What if, with a push of a button, you could save one of your favorite historic places?
The Partners in Preservation need your help. They need you to press a button and help decide who should get $3 million.
Some of the places on the list are really well known in New York and beyond; the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Apollo Theater, the Coney Island B&B Carousel… The list goes on and on.
I love bike share. I think it’s a fantastic idea and a great way to make NYC more sustainable, healthy, and livable for residents and visitors alike.
This past Monday, NYC announced that Citibank is the main sponsor for the system. And while I think it’s cute to call “The City’s” bike share “citibike”, I have some reservations.
We all fondly remember our college days and our favorite professor’s ‘additional reading’ list that always followed the 15 page syllabus. Those pages were chalk full of titles that, not being the classics, didn’t make the cut to be required reading. And while some of us still have those lists sitting painfully free of any check marks, others of you need to continuously find new books to feed your knowledge appetite.
So take out your pens, ready your computer’s copy function, because here is another list, and it’s one that will further your understanding of the great topic of sustainability.
The print media, often discussed these days as a dying breed, is alive and well in New York City. Small print-run, specialty publications are able to explore all aspects of architecture in new ways. What are some of the ideas I’ve seen discussed in these small architecture publications?
Visual Arts
Social sciences
Squatters
Architectural Theory
Geographies
Bio-Technical Landscapes
The Pedosphere
Inspiration
Non-Architectural Architecture
The complexity of views, approaches, and applications that exist within the field of architecture is growing, and smaller publications have an inherit flexibility that enables a discourse that is unprecedented. Is it possible that small niche publications can help demonstrate what mainstream publications cannot?
The college experience, a quintessential right of passage, has always been about camaraderie, experiences, and learning. Whether your experience was full of all-nighters, hair-pulling group projects, or last page computer crashes; in the end college prepares us for the “real world” and all its challenges.
On some campuses, learning to deal with real world challenges includes tackling issues surrounding sustainable living. Energy conservation and water conservation are essential parts of living a more sustainable life, and what better way to learn then with a little competition?
The Campus Conservation Nationals, in its 3rd year, is a college residence hall competition that aims to empower students to conserve electricity and water. This year the competition had a national goal, “Race to a Gigawatt”.
Living in a big city can be hard. If you live in New York, you have probably quoted the famous song, “If I make it there, I can make it anywhere.” But Portland-based developer Gerding Edlen recognizes the need for giving a softer side to the city.
They develop buildings that, from my perspective, promise to be soft on communities, soft on the environment, and soft on residents.
Gerding Edlen has spoken with Metropolis before, but now they are considering bringing rental development to the east coast, potentially to New York City. I spoke with Mark Edlen, CEO, about their development plans and how those plans fit into cities like ours, “the city that never sleeps.”
“We’ve seen a movement to the cities. Cities are the solution to our global population growth,” said Edlen. His firm recognizes that people see city living as a way to help solve global problems. They also see how it’s becoming more popular to live a mobile and sustainable urban lifestyle.
I’ve heard zoning called a lot of things: an invisible hand that shapes the city, a legal framework for protecting property investments, and the primary tool for protecting communities and culture. In the end, it’s really a set of rules that tells us what we can or cannot do when it comes to changing the physical forms of our cities. The New York City zoning code, the infamously complex set of guidelines that have helped shaped the city for almost a hundred years, needs to change.
Recently the Center for Architecture held a lecture and panel discussion on the topic. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company spoke to a room full of architects and planners on Miami21, the city’s revamped set of land use regulations. Plater-Zyberk, one of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, acted as lead consultant for the effort.
McGill University professors Dr. Effie Bouras and Ghyslaine McClure are on the hunt. They’re searching for designers and researchers who take innovative approaches to seismic design. The exhibit they’re planning recognizes that the frequent earthquake-related catastrophes often lead to engineered solutions, while leaving out aesthetics. Instead, Bouras and McClure will focus on proposals that do not “sacrifice a design aesthetic for conventional structural solution.” For more, see their website.
Architects, designers, students, professionals, and enthusiasts; all were present for the opening reception at the Center for Architecture exhibitions on the Middle East. The three shows: City of Mirages, Live Feed, and Change begin to weave together a discussion with perspectives on structure, culture, and politics.
At first it seems silly, a stop animation video of plastic form elephants parading through an African refuge.
See? It’s a little silly.
But if you learn a bit about the Eames Elephant and its creators, Charles and Ray Eames, you begin to see that same warm glow that a child feels with this toy. Read more…
If we love it, will it last?
Re-imagining Infrastructure: Part II
Getting to the (living) future… or 100% for all?
The Big Apple vs. the City of Lights
Lab Report: XXVIII
Something old, something new
Nine Lives of Green
Q&A: Nina Rappaport
Tough Love
Made in America
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