A public discussion raised concerns about apartment towers rising around the famed New York City green space. Image courtesy SHoP A rendering looking north toward central park shows the 1,350-foot-tall tower, 107 West 57th Street, by SHoP (center) as well as Christian de Portzamparc's 1,000-foot One57, just to the west. “Central Park was conceived as a democratic experiment,” said Warren St. John, a journalist who last fall began calling attention to the shadows created by a group of exceptionally tall buildings now rising just south of the park. St. John, speaking at the New York Public Library, during a community
A competition challenged four architecture firms to come up with new ideas for Long Island downtowns. Utile, Inc.'s scheme for Rockville Centre, where a train station on columns already exists, would add monumental arcades to shelter a garage during the week and a pedestrian plaza on weekends. Proponents of smart growth, which generally involves reliance on mass transit, should find a lot to admire on Long Island, where the nation’s largest commuter railroad carries upwards of 300,000 passengers a day. The trouble is that many of those commuters arrive at local train stations by car. Worse, their trips between home
“The public is invited into the process very late,” said Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic, referring to the decision by the Museum of Modern Art and its architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, to tear down the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, which stands in the way of MoMA’s recently announced expansion. And Ouroussoff was right: Eight hundred people turned out for what was, in effect, a town hall meeting on the demolition of the Tod Williams Billie Tsien building, which heated up a Manhattan auditorium on a very cold night. But then, after nearly two hours of
It’s hard to imagine a country with more varied architecture than Mexico, and a show at the Palacio de Iturbide is devoted to the last century of that diversity. Mario Pani and Luis Ramos Cunningham. Nonoalco Tlatelolco Housing Complex, 1964. Mexico City. One of the challenges facing the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), as it gathers material for its planned 2015 show of Latin American architecture from 1954 to 1980, is that Mexico alone warrants as much space as MoMA is likely to allot to the entire region. For proof, just visit the Palacio de Iturbide, in the center of
Miami Center for Architecture & Design (MCAD) opened last week with an exhibition of 105 renderings, Drawn From Miami. For MCAD's home, Shulman + Associates designed the renovation of 5,000 square feet in a 100-year-old post office. Proof that Miami is a hotbed of architectural experimentation resides less in its collection of gimmicky new condo towers than in the work on display at the Miami Center for Architecture & Design, which opened last week with an exhibition of 105 renderings, Drawn From Miami (through February 7, 2014). Together, the renderings show that Miami had been a magnet for design talent
Attendees at a dinner hosted by developer David Martin at the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum. The dinner was organized in part by Terry Riley, the former Museum of Modern Art curator, who recently helped Martin choose OMA to design a condo complex for a site Terra and the Related Group co-own in Coconut Grove. Converging on Miami during “Basel week,” the world’s top architects had lots to talk about—OMA’s convention center project, Herzog & de Meuron’s new museum, and Zaha Hadid’s trippy condo building expected to rise on a site that now houses a gas station and pawn shop. The sales office,
Despite cost overruns and leaky roofs, Santiago Calatrava’s buildings have the power to inspire. The West Concourse of Santiago Calatrava's PATH station at the World Trade Center opened on October 22. Shown here is its marble-lined walkway.
Fumihiko Maki's 4 World Trade Center tower is complete. Larry Silverstein, the octogenarian developer, has emerged as a hero of Ground Zero reconstruction. His 7 World Trade Center, designed by David Childs, with assists from the glass-master James Carpenter and the artist Jenny Holzer, is a crystalline gem, far more satisfying than 1 World Trade Center, the 1,776-foot tower that is meant to be the centerpiece of the rebuilt 16 acres in lower Manhattan. (Silverstein hasn’t been involved in that building, also designed by Childs, since 2006.) Now Silverstein has completed 4 World Trade Center, by the Tokyo-based architect Fumihko