Atlantic Yard Alternatives

The exhibition Five Proposals for the Future of Atlantic Yards opens at the Warehouse Gallery in Brooklyn on June 5, running for just over a couple weeks, until June 22. Per the exhibition's website: "The Atlantic Yards Site presents a major opportunity to create a  significant piece of architecture and urbanism at the center of several Brooklyn neighborhoods. Five architects will present their alternative proposals for the site. Each scheme will provide 4,278,000 square feet of housing and 156,000 square feet of retail space, equivalent to the master plan by Forest City Ratner."



Further, per the website: "The five proposals are intended to illustrate alternative architectural possibilities to the community through schemes that are equally profitable for the developer. The schemes will show that the proposed density is not inherently problematic if distributed properly on the site. The exhibition will open up a dialogue about the site’s potential, giving the community a deeper understanding of architectural and urban planning possibilities to properly develop one of the most significant large scale sites in New York City."

Below are images of four of the five proposals (I guess the fifth one is a surprise for those visiting the gallery?); click on the titles to read about the schemes and see more images.

Matthias Altwicker's and Farzana Gandhi's Flexible City:


OPerA Studio Architecture's The Garden in the Machine:


Amoia Cody Architecture's Vertical Lots:


Joshua Zinder Architecture and Design's Quilted City:

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Book Review: Drawing Ideas

Drawing Ideas: A Hand-Drawn Approach for Better Design by Mark Baskinger and William Bardel
Watson-Guptill, 2013
Hardcover, 304 pages



Creativity and design are riding a high these days. In various forms they are seen as the means for solving many of the world's problems, be it an app for this or that, a way to get clean water, or how to build a cleaner car. Much of the hype over creativity and design is hyperbole, and just as much of it is framed in the context of helping business, specifically helping the bottom line. I'm skeptical about the hype as well as design being relegated to business interests, but nevertheless I believe that creativity (the core of design, if you will) is something that should be fostered in children and adults alike for many reasons: in solving problems, in embracing art and culture, in heightening intelligence and emotional understanding, and on and on.



The above thoughts were going through my head as I tried to find a means of discussing what Mark Baskinger and William Bardel have created in Drawing Ideas. Clearly they are talented folks, capable of leading workshops that spur people in offices to "unlock [their] potential for brainstorming creativity through better drawing skills," but my yellow flag of skepticism is raised by the book. Yes, their drawing skills are evident throughout most of the book (accompanied by drawings from other designers in various fields), though as an architect I'll admit their styles are a bit removed from what I like. Nevertheless their drawings of objects, figures, and other elements accompanied by illustrations and text convey clearly what they are aiming to do; and in this case they are aiming to give the reader a means of planning, structuring and depicting ideas.



The book is billed as "a hand-drawn approach for better design," but the audience isn't limited to designers, many of whom probably learned a good deal of the book's contributions in school and practice. Much of what Baskinger and Bardel discuss applies to people in a wide range of businesses who are interested in being able to draw what they are thinking. While the authors' style and means of explaining their methods are very business-like, I must give credit where it is due. For one, their visual explanations are so well done that they can stand alone, separate from the text that accompanies them. Two, setting style aside (sorry, I learned to not like markers, which are used profusely in this book), the focus on drawing by hand is commendable, considering that the hand has a much more direct link to the brain, where the ideas are stored, than the mouse, trackpad, or keyboard. And three, they leave the creativity up to the reader, giving him or her the tools for getting those ideas on paper and sharing them with other people.

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2014 Wheelwright Prize

Last year's Wheelwright Prize traveling fellowship was notable for being open for the first time in its nearly 80-year history to graduates outside of the Harvard GSD, regardless of the fact that recipient Gia Wolff graduated from the Ivy League school in 2008. This year's prize continues the new tradition of being open beyond the confines of Gund Hall, but it differs in that a shortlist of finalists* was announced a few week's before last night's award to Barcelona-based architect Jose Ahedo. Beating the six finalists, as well as the roughly 195 other eligible entries, Ahedo wins the $100,000 travel grant with his proposal "Domesticated Grounds: Design and Domesticity Within Animal Farming Systems."

The proposal sounds anything but sexy, but Ahedo's first independent project -- Blanca from the Pyrenees, a 13-building dairy complex -- shows the potential for some smart and visually appealing design in an area often left to anybody but architects. Additionally, in last night's award presentation at the Harvard Club in New York City, Ahedo (who grew up on a dairy farm in Spain, by the way) wowed the small crowd with diverse examples of farming practices in China (Hainan's aquatic farms), Germany (the fascinating Halligen "islands"), and other places on his itinerary that combine traditional and technological agriculture in varying proportions.

Per a press release, "the jury praised Ahedo’s proposal for its integrated approach to a broad range of issues, and for his clarity in identifying architecture and design’s potential to shape more sustainable models of production for a global mega-industry." Yet as was mentioned last night, the jury also appreciated the personal nature of the proposal, given Ahedo's farming background and his desire to make sense of it in a much broader context. I'm looking forward to hearing how his research and work evolves after his travels.

*The other finalists for the 2014 Wheelwright Prize:

• Ana Dana Beros, MArch 2007, University of Zagreb: Independent architect, curator, editor, and cofounder of ARCHIsquad (Zagreb, Croatia).
• Alison Crawshaw, MArch 2004, Royal College of Art: Founder of Alison Crawshaw Architecture (London).
• Masaaki Iwamoto, Master of Engineering 2008, University of Tokyo: Partner of Vo Trong Nghia Architects (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam).
• Jimenez Lai, MArch 2007, University of Toronto: Principal of Bureau Spectacular and assistant architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago).
• Sean Lally, MArch 2002, University of California, Los Angeles: Founder of the firm Weathers and assistant architecture professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago (Chicago).
• Kaz Yoneda, MArch II 2011, Harvard GSD: Founder of the Architecture and Space Design Unit at Takram Design Engineering (Tokyo).

(Photo: Jose Ahedo, third from left, with jury members, L-R: Shohei Shigematsu, Linda Pollak, Jorge Silvetti, Sílvia Benedito, Mohsen Mostafavi, Pedro Gadanho. Jury member Iñaki Abalos was not present at last night's event.)

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John Jay Walkthrough

Here are some of my photos of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City by SOM. The building is a cube-like addition on 11th Avenue that is connected to the existing school on 10th Avenue via a long concourse that is capped by a green roof.

The west-facing elevation on 11th Avenue, at West 58th Street:


A close-up of the addition's elevation on West 59th Street:


Looking west along West 59th Street; the main entrance is in the foreground:


Another view of the main entrance:


A close-up of the main entrance:


The main-entrance signage from the other side:


The main entrance drops people into this light-filled space at the eastern end of the concourse:


A view of the skylight from the mezzanine:


And a close-up of the lighting below the skylight:


Moving west along the main level of the concourse:


A little bit more west:


The steps and seating at the western end of the concourse:


A view from atop those steps, looking east:


The 11th Avenue entrance; this seating area is where The Good Wife filmed a scene (with the school posing as an FBI building):


The 11th Avenue entrance, looking the other way (this entrance is entered below the big "JAY" lettering visible in the first photo):


Up on the green roof above the concourse, looking west toward the addition:


Atop the steps visible in the previous photo, looking east:


Turning left 90-degrees from the previous photo to look at the fins on the addition:


The red is made up of a grid of small dots:


Heading up the 8th-floor lounge in the addition:


The east-looking view from the lounge:


(Many thanks to Holly K. for the tour of John Jay!)

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Today's archidose #756

Here are some photos of Het Eemhuis (2013) in Amersfoort, Netherlands, by Neutelings Riedijk Architects, photographed by Matthijs Borghgraef.













To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

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SuperPuesto

Mark your calendars: On Saturday, July 14, from 3 to 5pm, SuperPuesto opens at the Andrew Freedman Home Garden, 1125 Grand Concourse between 166th and McClellan Streets, in the Bronx. The temporary pavilion by artist Terence Gower is being erected in concert with the Bronx Museum of the Arts' Beyond the Supersquare exhibition, which explores the "indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary art." The pavilion is actually located across the street and one block north of the museum.


[Terence Gower, SuperPuesto, 2014. Pavilion: wood, concrete, hardware, vinyl tarpaulins, 18 x 66 x 48 feet overall. Courtesy of the artist and Bronx Museum of the Arts]

Pavilion description from the Bronx Museum of the Arts:

SuperPuesto applies the sharp, clean forms of modernist architecture to the rudimentary building technology of the puesto, the traditional market stalls found throughout Latin America that have become the face of the informal economies prevalent in the region. Drawing from the iconic form of Marcel Breuer’s House in the Museum Garden, a commissioned structure exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art’s sculpture garden in 1949, SuperPuesto explores the connections between the European-influenced modernist movement that emerged in Latin America after 1945, and the informal economic systems that contrast the progressive ideals promoted in the region during this period.

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10-Year 9/11 Memorial Museum Time-Lapse

Best watched without the sound on:



(via ArchNewsNow)

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