It’s no secret that the United States Postal Service is hitting hard times. Budget shortfalls have led to talk of ending Saturday mail deliveries, meanwhile delivery operations have already begun consolidating across much of the country. And while snail mail may be anachronistic in the era of electronic communications, the retrenchment puts at risk many of the storied structures that have housed the Postal Service for decades. In New York City, several historic structures face uncertain futures as they are considered for sale as part of this process.

At the south end of the Bronx’s Grand Concourse, the Bronx General Post office commands an entire block. Opened in 1936, the monumental structure is fronted on the outside with grand arched windows and a pair of sculpted figures. Inside, several New Deal-era murals by the prominent Lithuanian-American artist Ben Shahn cover the walls. These magnificent murals depict laborers milling textiles, farming, and engaged in other work. Shahn is well known for his left-leaning political artwork during the first half of the 20^th century, as well as for his involvement with the controversial Diego Rivera mural in Rockefeller Center. Read more…

Congo Street Initiative, Dallas, TX. Courtesy of Congo Street Initiative

As an architect and advocate for better urban environments, I am excited about my new role as director of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence at the Bruner Foundation (Cambridge, MA). The biennial award, founded in 1987 by architect and adaptive reuse pioneer Simeon Bruner, recognizes places distinguished by innovative design and their social, economic, and environmental contributions to the urban environment. To date, the RBA has recognized 67 projects and awarded $1.2 million to support urban initiatives.

In the world of U.S. design competitions, the RBA is unique. We ask our applicants to submit detailed written analyses of their projects—from multiple perspectives—along with descriptive images. And entries must have been in operation long enough to demonstrate their impact on their communities. Our  selection process includes intensive site visits to our finalists’ projects to help us fully understand how their places work.

Inspiration Kitchens, Chicago, IL. Courtesy of Inspiration Kitchens

The RBA selection committee meets twice: first to select five finalists and again to select the Gold Medal winner. Assembled anew for each award cycle, the committee comprises six urban experts including a mayor, design and development professionals, and a past award winner. This year’s group includes mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, planner Ann Coulter from Chattanooga, landscape architect Walter Hood from Hood Studio in Oakland, architect Cathy Simon from Perkins+Will in San Francisco, Metropolis Editor-in-Chief Susan S. Szenasy, and Jane Werner, executive director of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the 2007 Gold Medal winner. The committee reviewed 90 applications from 31 states and the District of Columbia to choose the 2013 five finalists. Collectively, the projects they chose represent a diversity of creative, collaborative approaches and scales in tackling significant urban challenges:

• Congo Street Initiative - Dallas, TX - submitted by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP
  The sustainable rehabilitation of five houses and street infrastructure along with construction of a new home that provided transitional housing, in collaboration with resident families
• Inspiration Kitchens – Chicago, IL – submitted by Inspiration Corporation
  An 80-seat restaurant providing free meals to working poor families and market-rate meals to the public as well as workforce training and placement
• Louisville Waterfront Park – Louisville, KY – submitted by Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation
  An 82-acre urban park developed over more than two decades that reconnects the city with the Ohio River
• The Steel Yard - Providence, RI – submitted by Klopfer Martin Design Group
  The redevelopment of an abandoned, historic steel fabrication facility into a campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing
• Via Verde - Bronx, NY – submitted by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses
  A 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development in the Bronx designed as a model for healthy and sustainable urban living

Louisville Waterfront Park, Louisville, KY. Courtesy of Louisville Waterfront Park

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New York City is hosting a month-long celebration of architecture and design with its second annual Archtober festival. Scores of events are being held throughout the five boroughs to honor the city’s built history. The program—hosted by AIA New York, the Center for Architecture, and dozens of institutions—includes rare site tours, exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, walking tours, and even an architectural boat tour; a complete guide can be downloaded from the Archtober website. Select highlights include:

This past weekend the Center for Architecture hosted, Walking Tour of the 9/11 Memorial and World Trade Center Site: Urban Planning and the History of the New and Original WTC, led by Doug Fox. The tour began at the southeast corner of Liberty Street and Trinity Place. The tour is held every month and will also take place on November 3 and December 1. More information is available here.

On the 19th there will be a special public preview of the soon-to-open FDR Four Freedoms Park on the southernmost tip of Roosevelt Island. Thirty-eight years since the announcement of the park and appointment of Louis Kahn as architect in 1973, the park will finally open as “a beacon to America’s purpose and commitment to Freedom,” overlooking the United Nations to the west. A film documenting the importance of FDR’s legacy and the significance of the park, narrated by Orson Welles, can be viewed here.

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Rockefeller Center

When I found out that Barry Lewis joined the Open House New York 10th Anniversary Advisory Council, I was eager to get him to talk about his favorite city. His answers to questions about local lore, architecture, neighborhoods, money, people—everything New York—will amuse, entertain, and enlighten one and all. I, for one, am grateful to have someone of Barry’s commitment and enthusiasm on the New York scene. On the eve of OHNY (October 6th and 7th), here is what our very own New York mavin has to say about his metropolis. Dig in and enjoy!

Photo courtesy Dianne Arndt

Susan S. Szenasy: If there is one thing you could tell a friend from abroad about New York City, as it relates to the design (or lack of it) you encounter here every day, what would that be? Please explain.

Barry Lewis: Money.  It’s all about making money.  It’s why the Dutch founded us. New York’s architecture is pure speculation: build it, rent it, sell it, tear it down, and build something bigger.  So New York’s buildings are usually safely commercial in design: they want to be noticed (so they’ll rent) but don’t think them too weird. And if they’re “artsy”, as in the starchitect buildings of today—-it’s only to bring in more $ per sq. ft. However, squoosh together all this capitalist striving on a narrow little island set off by frame-setting rivers, and what do you have? One of the most thrilling skylines in the world.

SSS: I’d like to dip into your extensive knowledge of NYC history. Which is your very favorite period in the making of our city? In that period, pick a building or a place or neighborhood that exemplifies the ethos of its time and explain how it does that.

BL: The Beaux-Arts era at the turn of the 20th century was New York’s coming of age as a world capital, at a time when we Americans loved cities and wanted to make them not only beautiful but democratic.  So within a 25 year time span we have everything from the 42nd Library and the Metropolitan Museum to small gems like the Frick and the Morgan; we have urbane and brilliantly planned transportation complexes principally Grand Central and Penn Station; we have the beginning of apartment house living on the Upper West Side and soon Park Avenue and skyscraper office buildings sprouting around Wall Street and its offshoot, Madison Square. Downtown—Wall Street—was the center of the financial universe and romantic towers like the Singer and the Woolworth buildings announced the city’s ascendancy. Yes, the Lower East Side and Harlem were tightly packed slums but in the next generation (as we know in hindsight) would come the Harlem Renaissance uptown and the subway suburbs from the Bronx to Brooklyn where 1920s strivers could find a middle class lifestyle and got themselves out of the slums.

Barry Lewis outside the New York Public Library, Photo courtesy NY Magazine 1985

The Beaux-Arts and Art Deco eras (the 1920s and 30s) were the last eras when we Americans actually liked cities. Only in the last dozen years or so has the American middle class re-discovered “city” life. Since we spent the 50 years in between doing everything possible to destroy our great urban centers, it’s amazing our American cities all haven’t gone the way of Detroit.

SSS: You must have hundreds of great places you like to visit in NYC; can you list 10 here? And give some detailed historic information about one.

10 places + annotations?  In New York City?   That’s probably a book.  Here goes, off the top of my head:

1. Rockefeller Center  (pictures above) the best skyscraper complex I’ve ever seen.

I grew up with it, loved it then, love it even more today. It marries the skyscraper with the traditional city brilliantly weaving Le Corbu’s “slabs”, Beaux-Arts ideas of city planning, German Expressionist visions of cathedral-like symbolism, and steel cage construction whose flexibility and strength give us an underground shop-lined “street” system, among the world’s first extensively covered shopping malls. All this was wrapped around a new Subway line (under Sixth Avenue) making the entire project  “green” in conception. Plus it gave us Radio City Music Hall where I had the best time as a kid in the 50s seeing first-run movies on that one-of-a-kind screen with the Rockettes “thrown in” between the movies, newsreel, cartoon, and film short all for the 25 cent price of admission.

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When we tell people that Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects is based in New York City, the standard response goes like this: “What is left to landscape in such a densely settled city? Where do you find nature?” Our answer: “A LOT. Nature is all around you!”

Newport Green, Newport, NJ
Photo credit: Mathews Nielsen

The most challenging aspects of our work here are the variations in growing conditions, soils, aspect, drainage patterns, and the many different program types we find in urban landscapes. Site specific is a requirement; it is the landscape architect’s modus operandi.

Hunt’s Point Landing Revetment Pools, Bronx, NY
Photo credit: Mathews Nielsen/NYC Economic Development Corporation

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We picked seven absolutely stellar graduating projects from design schools around the world for the round-up in our July/August issue, but we found many more that were equally worthy of our attention. Graduate students in industrial design, architecture, and communication design are traversing disciplinary boundaries, and stepping out of the cocooned world of the design school to take on some heavy challenges.

Here are some more nuanced, fully resolved prototypes and concepts, in various shapes and sizes, and designed for very diverse situations and communities, but with one thing in common—they’re ambitious, and they’re ready to be implemented.

Beinetna: The conversation starts with us from Bint Beinetna on Vimeo.

Leen Sadder,
MFA Design, School of Visual Arts, New York
How to get women in Lebanon to talk to each other about health and sexuality, freely and confidentially? Use the metaphor of a ladies room. Beinetna (meaning “between us” in Arabic) is a Beirut-based youth initiative, a private online platform where girls can ask a simple question, and spark off an anonymous conversation.

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Photographer Sylivia Plachy, mother of Adrian Brody, student of Andre Kertesz, and at one time a Metropolis photo columnist continues to be an inspiration to me. Her eye is unerring when it comes to capturing the richness and pathos of humanity in the built environment. Her new show, This Side of Paradise, opens on April 4^th and runs through June 5, a the Andrew Freedman Home, in the Bronx. She originally took the photos of the inhabitants of room 246 to accompany an article by Vivian Gornick for The Village Volice in 1980. Here Sylvia talks about the experience of then, and putting together the show now.

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