difficult issues that I have ever
faced, personally and professionally, because the rezoning of 125th Street will
change the fabric of my district, my community, my home forever,” she said. “I
said if there were no protections for my community, there would be no rezoning.
After many hours of deliberations, disagreements and debate, I do believe the
City Planning Commission heard me loud and clear.”
The rezoning would remake 125th Street, one of the city’s liveliest streets —
and home to many small businesses like clothing stores, pawn shops and hair
salons — into a regional business hub with office towers and more than 2,000 new
market-rate condominiums.
The compromise was reached after an all-night negotiating session that started
on Monday evening. It reduces the height limit on new buildings to about 19
stories from 29; creates a $750,000 loan program to assist 71 small businesses
that would probably be forced to move; and allocates about $5.8 million in
improvements to Marcus Garvey Park.
Residents who spoke at recent community meetings were worried that rezoning,
combined with changes already under way in the neighborhood, would soon make
Harlem unrecognizable.
Among projects planned for 125th Street are at least two hotels, two shopping
malls and a tower that would be the headquarters of a new Major League Baseball
cable television network.
In recent years, the street — which only a decade ago was still dotted with
abandoned buildings — has become home to national retail stores, including
Starbucks and Old Navy, and to the offices of former President Bill Clinton. The
area has also seen a flurry of new residential construction, with the average
price for a new apartment hovering around $895,000.
Perhaps the most significant change to the plan reached during the Monday night
negotiations is the Bloomberg administration’s agreement to expand the number of
low-income residents in Harlem eligible for moderately priced housing.
As part of the federal calculation that is used by the city to determine average
household income levels, a family of four earning $61,450 can qualify for
low-income housing. That figure is about double the average household income in
Harlem, city statistics show.
During negotiations, the Bloomberg administration agreed to set aside about 46
percent of the 3,858 new apartment units the city would allow to be built as
part of the 125th Street rezoning plan to families earning no more than $30,750
a year.
“It is a milestone,” said Amanda M. Burden, the Planning Commission chairwoman.
“It’s something we haven’t done before.”
Some opponents remained unsatisfied.
Erica Razook, general counsel for Voices of the Everyday People, or VOTE People,
a community group opposed to the rezoning, said the last-minute concessions by
the Bloomberg administration only highlighted the flawed nature of the process.
“An issue like affordable housing should not be discussed by a couple of City
Council members and the Planning Commission behind closed doors — it should have
been discussed publicly,” Ms. Razook said. “They waited until the last minute
and then decided, ‘We’re going to try to squeeze in some stuff about affordable
housing to give everyone political cover.’ ”
Compromise Is Reached on Harlem Rezoning, NYT,
16.4.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/nyregion/16rezone.html
A computer rendering of the roughly 30-story tower
designed by Norman Foster for 980 Madison Avenue,
between 76th and 77th Streets.
Foster & Partners
NYT
Injecting a Bold Shot of
the New on the Upper East Side NYT
10.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/arts/design/10fost.html
Architecture
Injecting a
Bold Shot of the New on the Upper East Side
October 10, 2006
The New York Times
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
I expect Norman Foster’s design
for a new residential tower at 980 Madison Avenue to infuriate people. Rising
out of the old Parke-Bernet Gallery building, a spare 1950 office building
between 76th and 77th Streets, its interlocking elliptical forms throw down a
challenge to a neighborhood known for an aversion to bold contemporary
architecture.
The tower’s height, roughly 30 stories, hardly helps its cause; as with other
luxury high rises reshaping the Manhattan skyline, its scale is clearly driven
by economic considerations. Defenders will point out that the Carlyle Hotel
across the street is slightly taller, but the reality is that the Carlyle’s
setbacks make it virtually invisible when viewed from the street. Lord Foster’s
tower would have a far stronger visual presence, soaring above the apartment
buildings flanking it to the north and south.
With a little trimming, though, this could be the most handsome building to rise
along Madison Avenue since the Whitney Museum of American Art was completed 40
years ago.
The project approaches the existing building with gentleness, respecting its
integrity without resorting to historical mimicry. And its glistening forms
reaffirm the city’s faith in progress, suggesting that Lord Foster has a better
grip on what makes New York tick than architects who have worked in the city all
their lives.
Designed by Walker & Poor, 980 Madison’s austere limestone facades and urban
roof garden were meant to replicate the stylish look of Rockefeller Center,
completed a decade earlier. But the building signals the end of an era, not a
beginning. Its low, subdued profile is the antithesis of Rockefeller Center’s
soaring monumentality, giving it a curious sense of incompleteness. And within
two years Manhattan would move on to embrace International Style Modernism with
the completion of Lever House.
The building suffered through a major renovation in 1960, when the roof garden
was stripped away and replaced with a fifth floor whose horizontal windows
clashed with the formal rhythm of the windows below. Yet even after the addition
it retains a straightforward elegance, serving as a bridge between Beaux Arts
monumentality and classical Modernism.
Lord Foster was enlisted as someone who has handled sensitive historic sites,
even if the results have been somewhat mixed. In his recent addition to the
Hearst Building on Eighth Avenue he plunged a faceted 46-story office tower
through the original 1920’s structure with stunning force, and the collision
between the two is mesmerizing. But an earlier design for the courtyard of the
British Museum simply smoothed over the differences between old and new, an
approach that benefited neither.
Here, Lord Foster approaches the 1950 building with care, as if leery of riling
old ghosts. The unfortunate fifth-story addition from the 1960’s would be
demolished to make way for a spectacular roof garden framed by lush grass. And
the tower is set at the building’s northern edge, closer to 77th Street, giving
it a connection to the block between Madison and Fifth Avenues and preserving
some of the current views from the Carlyle Hotel.
Most ingenious is the delicate way Lord Foster links the old and new structures.
A slender exposed elevator core rises from the old building, connecting the 77th
Street lobby to the glass tower. The tower’s petal-shaped floors begin 30 feet
above the old structure’s roof level, so that the two buildings barely seem to
touch.
The tower’s underbelly forms an entrance canopy at one end of the garden. From
the street it would seem as though the tower were floating above the old stone
base, its elliptical shaft stretching up to the clouds.
As with all of Lord Foster’s recent buildings, the forms are generated by
environmental as well as aesthetic considerations. The tower’s interlocking
ellipses and uneven heights visually reduce its scale, giving it a more slender
profile as it rises. The elegantly curved forms were designed to limit wind
resistance; the fluted glass cladding will collect solar energy.
But the tower’s outsize height is a problem. Manhattan was shaped by the hubris
of developers struggling against the constraints of the street grid, and its
beauty is a result of wild juxtapositions of scales, styles and architectural
periods. But I’m not sure a luxury high rise should be allowed the same freedom
as a major civic building.
Unlike Renzo Piano’s planned addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art two
blocks south, the Foster tower will serve the interests of a wealthy elite, not
the public at large. We’re not talking about, say, a project that addresses the
city’s desperate need for middle-class housing.
And the argument that the tower’s height is in keeping with the Carlyle’s is
misleading. One of Madison Avenue’s most comforting features is the way its
scale shifts as you walk north from the corporate towers of Midtown and approach
its residential neighborhoods. You read the street differently as the pace and
intensity slow.
The tower need not conform to the height levels of its neighbors, but it should
at least establish a visual dialogue with the 16-story residential tower
immediately to the north across 77th Street. The challenge will be to scale back
the height without sacrificing the elegance of the tower’s slender proportions.
These decisions will play out in haggling between the developer, Aby Rosen, and
the Landmarks Preservation Commission, not in a design studio. (The building
lies within the landmarked Upper East Side Historic District; the commission
plans a public hearing on the project on Oct. 24.)
Lord Foster is not a social critic; his job, as he sees it, is to create an
eloquent expression of his client’s values. What he has designed is a perfect
monument for the emerging city of the enlightened megarich: environmentally
aware, sensitive to history, confident of its place in the new world order,
resistant to sacrifice.
Still, you cannot help but marvel at the project’s sophistication as a work of
architecture.
Injecting a Bold Shot of the New on the Upper East
Side, NYT, 10.10.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/arts/design/10fost.html
The Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio,
with exterior and interior walls of curved glass,
houses glass artworks and a
glassmaking workshop.
Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
A Crystal Showcase Reflects a City’s
Glass Legacy NYT
28.8.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/arts/design/28sana.html
Architecture Review | Glass Pavilion
A Crystal Showcase
Reflects a City’s Glass Legacy
August 28, 2006
The New York Times
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
TOLEDO, Ohio — “Without a glass palace, life
becomes a burden,” the poet Paul Scheerbart wrote nearly a century ago. Standing
in front of the new Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, designed by the
Japanese team of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, can reawaken that belief in
the power of glass to enchant.
The pavilion, which houses the museum’s vast collection of glass artworks, is a
testament to an earlier era when American industrial production and cultural
growth were profoundly intertwined. Toledo was once a major center of glass
production; now most of its factories are closed and the glass workers gone. The
enormous sheets of glass needed for the pavilion were manufactured in Germany
and molded in China in preparation for the Aug. 27 opening.
Yet this wholly contemporary building conjures up potent memories of the city’s
history. Composed with exquisite delicacy, the pavilion’s elegant maze of curved
glass walls represents the latest monument to evolve in a chain extending back
to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Its understated elegance recalls a time
when investment in the public realm was still driven by civic pride rather than
a lust for tourist dollars. The Glass Pavilion is part of a loosely knit complex
that includes the Beaux-Arts-style art museum here and the University of
Toledo’s Center for the Visual Arts, designed by Frank Gehry. With its grand
staircase leading up to a row of Ionic columns, the original museum is both a
temple to art and a monument to the belief in high culture’s ability to uplift
the life of the worker.
The new structure’s low, horizontal form fits in this context with remarkable
delicacy, as if the architects hesitated to disturb the surroundings. Seen from
the museum steps, the pavilion’s reflective facade, surrounded by a soft carpet
of glass, is barely visible beneath the shadowy canopies of ancient oak trees.
Just beyond it is a row of stoic Victorian houses.
The closer you get, the more the building reveals. Its main entry is positioned
off center, to line up exactly with the art museum’s grand stairway across the
street. The pavilion’s cafe and a glass workshop extend out from there,
punctuated by the intense orange glow of the glass furnaces. All this glass
brings to mind Philip Johnson’s famous 1949 Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.
Both facades dissolve into a collage of reflected and transparent images. Both
structures rest on a thin base, firmly rooting them to the ground. In both cases
the roof is a thin slab, as if it exists only to frame the view of the interior.
But Johnson’s masterpiece is the work of an exhibitionist. The facade acts as a
picture frame, casting a visitor into the slightly creepy role of a peeping Tom.
The first time I saw it, nearly two decades ago, I found myself hesitating
uneasily as I approached the door. When Johnson’s hand gently pressed against my
back, pushing me through, I felt like Alice falling through the looking glass.
By contrast the Glass Pavilion’s design is a diaphanous maze. The interior is a
series of rounded glass rooms wrapped in a secondary glass skin, which creates a
remarkably layered visual experience. From the lobby, for example, fragments of
the landscaped lawn on the other side of the building are visible through a
series of glass-walled galleries. Three simple interior courtyards, the largest
with its windows hung in a gauzy curtain, separate these rooms, framing views of
the sky and allowing light to spill down into the interiors.
The effect is hypnotic. And it is reinforced by the sinuous pattern of lines
made by the walls meeting the ceiling, which draws you deeper into the spaces.
Once inside the galleries, the eye is constantly slipping around curved surfaces
before coming to rest on a particular view: a work of art, a tree in the
landscape.
But it is the graceful interplay of human forms that gives the pavilion its
enigmatic, ghostly quality. The double layer of glass sets up a delicious
contrast between the stillness you experience inside the glass rooms and the
more fluid interstitial spaces that separate them. As passing figures drift
through these spaces, they seem to momentarily caress one another before pulling
apart again where the walls curve to envelop the galleries.
At times the movements look ceremonial. As you watch, you become keenly aware of
the different degrees of intimacy and isolation.
The art too looks good. Most in simple cabinets, the objects — elaborate
chandeliers, Roman vases, a cast and gilded-glass Louis XIV mirror — seem to
hover within the transparent spaces, allowing you to focus on individual pieces
or uncover unexpected relationships among objects that are physically segregated
in different galleries.
The architects, whose firm is known as Sanaa, designed two opaque galleries for
more light-sensitive works. These solid white forms also serve to anchor a
structure visually that might otherwise seem about to drift off into space.
That Sanaa could make all of this look so effortless is a sign of its mastery,
and an illusion of course. To keep the roof so thin, for example, all of the
major mechanical systems — heating, ventilation, plumbing — were buried in the
basement or hidden in a nearby building. Pipes, wiring and air ducts were woven
through the building’s structural beams as precisely as wires laid into a
computer board. A loading dock was buried underground so that it would not
detract from the purity of the facade.
The building hides a complex ecological organism, divided into three independent
climate zones. A radiant heating-and-cooling system inside the interstitial
cavities is used to control the climate in the public areas and to prevent
condensation on the glass. The “hot shop” — where visiting artists will hold
classes in glassmaking — provides heat for the hot-water systems. The climate in
the galleries, which requires more control, is regulated independently.
For me the meaning of Sanaa’s creation snapped into place when I arrived at an
empty room overlooking the back garden. Lined with a few simple benches, this
area was conceived as a contemplative space, a place to refuel mentally before
venturing back into the galleries. In an age when museums are packed with
bookstores, cafes and shops, persuading curators to keep this space empty must
have been a triumph.
But it also reveals the architects’ awareness of the delicacy of their own
creation. This is not a design that can easily sustain an endless crush of
tourist traffic. It recognizes that emptiness, in our world, is increasingly a
luxury.
It is not architecture with a Big Message. It is about empathy for the human
condition. Once you drift outside again, the tree branches seem to sway more
gently, the light feels softer, the world more tender. Most important, you are
more attuned to the distances between people. There are few higher compliments
you could pay a building.
A
Crystal Showcase Reflects a City’s Glass Legacy, NYT, 28.8.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/arts/design/28sana.html
MOVIE REVIEW
'Urbanscapes,'
a Documentary
on the Decaying of Neighborhoods
July 5, 2006
The New York Times
By NATHAN LEE
"Urbanscapes" plants a camera in
neighborhoods gone to seed, cultivating a bittersweet portrait of American ruin.
The filmmakers, Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo, grew up in Italy, and they
regard the dilapidations of their adopted superpower with a touch of the
tourist's sentimentalism. Wastes of Chicago, Detroit, the South Bronx and Newark
are reflected through measured montage and digital-video impressionism. A cello
suite by Bach is as prevalent as the trash.
As indicated by the title, this documentary tends toward the general, abstract
and vague, though some detail and much charm are achieved by the choice of
commentators. The photographer Camilo J. Vergara tracks the metamorphosis of
specific city blocks over decades, returning to update his extensive record of
demolition, gentrification, neglect or renewal.
General Gordon Baker, a Detroit autoworker, remembers better days. Marion, his
wife, who is a social worker, recalls the upheavals of urban renewal, a process
known in her circle as "Negro removal." Mel Rosenthal, a native of the South
Bronx, returns with memories good (then as now, a vibrant street life) and bad
(the "planned shrinkage" of the 1970's, whereby municipal services like garbage
collection and firefighting were deliberately cut back to encourage the exodus
of undesirable populations).
Things go bad for a reason, and in the United States they go very bad where poor
black people live. "Urbanscapes" doesn't neglect the politics of blight, but as
with every subject glanced at here — memory, architecture, city planning, racism
— the emphasis sticks on those poetically entropic facades.
Urbanscapes
Opens today in Manhattan
Directed by Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo; director of cinematography,
Wolfgang Held; edited by Ms. Luciano; produced by Mr. Piscopo; released by Film2
Productions. At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street, at Avenue
A, East Village. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is not rated.
'Urbanscapes,' a Documentary on the Decaying of
Neighborhoods, NYT, 5.7.2006,
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/movies/05urba.html
Muscular bravura:
A lobby inside the new
Guthrie Theater,
on the banks of the Mississippi in Minneapolis.
Amanda Ortland/Guthrie Theater
On the Mississippi, a Vision Steeped in an
Industrial Past NYT
4.7.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/arts/design/04nouv.html
Architecture Review
On the
Mississippi, a Vision Steeped in an Industrial Past
July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
MINNEAPOLIS — For fans who prefer that their
heroes remain predictable, Jean Nouvel has been a bit of a puzzle lately.
Two decades ago he established his reputation with the Institute of the Arab
World in Paris, whose southern facade, an enormous grid of filigreed steel
apertures, suggested inscrutable camera lenses. In the ensuing years this
architect could generally be counted on for big, bold forms; a fetishistic
obsession with technology; and a magician's bag of optical tricks.
His most recent projects, however, like the phallic, candy-colored Agbar Tower
in Barcelona and the anarchic mix at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, have
drifted toward the wildly eccentric, as if Mr. Nouvel, now 60, were more
interested in letting his imagination roam unfettered than in impressing critics
and academics.
The new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis should offer comfort to those who miss
the 1980's Nouvel. Rising at the edge of the Mississippi, its confident forms
are rooted in a vision of a muscular industrial America, and its structural
bravura will certainly please the techno-fetishists. As a thoughtful response to
the American city's evolving role as a haven for cultural tourism, it also
coaxes new meaning out of a haggard landscape.
The site is a Modernist heaven on a former industrial strip along the
riverfront. Just next to the complex is a grain elevator, similar to those that
Le Corbusier once lauded as the American equivalent of the Parthenon, the
"magnificent first fruits of a new age." An electric generating plant looms
across the river; to the north, water rushes through a series of locks beneath
an industrial bridge.
Like so many cities, of course, Minneapolis has gradually undergone an economic
transformation. Most of the city's old flour mills were shut down long ago. The
concrete grain elevator alongside the theater complex has been preserved as a
historic monument, and a nearby row of warehouses has been converted into
co-ops. Mr. Nouvel's design takes its initial cues from the city's early
history. The complex's scale fits nicely with the structure next door. The boxy,
piled-up forms echo the electric power plant across the street, anchoring the
theater in the city's early industrial ethos rather than in the shopping centers
and office towers downtown.
Yet that virile image of a landscape ruled by men and machines is tempered by
Mr. Nouvel's typical subversiveness. The metal cladding is coated in midnight
blue, a symbol of buttoned-down conservatism that suggests a killer in a pressed
suit. A small terrace in a bright police-tape yellow juts impudently from the
building's riverfront facade.
Enormous mirrored panels frame a restaurant terrace, snatching up refracted
images of the surrounding city. Orange-colored LED images climb two towers that
rise from the complex like high-tech smokestacks.
Mr. Nouvel's biggest gesture is a 175-foot-long cantilevered form that projects
toward the river, its end abruptly sliced off at a sharp angle. Viewed from
across the river, it looks like a bridge leading nowhere. Yet as you approach
the main entrance along Second Street, as most visitors will, the cantilever
reads as an extension of a walkway bridge that runs from the theater complex to
a parking structure on the other side, an echo of the skywalks found elsewhere
in downtown Minneapolis.
The cantilever houses a bar and an outdoor terrace. But its main role is
symbolic. In embarking on such a spectacular structural effort for what most
would consider a secondary space, Mr. Nouvel is upholding the value of the
tangential experiences that are often the most important in life.
Inside, the main 1,100-seat hall, a nod to the liberal Modernism of the 1960's,
pays homage to the underappreciated original Guthrie designed by Ralph Rapson
with a thrust stage that bridges the distance between the performers and the
audience. Seats spill down toward the stage from three sides. Above, a sweeping
balcony is set just off center, giving the room a wonderful edginess.
Mr. Nouvel has also designed a more conservative 700-seat proscenium theater —
albeit in an erotic lipstick red that plays off the stiff formality of the space
— and a 300-seat black box for experimental work.
But the true heart of the building is its connective tissue, like a two-tier
public foyer where theatergoers will mingle during intermission. A large window
at one end overlooks the area where workers assemble the stage sets; from the
other side, people can amble out to the cantilevered bar and terrace.
Here and there, the images of past performances, faint as shadows, are imprinted
on the foyer wall, ghosts from the Guthrie's past. But once you drift out to the
cantilevered bar, a sense of flux returns. The windows are framed in a mirrored
steel that blends city views with refracted images of nearby buildings. In warm
weather, a breeze wafts in through a large open window, carrying the scent of
the outdoors.
Suddenly we're not altogether sure where we find ourselves, and that's part of
the point. The city, too, is a theater, a vast unstable laboratory that is
constantly being reshaped by economic, political and imaginative forces. Seldom
does that reality seem this seductive.
On
the Mississippi, a Vision Steeped in an Industrial Past, NYT, 4.7.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/arts/design/04nouv.html
February 13 1945
Prefabs
— houses built in a day
The Guardian archive
February 13 1945
The Guardian
A new system of house construction was explained
to the Manchester Housing Committee yesterday when the members inspected the
model and plans of the "Ritonoff" permanent prefabricated house.
Designed in steel or aluminium alloy for an estimated "life" of fifty to sixty
years, a semi-detached pair, prefabricated and pre-assembled, can, it is
anticipated, be erected in six sections in one day by a gang of six men with the
assistance of a crane.
Such houses, being of dry construction, can be occupied the next day. It is
hoped the cost will not exceed £1,000. Councillor H. Bentley, chairman, said
yesterday that if the committee is in favour of the new type Rotinoff
Construction, Limited, will be asked to erect a prototype in Manchester for
inspection by people from the whole of the industrial North.
The architect is Mr. Richard Nickson, of London and Liverpool, who is associated
with Professor Sir Patrick Abercrombie in a study of post-war town planning and
building development. "This particular house," said Mr. Nickson yesterday to a
"Manchester Guardian" reporter, "arose from my acquaintance with Mr George
Rotinoff, who had patented a system of whole-metal shipping construction which I
invited him to apply to housing to a certain lay-out of mine on the system of
transportable box sections."
Mr. Nickson is a nephew of Sir William Clare Lees, who introduced him to
Councillor Bentley with the result that a deputation from the committee first
saw the model in London. Plans seen yesterday provide for a house without home
laundry of 968 square feet floor space, or with it, 1,040 square feet. The
accommodation on the upper floor is for three bedrooms, (one small) bathroom and
separate W.C., while there are alternative layouts for the ground floor.
In one the large living-room opens into the kitchen, a sitting-room opening off
the hall. The kitchen comprises larder, refrigerator, washer, dry goods
cupboard, sink with double drainers, gas or electric or solid fuel cooker, china
cupboards. and a drop-flap table to enable "snack" meals to be served.
The connecting wall between the "semis" is a double one and completely
insulated: and all floors are carried on cork insulating pads. Rooms are eight
feet high.
[A 1944 act of parliament provided £150m nationally, the equivalent of
£4.3bn today, for prefabs to house returning servicemen. Many were meant to
stand for only 15 years, but remained a common sight into the 70s. In Newport,
Gwent, the last were replaced early this century.]
The Guardian archive > February 13 1945 > Prefabs —
houses built in a day, G, Republished 13.2.2007, p. 32,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/02/13/pages/ber32.shtml
Related
Anglonautes >
Images > Architecture
Anglonautes > Arts >
Architects / Architecture
Anglonautes > Vocabulary /
Encyclopaedia > Home
|
.jpg){kind=link}
