.

I use forearm crutches and I find it a bit tricky to open doors coming in from the street. Over the years, I have been gratified by the number of pedestrians who swoop in front of me and open the door; once I’m inside they scoot off on their journey, always at a very rapid pace. Who says New Yorkers are not concerned about the plight of the needy? I am always surprised and bolstered with a great sense of optimism after these encounters. There are other examples: Once a police sergeant helped me cross a two-lane street so that I could more easily get into a car. Some restaurants send their staff out to hold the outside doors.

The average citizen and even the police are attuned and helpful to the handicapped, but what about property owners, good-government groups, and the city governing agencies and legislative bodies? They are not. Maybe the difference is an issue of abstraction. The handicapped are not real to them because someone needing help is not in front of them. Read more…

.
Following my recent post on the clash between historic preservation and universal design, we’ve decided to undertake a regular blog column on accessibility in buildings and cities. We hope to discuss examples from all over the world, but at first our focus will be where we are, New York City. I walk with a cane or, recently, with forearm crutches, and I find it difficult to go up or down steps or stairs. I often wonder what folks in wheelchairs do. Those of us with mobility impairments cannot easily use the subway system because there are so few elevators, and those that exist seldom are working. The bus systems are not much better, and only 239 of the city’s taxis have the necessary wheelchair lifts and ramps. (Admittedly, New York still has the largest fleet of fully-accessible taxis of any city in the nation.)

Metropolis has followed the story of handicap access since the Americans for Disability Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. Read more…

Last Saturday I attended a wedding at New York’s Players Club, which occupies a historic 19th-century mansion on Gramercy Park South, next to the National Arts Club. After getting out of the car with my forearm crutches, I navigate a brightly painted step down to the entry then push myself up four steps, where I am confronted by a curved half-flight of stairs up to the parlor floor where the event will be held. An extremely nice coat-check attendant—who seems willing to almost carry me upstairs—tells me that although the building has an elevator, it does not stop at the parlor floor. So I give one crutch to my wife, Eugenie, and slowly ascend the stairs one at a time, my left hand on the rail and my right arm in a crutch, all the while struggling against the flow of traffic heading downstairs.

Once we are on the correct level things are great and, providentially, I don’t need the bathroom two flights down. But what would I have done in a wheelchair? Read more…

On a rainy day in May, my wife and I arrive by taxi at Daniel Libeskind’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. We’ve seen this wonderful sculpture of a building from the street and are eager to experience it. But I’m having problems getting there. The museum is on an interior street, so after we leave the cab, we have to walk on the slippery sidewalk. This would not be a problem for most people, but I use a cane and am having an awful time getting to the front door. This is a public building and, surely, the ADA rules for access have been followed. Or were they? In fact, was way-finding in a true systems sense even considered by the designers? Read more…

(Credit: Stefan Weisman)

I recently went to the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) at New York’s 2 Columbus Circle and I was surprised at how much I liked it. With the flurry of controversy and negative criticism that surrounded the museum’s opening, I was expecting something entirely different than I got. The interiors, revamped to turn rabbit warrens on a cramped site into generous spaces, are wonderfully successful. The rooms are filled with light and give the exhibitions a connection to the world at large—this did not happen in the former windowless interior which was designed as a museum for another age.

From inside MAD, the glass slits in the ceramic facade line up with the avenues and streets that radiate from this spectacular site and create exciting views. The materials chosen are pleasing, particularly the rods that support the stairs from the basement to the second floor. Unfortunately, the flooring in the elevators is already showing signs of wear.

The renovation of this building, and its use for MAD, counts among the most controversial projects undertaken in New York in recent memory. Now, some six months after the opening, it’s hard to understand all the acrimony that surrounded the project. This makes me wonder if any of the critics actually went inside, took a look at the way most of us experience buildings, and really understood the architect’s contribution to adapting a difficult museum building to the ethos of the new century.

When I was there the temporary exhibit, Second Lives, showed artists’ use of every day household objects in extraordinary ways. I give it high marks.

The permanent collection is now exhibited—there is space for it, finally! I think these exhibits should be much better than they are. Many craft artists were missing and the work shown is not the best work. Now that MAD has space to show its collections, I hope that donors, curators, and artists will strive to upgrade the collection to meet a higher quality in the months and years to come.

I find the negativism that surrounded MAD and the design of its new space hard to understand and totally out of order. And I wonder if this is merely a symptom of design criticism being based on the model of art criticism. I believe design criticism that does not take into consideration context, people, culture, and environment will always be off the mark; and a useless exercise whose time has come and gone.

I’m reading a new book from John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. It brings to mind the current discussions on infrastructure, particularly the Obama’s administration plan to create 2.5 to 3 million new jobs by rebuilding our decaying infrastructure.

There’s also talk among architects as well as AIA chapters about broadening the definition of infrastructure; they say it’s more than just road widenings and bridge rebuilding. It needs to include our schools, public buildings, parks facilities, and fixing suburban sprawl. They have a point. Read more…

Harlem’s Apollo Theater on West 125th Street. Photo by Stern, 2006

I have always been a fan of the late William H. Whyte and his philosophy of bottom-up city planning. Throughout his career, Whyte advocated human-focused, democratic urban design rooted in pragmatism. I can only imagine what he would say about the spate of rezoning currently sweeping New York. Read more…

Our July issue is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes as I write this and the issue includes a feature article on the legacy of Buckminster Fuller. A few weeks ago, our editors participated in a series of lectures and events sponsored by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, including the awarding of the first annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize, which was sponsored by Metropolis. At a conferring ceremony at the Center for Architecture in New York City on Monday, June 23rd, the BFI honored ecologist John Todd for his innovative approach outlined in his paper: Comprehensive Design For A Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia. Read more…