Last April we wrote about Rafael Viñoly’s final big push to win approval for his firm’s proposed $1.5 billion redevelopment of the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Today, Viñoly and co. cleared what should be the last hurdle of a drawn-out and often contentious regulatory review process when the City Council of New York approved the project’s proposed zoning change. The New Domino is now slated to break ground next year.

Frankly, we have mixed feelings about this result. On the one hand, the development will preserve the historic (and badly decayed) Domino refinery; create 660 new units of affordable housing; and open up the waterfront to citizens with a quarter-mile public esplanade. On the hand, it’s going to turn yet another modest, charmingly run-down corner of Brooklyn into a cluster of condo towers—and put yet more pressure on an already overtaxed subway line.

Guess you just can’t stop progress? Tell us what you think using the comments form below.

Image: courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects

Depressing news from Kansas City: USA Today reported on Friday that Dan Rockhill’s celebrated Studio 804 design-build program has been unable to find buyers for its last two houses. As we reported in a feature story last February, Studio 804’s previous houses had attracted waiting lists of potential buyers. Unfortunately, the program moved into more expensive cutting-edge sustainable design—its 2009 house (pictured) earned Platinum LEED certification, and its new passive house is expected to do the same—just as the housing market imploded. Now, according to the USA Today article, Studio 804 is “essentially bankrupt,” with only $25 in its checking account.

Click here for information on how to donate money to Studio 804; to learn more about the program, read Daniel Akst’s feature story, “Platinum at a Price.”

And the winners are… Snøhetta founders Craig Dykers (left) and Kjetil Thorsen.

You heard it here first: The architecture firm to lead the highly anticipated, $250 million expansion of SFMOMA will be the Oslo- and New York–based Snøhetta, which beat out fellow finalists Adjaye Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Foster + Partners. Our anonymous Bay Area insider predicted last May that the SFMOMA board’s conservative types would go for Foster while the more design-minded folks on the selection committee would choose DSR or Adjaye—thus leaving the “dark horse” Snøhetta as a kind of compromise. Of course, SFMOMA’s director, Neal Benezra, has a different version of events, telling the San Francisco Chronicle that it was the committee’s site visits that ultimately set Snøhetta apart. “After our visit to Oslo, there was no question that we had found our architects,” Benezra said. “It was a beautiful moment.” The museum plans to unveil a potential design next spring.

“Trumbull” (left) and “Gilman,” two of the canned magazine templates now sold by Ready Media

How should publication designers greet the news yesterday that Roger Black—the magazine design (and redesign) guru who’s had his hands on Rolling Stone, Newsweek, New York, Popular Mechanics, Esquire, and about a zillion other titles over the years—has launched a new venture called Ready-Media to provide “outstanding media templates for both print and web-based formats” to publishers “at a fraction of the cost”? Several commenters on the Society of Publication Designers’ Grids blog were understandably displeased by what they saw as yet another nail in the pub-design coffin:

What a huge setback for designers and magazine makers.

You’ve got to be kidding. Paint by numbers for magazine design?

Working at a city/regional magazine and seeing the ever reducing budget & staff, this sends a shiver down my spine.

Read more…

Last week we posted a roundup of noteworthy design competitions accepting entries in the next few months. We wanted to take a moment now to call extra attention to one contest that is particularly important to us at the magazine: the fifth-annual IIDA/Metropolis Smart Environments Awards, which recognize interiors that are more than just pretty pictures. Eligible projects do have to be good-looking, of course, but the jurors are just as concerned with sustainability and accessibility. The idea is that these are spaces that embody the very best in 21st-century interior design, with aesthetics, human health and well-being, and environmental concerns all seamlessly integrated. Perhaps the best way to understand what make a Smart Environment is to study past winners—so here they are:

2009

THE PLANT CAFE ORGANIC
CCS Architecture

TWELVE WEST (above)
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects

KROON HALL
Hopkins Architects and Centerbrook Architects and Planners

Read more…

Yet more news from Yves Béhar: the prolific designer has teamed up with GE to develop the WattStation, a plug-in electric vehicle charger with a cute, colorful form. It’s powerful too: according to GE, the WattStation’s “level 2 capability” will decrease typical charging time from 12–18 hours to as little as 4–8 hours. Check out a video of Behar describing his “small, soft, and friendly dispenser of electricity” after the jump. Read more…

Introducing this year’s MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program installation to a group of journalists yesterday, MoMA’s chief curator of architecture and design, Barry Bergdoll, likened it to a playground—but then quickly qualified that assessment. “Turns out it’s an extremely serious playground,” Bergdoll said, adding later that the installation is “about our contemporary condition and not just about fun.”

You could have fooled me. Read more…

We first wrote about the Helsinki-based design firm Company back in 2008, shortly after its founders, Johan Olin and Aamu Song, debuted their Top Secrets of Finland collection. The idea there was to commission traditional Finnish manufacturers to produce small runs of everyday products unique to the region. Now Company has expanded the line for the exhibition Secrets of Central Finland, on display at the Craft Museum of Finland until September 5. Check out more images of Olin and Song’s latest Finnish design finds after the jump. Read more…

Every summer since 2007, the editors of the self-consciously upscale magazine of “global affairs” Monocle have assembled a list of the world’s most livable cities—in their words, “urban settlements where human life can thrive because they are easy to navigate, diverse, pulsing and full of opportunities.” I generally find these kinds of best-of lists irresistible, and Monocle has always used an appealingly idiosyncratic set of metrics (including the number of cinema screens and outdoor seats; the quality of the local architecture; the average amount of annual sunshine; the robustness of public transit; and the government’s commitment to diversity, tolerance, and sustainability.) The problem is, their criteria keep turning up the same cities year after year. Not exactly the same ones—but close enough to make the so-called Quality of Life Issue increasingly predictable and even dull. Let’s take a look at the rankings for the last three years: Read more…

Metropolis was saddened to learn today of the death of William J. Mitchell, the former dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and, most recently, the director of the MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities research group. According to an obituary by the MIT News Office, Mitchell died on June 11 after a long battle with cancer. He was an influential urban theorist, a prolific author, and a passionate advocate of creating more sustainable cities through technology. “Our cities are fast transforming into artificial ecosystems of interconnected, interdependent intelligent digital organisms,” he wrote in a 2006 essay for Metropolis. Last March, Mitchell spoke to us about his team’s efforts to reinvent the automobile by introducing ultralightweight, battery-powered vehicles into dense urban areas. “It’s important to get the technology and the policy right,” he said, “but in the end, the way you break a logjam is by engaging people’s imagination, people’s desire, by creating things that they never thought of before.”

Donations can be made to the Learning Prep School at 1507 Washington St., West Newton, MA 02465, where a technology fund will be established in Mitchell’s memory.