Watch out, Nicolai Ouroussoff. There’s a new architecture critic in town. And he’s a very mad man.

John Slattery, the impeccably squinty-eyed actor who plays career scuzz Roger Sterling on AMC’s Mad Men, has no love for a chunky new sanitation facility due to rise over Hudson Square, where he lives with his wife and children, in downtown Manhattan. “It’s incredibly inefficient,” he said squinting in a slick, gently lit art gallery last night at a community rally for an alternative design. (The community being Soho, there was both a popcorn machine and wine.) “It doesn’t take into account the people that live here.”

He went on: “The attention this received has spun the community’s concern for the as-designed project as, ‘We don’t want it in our neighborhood. Not in our backyard.’ That’s not the case at all. All we’re saying is we have a smart, better, cheaper, more responsible, more efficient, more sustainable, and more forward-looking design. It’s better in every way.”

What Slattery and his brethren are championing is, essentially, a greener vision of the neighborhood. Hudson Square is an awkward site off the Hudson River, an industrial ghost town that has only recently fetched up with New York’s (pre-crash) condominium craze. It has since become a wealthy redoubt with scarce few amenities; an ersatz Soho. Residents say it has some of the poorest air quality and among the least public green space in the five boroughs. Now, the city’s gone and made things worse with a plan to erect a monolithic (and vaguely prison-like) 138-foot-tall garbage-truck garage over two acres. Read more…

When the ball drops on Times Square this New Year’s Eve, it will cast 32,256 LEDs flashing some 16 million colors over the scores of kazoo-tooting tourists who people the event each year. It will be bigger, brighter, and glitzier than ever before. It will be, to quote one spokeswoman, “truly befitting the glory of New York.” But will it befit the city’s newfound spotlight on energy efficiency?

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The Philadelphia Phillies clinched the World Series last night with a 4-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays, drawing to a close the longest losing streak of any American city with four professional sports teams. More importantly, it dispelled one of the odder superstitions in American athletic history: the curse of One Liberty Place. 

(Photo: Spikebrennan)

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AvroKO, the New York City design firm that earned its star pairing tailor-made objects with peculiar salvaged goods, has opened its second owned-and-operated restaurant on Manhattan’s famed Bowery. Read more…

Solar 2 Green Energy, Arts and Education Center, New York

A carbon-neutral education facility slated for New York City’s waterfront took home the $100,000 gold prize at the North American Holcim Awards competition for sustainable construction in Montreal Thursday. The project, Solar 2 Green Energy, Arts and Education Center, calls for 13,000 square feet of arts and cultural space on a brownfield site in lower Manhattan that is dedicated to raising awareness of environmental sustainability. It is expected to generate all the energy it uses via geothermal exchange wells, photovoltaic panels, natural ventilation, and a building-enveloping green screen, among other features. The award went to Christopher Collins, executive director of Solar One Green Energy, Arts and Education Center; Colin Cathcart, of Kiss + Cathcart Architects; Nigel Nicholls, of Arup; and Judith Heintz of Wallace Roberts & Todd. Read more…