The Rotterdam-based firm West 8 has transformed 30 acres on Governors Island into parkland. Buildings have been leveled and parking spaces have been eliminated on the 172-acre island, leaving plenty of open space. When superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc around New York Harbor, Governors Island was largely spared, in large part because construction of a new park had involved both adding elevation and installing proper drainage. “I’m glad my landscape architect is Dutch,” says Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island, referring to Adriaan Geuze, the principal of Rotterdam-based West 8. That firm, chosen in a 2007 competition (as
Product designers descended on New York last weekend for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, WantedDesign, and various events in galleries, showrooms, and studios throughout the city. RECORD sent out a team of editors to scout for the best new products. Click the image below to view a slide show of what they found. A collection of geometric lighting by Bec Brittain at ICFF.
Health-care construction starts have been hampered by questions concerning the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act. But the market should soon pick up to meet the growing demands of an aging population. Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].
Photo courtesy Landmarks Illinois The Farnsworth House flooded in September 2008 and remained closed for the rest of the year while repairs were made. Plans to protect Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House by placing it on a hydraulic lift that can be deployed in case of flooding are proceeding at a rate that has taken even the plans’ supporters by surprise. The lift will cost as much as $3 million, according to Robert Silman, a structural engineer whose firm has done preliminary design work on the system. But Silman says that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns
The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, reopened last week after a $24 million renovation and addition. Situated prominently at the eastern end of The Hague—not the city in the Netherlands, but a crescent-shaped inlet that feeds into the Elizabeth River as it passes through Norfolk, Virginia—the Chrysler Museum of Art’s newly renovated and expanded Italianate pile opened to the public again last week after 17 months of construction. Local firm H&A Architects designed identical, two-story porticoed gallery wings that flank the main entrance and added 10,000 square feet of exhibition space for American and European painting and sculpture
Karim Rashid's residential building on Pleasant Avenue in Manhattan, called HAP 5, broke ground in April. If New York Mayor Bill de Blasio wants affordable housing that isn’t cookie-cutter, perhaps he should consult Karim Rashid. At 53, Rashid is best known for designing household products. But now he wants to design households for those products, and he is getting his wish: among his current projects are four Manhattan condo buildings, the first of which is already under construction. Though they are recognizably Rashid’s—with ample curves and Kool-Aid colors—they are also economical, with construction costs of about $250 per square foot.
The Rising: A museum devoted to a traumatic event provides space for soaring emotions as it descends to bedrock. Slurry wall and “Last Column” on the exhibition level. Fought over, stalled, reconceived, and finally built, the National September 11 Memorial Museum has followed a tortuous path since it was first proposed in Daniel Libeskind’s 2003 master plan for Ground Zero. While nearly every part of the redevelopment effort at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan has generated debate, the museum has been a lightning rod for particularly intense criticism and controversy. Its role as the main keeper and
New York architect James Biber is working with Andrea Grassi of the Milan firm Genius Loci and Susannah Drake of Brooklyn’s dlandstudioon the design of the U.S. pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015. The State Department has chosen a group to design, build, and operate the U.S. pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015. The theme of the Expo is "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”; the U.S. pavilion will focus on American food production, says its architect, James Biber, who runs a small firm in Manhattan’s Woolworth Building. Biber, who has designed several restaurants, including New York’s venerable Gotham Bar