New Sheds for New York
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Buildings commissioner, Robert Limandri, announced the winner of the urbanSHED competition,which, last summer, asked for redesigns of the city’s sidewalk sheds (the plywood constructions that shield pedestrians from exterior building renovations). The winning project, Young-Hwan Choi’s* Urban Umbrella, beat out 163 designs, including those by the two other finalists, the New York firm KNEStudio NewYork and the Massachusetts-based XChange Architects. The DOB promises to promote the design as a new standard, and it’s likely that a trial version of the scheme will be erected soon.
*Clarification: Choi created the initial design; after it was selected as a finalist, he teamed up with Andrés Cortés and Sarrah Khan, of Agencie Group, to develop the final, winning design.
Of the three final designs in the competition, Urban Umbrella seemed the most ambitious— which, in all honesty, made us think it had the least likelihood of winning. City bureaucracies, even in places like New York, aren’t known for taking risks, and the Umbrella scheme, though it’s been thoroughly vetted for structural integrity and cost, is an obvious break from a proven, if drab, design. (There’s also the matter of Choi’s relative inexperience: he is 28 years old and a first-year student at PennDesign.) If it’s ever realized on a broad scale, the new shed will convincingly illustrate that the city is committed to quality aesthetics over safe but generic solutions.
Of course, durability is always a concern with a project like this, and it’s difficult to predict how the Umbrella will hold up to tough weather and tough New Yorkers. But, at the very least, the competition has resulted in an elegant design, environmentally friendly in its use of sustainable materials and urbanistic in its promotion of open (and well-lit) streets. Both the winning designer and the city building department should get kudos for that.
Photos: courtesy the urbanSHED International Design Competition. Urban Umbrella design by Young-Hwan Choi, Andrés Cortés, and Sarrah Khan of Agencie Group.
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While it’s true Young is young, for the past three months (since the start of stage II of the competition) he’s been hard at work with the founders of Agencie Group, Andres Cortes and Sarrah Kahn (http://agenciegroup.com/), architect and engineer, respectively. (He teamed up with them at the suggestion of Marilyn Taylor, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.) Together they explored material and structural options until they came up with the strongest, most affordable, easiest to construct solution. I’m thrilled that the new design will be making its way onto NYC’s streets.
Comment by Emily Nemens — January 22, 2010, @ 1:04 pm
While I find the design to be uplifting and would love to see it on the city’s streets, I am not holding my breath, for two reasons.
First, I doubt that the handful of companies that control the sidewalk shed market have any interest in replacing their inventory of pipes, plywood, etc., with anything new simply because it looks better. I doubt that they will be convinced about any longer term savings that the new design promises.
Second, while the folks at the top of the Department of Buildings are happy to sponsor a competition, I doubt that there is any motivation in the rest of the Department to update the regulations to encourage the installation of these sheds. Perhaps if the new design were required for any city-funded project, in the same way that LEED is being used on city projects? If DOB and DDC were to commit to that, we might actually see these on the streets.
Comment by Christopher Stephens — January 22, 2010, @ 10:48 pm