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April 27, 2005
The NYU Post
Some hot hi-lites from the "Greenmonster" Goldberg review of Gwathmey’s insipid Astor Place tower, sitting there like a spoiled NYU kid. Such a stain on what was such an opportune site for a signature piece of Downtown architecture. You would have expected more from the Cooper Union trustees...
The Site
"The tone of Astor Place is set by places like Cooper Union, the Public Theatre, and the gargantuan former Wanamaker store on Broadway: heavy, brawny blocks of masonry that sit foursquare on the ground. Louis Sullivan once described one of Henry Hobson Richardson’s great stone buildings as a man with “virile force—broad, vigorous, and with a whelm of energy.”
Choice Cuts
"Mies van der Rohe as filtered through Donald Trump. Instead of adding a lyrical counterpoint to Astor Place, the tower disrupts the neighborhood’s rhythm." ... "The new building, designed by Charles Gwathmey, is an elf prancing among men."
"Gwathmey’s building doesn’t rise quietly—it thrashes about. It’s as if he believed that its complex shape and its eye-popping glass would somehow provide a strong counterpunch to the powerful surrounding architecture." Booya, Charles!!!
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature"- FLWright
Before Frank Lloyd Wright was on everyone's lips, he built 5 major commissions in LA between 1917-1923, like the Hollyhock house, the Millard house, and the Freeman house. The more famous of the bunch, the Ennis-Brown House, seems to be succumbing to the hilly site on which it sits, a common problem in LA's foothill communities. The New York Times is reporting on the estimated 5 million it will take to shore up the foundation and stablize the 10,000 sqft mansion.
The Villager is reporting, surprise surprise, that the former educator turned real estate baron, NYU, might unjustly influence the proposed design changes at Washington Square Park, in an unfavorable way. This is at which point I love NIMBY neighborhood groups like the Greenwich Village Block Associations, because somebody has GOT to piss on NYU's amobea like ooze throughout downtown, making some blocks downright unlovable.
Curbed founder, Lockhart Steele, gets inked in Business Week.
NYC Rent Guidelines Board recently released their 2005 Income and Affordability Study (.pdf). In 2004, the obvious surfaced in the numbers, no affordable housing, and booming price increases, makes Jonny a dull boy. Inflation rose 3.4%, above the national increase of 2.7%. A quarter of all rental households pay over 50% of their gross income towards rent. The citywide vacancy rate sits at 2.9%, the average rental output per household at $816 with the average income at $39,937. The New York City Housing Authority will get 50 million less form the Federal Govt this year, in addition to a 7.5% decrease in monies from HUD. Not too mention the palpable 6% increase in single adult homelessness. Unemployment is down, and so are real wages. A mixed bag, indeed.
Fennesz played an absolutley beautiful set of music last night at the Austrian Cultural Forum, wowing a Packed room of (mostly) sweaty nerds. Get his music here, and here.
Posted by jmarston at 04:36 PM
April 25, 2005
More, More, More
Wait, I redoubled when I read this, after spending many-a-night wondering why all the heat had dissipated, this put my temperature right back up to Dangerously High. "Silverstein Properties has applied for an additional $3.5 billion in Liberty Bond financing with the New York City Industrial Development Agency to go toward the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site." Wait Larry, you're telling me, it wasn't enough to collect seperate policies on both towers, or to give the whole design process a a gracious middle finger by inserting Childs, now you want Billions in Liberty Bonds??? I have to say, you have a staggering amount of couth, asshole.
Why does nearside Brooklyn only have one Hotel? Where do all those parents stay when visiting their South Brooklyn dwelling Oberlin grad kids... Well the Marriot is building 28 more stories of overpriced (yes, $210/night for Downtown Brooklyn, monopoly is a beautiful thing, Mom) chain experience.
Agri-Tecture. Love It. The High Line gets moving, and for once we can breath a sigh of relief that we won't be stuck with another Battery Park Waterfront - read - concrete race track for Type-A rollerbladers.
Interview with New Urbanist kingpin Stefanos Polyzoides, principal at Moule & Polyzoides...
Green Building is self evident to most folks, but here is a comprehensive list of 46 benefits, with a short explanations for each. So money talks, eh? "75,000 ft2 (7,000 m2) office building that saves $0.50/ft2 ($5/m 2) per year in operating costs ($37,500 per year), will see the value of the building increase by $375,000. A 1999 HMG study of 108 big-box stores in California found that daylighting increased sales by 40%." Get LEED.
The smokestacks atop the Pennsylvania Railroad Power Station, also recognized as the Schwartz Chemical Building in Long Island City Queens, appears to be doomed, despite efforts to perserve or incorporate the existing - and quite beautiful - structures into the Lux Condos planned for the site. The Grey Lady reports...
"Flying Cars Ready to Take Off." Umm... ok folks. Tighten it up 60MIN.
Posted by jmarston at 01:37 PM | Comments (1)
April 22, 2005
Fryday... ahh Earth Day
His Most Highest Excellency, The Globally Hacked Sound Ambassador, DJ/Rupture, has a new mix available online. Fantastic. Save Target As
The Next American City has a nice article on DG, exciting green thinking... "Distributed generation (DG) is the name for a new trend in electricity production in which, instead of drawing power solely from a few large, far-off power plants, buildings get some of their power from numerous smaller, local facilities often located in or on the buildings themselves."
City Journal pens a much needed article on the impending MTA/Subway collapse here in New York. Although (unsurprisingly) CJ unfairly pins alot of blame on the unions, it is an extensive and in depth look at the state of Transit in this city. The fact that Bloomy has not made it a priority, like his pet stadium, is my biggest gripe with administration. And the Daily Tabloids for refusing to indict the philandering ineffectiveness of Peter Kalikow, or calling the State and City to clean up the beast, or shit, even run it somewhat effectively. The A/C fire, and other recent dramas will hopefully bring the Elephant into the spotlight. "the MTA has never rationalized its own management structure and is inefficient even by public-sector standards." Management, Bloomy, Pataki, and yes, sometimes Labor, should get a swift kick in the ass for strangulating NYC transit... As straphangers, we're getting shafted. "The 12 percent of revenues (and subsidies) that the MTA must spend this year on interest will rise to 21 percent by 2008 and 24 percent within a decade, while city and state subsidies remain flat." Eureka, lets build a 7 extension to a Manhattan football stadium, all with more taxpayer guaranteed bonds!
Architecture Week's article on a affortable housing competition, "We cannot continue to afford the design inefficiencies of our "affordable" housing. Our current behavior needs to change, and it's simply a matter of time until we will be forced as a society to do so."
Slatin Report's editorial on the
Posted by jmarston at 10:30 AM
April 21, 2005
Transect, Bubble, Disaster
My favorite urban observer, Mike Davis, inks on the housing bubble in LA and SoCal: The Bubble, Then the Blues
Naomi Klein on the roles and interests of the newly formed US Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization - postmodern colonialism: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Say it aint so, but Detroit continues to hemorrhage residents, at an estimated 1,000 persons a month: Detroit's 'tough decisions' are only going to get tougher
Hilarious illustrations for the New Urbanist concept of the Transect, for the cities of Paris and Pittsburgh: Some People Have a Hard Time Understanding the Transect...
Posted by jmarston at 10:04 AM
April 20, 2005
The G-Word
Race, housing, and the American city...
First, USA Today's article: "Gentrification drives comparatively few low-income residents from their homes. Although some are forced to move by rising costs, there isn't much more displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods than in non-gentrifying ones.
In a separate study of New York City published last year, Freeman and a colleague concluded that living in a gentrifying neighborhood there actually made it less likely a poor resident would move — a finding similar to that of a 2001 study of Boston by Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor..."
Second, New York Magazine dives into the Bed-Stuy fray: "On a single street, brownstone by brownstone, gentrification and race are colliding, making Bed-Stuy locals wonder what kind of block will be left when it all shakes out..."
Third, a gentrifiers perspective on crime prevention: "I have personally told some hustlers that I don't appreciate their activity on my block and that I would be watching them, they moved on within a day or two..."
Posted by jmarston at 02:32 PM
Battery Park City Bonds & Federal Highway Funds
"The city will use $130 million in money from the Battery Park City
Authority to create a trust fund to provide more affordable housing in the city...build or preserve 4,500 affordable homes for approximately 11,000 largely low-income New Yorkers...latest development in a long-standing dispute over money from the authority...its surplus was supposed to be used to create affordable housing, it has gone to the city's general operating funds and, more recently, was earmarked by Bloomberg to help expand the Jacob Javits Center." -Gotham Gazzette
"Imagine that the urban, or metropolitan, portion of the interstate highway system was built according to the same procedures as those used or proposed to build major transit systems. The result would be:
Only 50 percent of the capital costs for major highways would be paid from federal sources rather than 80 or 90 percent. Cities would have to aggressively compete among one another for their highway funds based on the quality and justification of the proposed project. The rules for the competition would be subject to change without any input. Some states, cities, and metropolitan areas would never be able to build any highways even if there was a pervasive desire by the public and the local officials to do so. Only a few highway segments could begin construction in any year.
If major highways projects were built by the same rules as transit, highways would need a congressional "sponsor" who would secure an earmark by competing with other members for scarce funds. Cities unable to get an earmark would have fewer freeways. Local governments would have to demonstrate that they have sufficient funds to pay for their share of the costs of building the highways. They would also have to demonstrate that they would be able to operate and maintain these highways, as well as their existing highways, into the future.
A substantial portion of highway funding would likely have to come from local property taxes, local sales taxes, or local income taxes. Often there would be limited state contribution to the costs. In many instances, public referenda would have to be approved to get local authorization for project funding.
Also, highway projects would have to compete with police, fire, education, and other programs for funding. In times of budget shortages, highways could be closed completely or eliminated.
The highway would need to be justified on an explicit measure of cost effectiveness. Agencies would have to specifically state how they would manage the land use impacts of their highways. Finally, intensive mandated studies would have to precede the project and would be subject to an independent review by the federal government and an open comparison to other projects." -Brookings Institute full report.
Posted by jmarston at 10:00 AM
April 19, 2005
Surprise, Surprise NYC2012 Under Scrutiny
Like I was talking about earlier, IOC is now investigating the NYC and London bids... "The move came after New York and London — seeking votes in the final stretch of the campaign — promised subsidies, free marketing and other benefits to international sports federations and national Olympic committees."
Posted by jmarston at 04:47 PM
Lad
Posted by jmarston at 10:25 AM
April 15, 2005
Miami's Manhattanization
the darker the shade of red, the higher the population density. original map can be found here.
According to the City of Miami Large Scale Development Report, since 1995, 79 projects have been completed (or are close to completion) for a total of 18 thousand new residential units, and 2 million sq ft of office. There are 67 approved projects slating an additional 21 thousand residential units, and 21 projects in the application phase, for 3 thousand more residential. There are a whopping 87 in the preliminary phase, which would add 25 thousand more residential units. The sum of these: 4 million sqft of retail, 3 million sqft of office space, and 69 thousand residential units. With 37 thousand of these units being built in Downtown Miami, at an esitmated construction cost of over 12 billion dollars. Huge. Talking Hi-Density, Hi-Rise, Downtown, Tower construction. Another 8 thousand of these units, 52 of the total residential projects, will be built in Wynwood/Edgewater, most of which will be lower scale lux lofts and other semi-dense yuppie enclaves.
The unemployment rate in Miami-Dade is 7.7%. The average price for a condo is $254,365. The median age of a Miamian is 35.6 years. 25% of West Miami is over the age of 65. Per capita personal income sits below the national average ($29,000) at $25,320. The cost of living index, compared to New York's 232, is 106.4, just above Minneapolis's 104.2. American Airlines is the largest private employer in Miami with 9,000 employees, and the larget public employer is Miami-Dade public schools who employ 35,500 people.
Miami-Dade County has roughly 2.2 million people, the City of Miami has 362 thousand and the illustrious Miami Beach has just under 90 thousand. The metro sits at about 5 million. In 1910, Miami had 5,741 residents. Hemmed in between the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, Miami is a virtual island.
Interestingly reflective of the international flavor of this boom in investment is the 2000 census figure that puts 1.4 million residents of Miami-Dade as foreign born - 44 thousand of which are from Europe - 28 thousand of which are from Asia.
Apprehension is definitely bubbling, with lots of questions about how many of these units are servicing investors, "Company representatives said that "as much as 85 percent of all condominium sales in the downtown Miami market are accounted for by investors and speculators."
"I've never seen anything like this," said Miami historian Paul George, a professor at Miami Dade College. "I've studied the booms of the mid-'20s, after World War II, and other smaller ones of the late '70s and early '80s, and none of those compare to this in terms of dollar value, the volume and scale of things being built, and the amount of places being impacted."
But the Brokers and Agents are feeding like sharks in a sea of chum...(ps). Its no doubt a fascinating moment for this city, and the outcomes may spell prescient for other cities looking to drive upward, instead of entirely outward. America needs positive lessons in dense urban living, and Miami may or may not prove instructive. As the Fed inches up the rates, Miami also might well serve as a barometer to other cities booms... Like the upcoming Transfer commentary on Las Vegas. On with the structures...
Big name designers are getting involved with big name firms, the best and brightest being the recently approved One Icon project. An Arquitectonica building with a Philip Starck designed lobby, which is rendered below.
Arquitectonica, who already have a huge architectural presence in Miami, perhaps rivaling that of Morris Lapidus, are doing another project just up the block from One Icon, 500 Brickell. Two connected 43-storey towers with ultra-lux amenities, rendering below...
Arquitectonica are also doing Marina, the 60-storey project includes a 14th floor Skybeach, a beach sand amenities deck which spans from the east to the west side of the building rendered below...
Arquitectonica are also doing the 45-storey One Miami, rendered below... Perhaps one of ugliest of new batch... Flashy and Clunky. Rendered below that is Arquitectonica's Canyon Ranch, another, not so sexy contribution to the boom...
Which is down the block from the tallest of the new structures going up, the 65-storey 900 Biscayne Bay, whose nauseating website is a good introduction to the level of design, packaging, and money being tossed around Miami right now. 900 is rendered below...
Ten Museum Park is another supra-lux 50-storey hi-profile building pioneering a new master zoned area of hi-res/hi-rise towers, rendered below...
Onyx2, promises threesomes as part of their Cosmo-Hi-Definition-Lux-Living...pictured below.
Soleil presents itself as a more fit alternative to the hedonists at the Onyx2.
Finally, the Avenue is available to the smart, technologically engaged hipster - check the website if you think I'm kidding - offering real "urban living to new heights".
--Miami
--City of Miami Planning Department
--Miami-Dade Planning Department
Posted by jmarston at 04:13 PM
Thinks
Posted by jmarston at 02:55 PM
The Anti-Sit: Global
Posted by jmarston at 02:53 PM
City & Suburb Energies
Two great entries in the blogsphere...
--> People who live in cities use half as much energy as suburbanites.
--> If it were a state, New York City would rank 51st in energy use per capita.
| via Veritas et Venustas
And over at Starts and Fits, skyscrapers and efficiency.
So yes, while it may not be alright to condemn the suburbs strictly in terms of the experiencial/aesthetic, how elitist, I can surely flip the bird when it comes down to consumption (feeding right into leadership and foreign policy). So, a heavy pluck you to all the suburban leaches out there who are unabashadly sucking our planets last reserves, and painting the sky black.
Back in the hometown, the Walker Art Center addition (Herzog & de Meuron) gets a nice review in the New York Times. "Anchored by an aluminum-clad tower, the addition is a masterly example of how exhausted motifs can acquire new meaning when reworked in a fresh setting."
Daily Dose's coverage of the Walker opening...
Posted by jmarston at 10:34 AM
April 14, 2005
7th Ave Sensual
Posted by jmarston at 04:32 PM
New Category Alert
Category: Faces... for the thousands of beautiful and amazing faces; human, animal, and otherwise, that look down upon us from their carved abodes above.
Posted by jmarston at 02:14 PM
April 13, 2005
The Anti-Sit: Triple Feature
Posted by jmarston at 05:34 PM
Attack of the Useless Awning, Pt. 2
Looks Great Guys! Whats the name again? Oh, Baskin Robins! Pt.1
Posted by jmarston at 03:05 PM
April
Posted by jmarston at 10:48 AM
April 12, 2005
Brooklyn's Ugliest New Row House
Usually, as I mentioned earlier, these are reserved for further outterboro neighborhoods, but this is nearside Brooklyn, Dean btw 4th & 5th Ave. Prime 'underdeveloped' southslope real estate. What a pile of uninspired insipid trash. Love the wood awning, the curvaceous railings... Yowsers.
Lucky for us, this development is on the same block as two other slighly historicised and wholly boring structures. So terribly reflecting the RUSH to capitalize on Brooklyn's comeback kid status.
The two above do a really nice job highlighting the beauty, stature, and class of some of the 19th century wood frames - one below - that dot this same block of Dean St.
Posted by jmarston at 12:13 PM | Comments (7)
Little Angels
Posted by jmarston at 11:26 AM
Little Man's Big Shoulders
Posted by jmarston at 11:23 AM
1960's Skin to Faux 1860's Skin
A long empty Madison Ave ground floor, once home to the sheesh bag retailers Koret and Walborg, will lose its vaguley 60's mod design in favor of a more conservative faux historicism. Although this faux gas light anklet reskinning would fit the structure, the Backer Building, more uniformly, there is something grossly appealing about he space age windows. 'Promised Facade Changes' for any new tenant, last photo provides a rendering. I would say a slick reno on the existing could create a pretty inviting new night spot... Hopefully we can look forward to Duane Reade, NOT!
The promised street level reskinning...
Posted by jmarston at 10:38 AM
April 08, 2005
Shenzhen, China
Situated in the Guangdong Province, Shenzhen is another one of China's hyperurban centers, one of the first of the Pearl River Delta's special economic zones, on the South China Sea. Even though it has fewer than five million residents, it has the highest population density of any Chinese city, 2,079 persons per sq. km, with 4,855 persons per sq. km in the special economic zone. Here are some photos, from Mike's PBase Gallery, where he has many many more. Cwazy.
Posted by jmarston at 04:23 PM
Fringe Areas Just Got More Tattered
The New York City Housing Authority could lose 25 percent of its
federal funding under a new plan recently proposed by the Bush
administration. The administration intends to cut the $3.4 billion
budget for day-to-day maintenance of public housing nationwide by 14
percent, one of the sharpest declines since the federal government
began subsidizing public housing. Older urban areas are to suffer even
deeper cuts. New York City is slated to lose $166 million; New York
State would lose more overall funding than any other state in the
nation. While the proposal may be altered during negotiations in
Washington, housing authorities say that it will immediately make it
harder to provide basic services. --- Gotham Gazette
Posted by jmarston at 10:55 AM
Leon Krier
Leon Krier is supreme loverboy of the new urbanist/neo-traditional/classical set, which has made him whipping boy de jour for the lefty deconstructionist kids... who use the laughable 'he did that Albert Speer book' (nazi) line of crap. Although the classicalists return the volley with, if you don't like Krier, you must be a high modernist, brutalist, line of baloney. No, not in the least actually. There is good reason to problematize architecture as subjective sculpture, but surely it doesn't mean turning back three thousand years of thought, does it?
Because of his lightning rod quality, he's been popping up in the blogsphere as of late. But Leon Krier shouldn't be whipped for his his book projects, but for his ideas. Like this one:
ummm, yea, miscegenation bad, purity good...
All those doric columns just give such a mystical signification. To what you ask? Stop there interloper! Temples to the significance of classical ideas, forms, and a more distinguished geometry. Timeless temples to the publicam. Wait, is this a bad fantasy novel or am I in Medici Italy? Does it matter, really, with of all this pomp and circumstance? I'm waiting for the winged beast to drop a slaughtered Koolhaas Foster & Company on the steps of our temple to the honorable Lord Krier. Pt 2, we enter the city...
This image comes from his drawings for Poundbury, Dorset.
And a Krier joke... Funny, in all of his flatus pre-premillennial europhilia, Krier is not above a penis joke - but in true form, he links it to a Greek mythology. Gotta love his steadiness. Do you really hate the Gherkin Krier?
Posted by jmarston at 09:41 AM | Comments (1)
April 05, 2005
Municipal Art Society Rescue at Flatiron
MAS gets the Department of Buildings in on the Flatiron advertisement - advertecture - fray... citing them for, among other things:
5. Sign creates hazardous wind load.
6. Prohibited advertising sign on scaffold.
7. Sign extends too high. It exceeds the 40-foot height limit.
8. Surface area for the sign is too large.
9. Failure to get permit from Buildings Department. (The permit would not have been granted)
I suggest a violation of good taste, obviously. You can track the long list of violations here, and you can thank the conglomerate Newmark Partners for the deal - and Municipal Art Society for making the right moves in response.
Posted by jmarston at 12:10 PM
April 01, 2005
Substandard Architecture
Talk about FUGLY! Emblematic of the type of structures United Homes of New York loves to construct... This image comes from an article in the City Paper about garage enabled row home construction in the Queens Village neighborhood of Philadelphia, & the fight against it. I love how modern is used here as a pejorative.
According to O'Donnell, even the city's temporary moratorium on demolishing historic buildings in this district hasn't stopped the garages. The moratorium is easily circumvented, he says, by reconstructing in phases. "They'll leave a toothpick, and build around it," he says, pointing at a new, modern facade that slipped past the historic moratorium.
Here are some really sexy images from Foxtons real estate listings of new construction in New York City, usually United related, mostly in impoverished outer borough neighborhoods. Substandard design, materials, and expectations... Just what the ghetto needs, right?
Posted by jmarston at 04:35 PM | Comments (5)
Averages
CNN/Money reports the continuing insanity...
The average sale price rose to $1.21 million -- up 23 percent from the final quarter of 2004 and up 26 percent from a year earlier -- according to the Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan Market Overview.
For Manhattan's entire apartment market, the average price per square foot climbed to $910 -- topping $900 a square foot for the first time. That's up 16.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2004. It's a gain of 28 percent from a year earlier.
Who said anything about a bubble?
Posted by jmarston at 04:07 PM
Odd Top: 60's & 70's Edition
Here we have a some classics, in the least classy of senses. Standard brick boxes with some vague middle eastern gestures a'la the mosiac brick. Functionally, I'm not sure what encasing a water tower does. Visually, it tries to convey a uniform sense, but ends up looking pretty shabby. Most have had cell towers, tv antennas, and the like added to them... Not odd, so much as it is bodd.
Posted by jmarston at 12:35 PM