It’s only the ninth of March and already we’re having trouble keeping up with all this month’s design news. If you’re like us (harried, easily distracted, constantly hungry, etc.), then read on for a quick, painless recap of the month’s biggest design news, so far.

President Obama Appoints Edward Tufte to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel

In his new role, the information-design guru (and vocal PowerPoint critic) will help track and explain the $787 billion in federal stimulus funds. “I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service,” Tufte wrote on his Web site. “And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do.”
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MIT’s New Media Lab Building Opens

Fumohiko Maki’s design draws on Piet Mondrian, George Seurat, and Japanese paper lanterns for a 163,000-square-foot exercise in transparency.

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Read more…

Attention, New York artists and designers: the city’s Department of Transportation just announced  that it is soliciting conceptual designs to refresh the new pedestrian plazas at Times Square. As you may recall, Mayor Bloomberg decided last month to make permanent the five plazas that DOT installed in the area last May. Now the DOT is looking for “a series of economical, temporary surface treatments” to keep these spaces looking good until it’s able to implement a permanent build-out (currently slated to for 2012). Designs must enhance the pedestrian experience, improve the setting for Times Square events, and accommodate fire lanes, crosswalks, and other “use zones.” The complete request for proposals is supposed to go up on the DOT Web site sometime today.

Update: Here’s a direct link to the RFP.

For the second year in a row, David Rockwell has taken on the set design for the Academy Awards—and, also for the second year in a row, it will feature an enormous cascading curtain of Swarovski crystals (92,000 to be exact). Otherwise, the 2010 set will eschew last year’s black-and-blue palette for a brighter, more streamlined look. The glowing white stage covered with circular patterns (and featuring a series of three rotating platforms) evokes, to our eyes, a modern take on a retro style—like a Sixties-era game show, but with considerably more bling. Check out one more rendering after the jump. Read more…

Civic involvement is top of mind in Washington, D.C.—at least in the White House, even if it’s scarce on the Hill. This spring, it will be also on the agenda at the National Building Museum, which, on May 11, will honor three “civic innovators” who have helped build strong communities and neighborhoods, made breakthroughs in clean-energy technology, and aided in recovery from a natural disaster. The honorees are Perkins + Will, the architecture firm well known for its stellar pro-bono work, in addition to its expertise in building stellar schools, hospitals, and other large projects; the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon; and the founders of the New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village (Harry Connick, Jr., Branford Marsalis, Ann Marie Wilkins, and Jim Pate).

Perkins + Will’s Hector Garcia Middle School, in Dallas, was included in our recent survey of outstanding K–12 schools. Photo: James Steinkamp/courtesy Perkins + Will

The designers at Perkins + Will are the first to tell you that their pro-bono work enriches them as practitioners and human beings as much as it helps their clients. Read more…

Now that green design has gone from a fringe concern to an absolute imperative for the architecture community, you have to wonder what, if anything, is the next frontier. The recent publication of New York City’s Active Design Guidelines suggests one possible answer: architecture to get people off their butts.

The Guidelines, which were unveiled at the Center for Architecture last Wednesday, outline how architects, city planners, and other design professionals can encourage daily physical activity among city dwellers. Strategies range from the simple (posting signs encouraging office workers to take the stairs) to the formidably complex (creating a vibrant streetscape with mixed land use, attractive public plazas, and designated bikeways). And although they’re specifically geared to New York, many of them would be relevant anywhere. Read more…

Last month, we wrote about some of the Haiti relief efforts coming from the architecture and design community, including, notably, a long-term reconstruction plan being put forward by Architecture for Humanity. Over the weekend, we received word of a global fundraiser that should help finance AFH’s efforts. On February 20, the creators of Pecha Kucha—the 20-slides-for-20-seconds presentation format that has been adopted in 277 cities–will hold a continuous 24-hour Internet broadcast to solicit donations to help rebuild Haiti. They will be streaming video of 2,000 presentations in 200 cities, starting in Tokyo and  moving eastward around the globe. The organizers are saying that the “WaveCast” may be “the world’s biggest single-day globally-distributed conference.” But you don’t have to wait until the 20th to do your part; visit Pecha Kucka for Haiti to donate now.

To learn more, watch the video announcment (above), with PK cofounder Mark Dytham and AFH’s Cameron Sinclair.

Previously: How Are Architects Responding to the Haiti Disaster?

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. Read more…

Photo: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz, via Flickr

In the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, countless relief organizations have stepped up to provide immediate aid to the Caribbean nation. Architects and designers are contributing as well, and with good reason: Since much of the damage could have been avoided with strictly enforced building codes or earthquake-proof structures, the architecture community will play a key role in ensuring that this disaster does not happen again.

Currently, Cameron Sinclair and Architecture for Humanity are leading the way in reconstruction planning, wisely eschewing a build-now, plan-later approach in favor of a long-term initiative. You can read AFH’s seven-point reconstruction plan here.

Long-term planning is essential, but so is short-term relief. Here is a look at some of the more immediate initiatives proposed by the architecture and design community. (If you know of any important programs we missed, please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with the details.)

• Article 25 is a UK based charity organization that believes that all people deserve adequate housing and shelter. It designs and delivers architectural solutions worldwide to those in need. Article 25 vowed to monitor the international response effort to determine the coordination between key agencies to ensure success in the reconstruction of Haiti.

• The USGBC pledged its support to “rescue and rebuild” Haiti. In the past, the organization has worked in similar natural disaster zones in New Orleans and Greensburg and now promises similar long-term assistance. In the meantime for immediate aid, those interested are asked to donate through the Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief Fund.

• Habitat for Humanity is working to address the problem of immediate shelter in Haiti. The organization is removing the rubble of fallen buildings to begin the rebuilding process. Habitat is also working to provide transitional housing for families displaced by the disaster.

• Engineers without Borders is not providing direct relief.  But it is rallying support for the cause by seeking out French and/or Creole speaking volunteer engineers to assist in the rebuilding process. Since EWB has several ongoing projects in Haiti, it is also possible to donate through its Web site. Read more…

Just before Christmas, the Chicago Department of Environment launched a redesigned Web site for its Chicago Climate Action Plan. The new site details some of the city’s goals for greenhouse-gas reduction (an 80 percent decrease from 1990 levels by 2050, with incremental reduction markers in the meantime), and it provides informational resources to residents: PDFs on the effects of climate change, suggestions for ways businesses can reduce carbon emissions, and a checklist of money-saving energy reductions.

CCAP’s isn’t the only city-run environmental site, and it’s not as comprehensive as, for example, New York’s PlaNYC page, which seems to be the gold standard in the field. But it ranked high in our quick survey of similar Web sites, many of which seemed surprisingly bare-bones; apparently most cities, even big ones like Los Angeles and exceptionally progressive ones like Portland, can’t or won’t commit to high-quality online resources of any type, let alone environmental ones (and you can forget about savvy Web-design). In that company, CCAP fares pretty well—easy enough to navigate, with relatively attractive graphics and a decent amount of information. It’s not spectacular, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Here’s hoping other cities follow suit.

Robert, a new restaurant in the Museum of Arts and Design

When Sarabeth’s closes its Whitney outpost in the middle of this month, it will mark the end of the restaurant’s 19-year presence in the museum’s basement (it was the first private restaurant to operate within a New York City museum).

And when Robert, on the top floor of the Museum of Arts and Design, begins dinner service, also in the middle of this month, it will mark the full opening of the city’s latest museum restaurant (the café currently serves lunch and tea).  As Sarabeth’s closes shop—Danny Meyer, of Shake Shack fame, plans to open a new Whitney eatery in the fall and a pop-up café in the meantime—Robert will hope to duplicate the recipe (figuratively, of course) that kept the Whitney fixture in business since 1991.  The food is billed as “American fare,” but, for now, it’s the décor—custom tables and chairs by the architect Philip Michael Wolfson, lighting by Johanna Grawunder, furniture by Vladimir Kagan, and a video installation by the artist Jennifer Steinkamp—that takes top billing.

Previously: We took a quick look at the Guggenheim Museum’s new restaurant and admired a line of  fiberglass furniture by Vladimir Kagan. In 2008, Peter Hall argued that critics of the Museum of Arts and Design missed the real point of the building.