March 13 is the early bird deadline to enter the Core77 Design Awards competition. The imminent date prompted me to inquire about how this unique awards program, now in its second year, is evolving. So I asked director Jacqueline Khiu to talk about how this global, digitally savvy, highly connective competition is incorporating some of the lessons learned, the merits of direct communication between judges and entrants (a first in design competition history), and moments of elation (a video of one judge popping a Prosecco cork in celebration to a job well done by all involved).

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Zuccotti Park, before and after Occupy Wall Street, image via Curbed NY

If you believe that good and bad intentions eventually circle around to some sort of cosmic resolution—karma, if you will—then the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park are sweet indeed. Why? Zuccotti Park (named for John Zuccotti, former deputy mayor, former planning commissioner, chairman of the real estate behemoth Brookfield Properties, and all around operator—a deep pocketed capitalist, if you will) is one of those strange New York anomalies: privately owned public space. The park, which until the protesters arrived was very much under the radar, is the product of a 1961 zoning ordinance that gave developers (like John Zuccotti) extra height in exchange for the creation of plazas, parks and atriums, which they were in turn responsible for maintaining and keeping open to the public. The Plaza Bonus, as it was called, inspired more than 500 of these hybrid spaces. Some, like the atrium at the IBM Building, were genuine public amenities; others were altogether forlorn and “parks” in name only.

Zuccotti Park (originally called Liberty Plaza Park—think barren and windswept) was created in 1969, when U.S. Steel was given an extra 500,000 square feet of office space at nearby 1 Liberty Plaza . And guess who owns the 54-story building and adjacent park today? Brookfield Properties. So it all ties together rather neatly: the protesters were allowed to gather in Zuccotti Park because the Plaza Bonus that created it allowed them to.

Somewhere Holly Whyte is smiling.

Related: Martin Pedersen explains the fallout of the plaza bonus in this Metropolis film, My Banal Neighborhood.

Southern view from 114th Street

The waterfront park along Manhattan’s East River Esplanade (60^th to 125^th Streets) is in disrepair, even sinking into the water in spots. An ambitious redesign is called for. Last month, CIVITAS’, a non-profit organization that works to improve land use and zoning policies on the Upper East Side and East Harlem, announced an ideas competition for major infrastructural improvements for the linear park. The competition closes on January 15, 2012.

Reimagining the Waterfront is only the first step toward developing a new vision to improve the Esplanade, indeed to improve lives in many, diverse communities along the river. Open to architects, landscape architects, urbanists and design students, the competition is intended to produce exceptional designs and ideas that will profoundly enhance the public’s relationship with the park and river, and bridge the urban and the aquatic.

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For a month now New York’s Zuccotti Park has been a digitally radiating lamentation of capitalism’s cruelest traits. The Great Recession, the park’s inhabitants say, made it impossible to mask hypercompetitive, socially atomizing forces inherent in the status quo. It’s an odd scene set against the forbidding façade of World Trade Center One, rising comically out of proportion to every unfortunate park, street or building near its base. Somewhere down there the general assemblies of Zuccotti Park scramble for alternatives to the system of irrational speculation that, incidentally, spawned WTC One. What would that system look like?

The major critique of Occupy Wall Street is that they haven’t uniformly articulated such a system yet.  But their spontaneous reinvention of Zuccotti Park offers glimpses of alternative urban design in real time. It brings to life the art world’s increasingly popular genre of social experimentation. As I’ve written about before, the temporary Guggenheim Lab used vacant space to invite civic input on urban design alongside a stream of expert informers. Creative Time’s “Living as Form” in the Lower East Side’s historic Essex Street Market did much the same thing, but from a consciously radical perspective in tune with the emergent zeitgeist. The exhibit, which closed Sunday, was a study of how to foster substantive social interaction.

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As a writer, Sandra Steingraber has the eloquence and urgency of Rachel Carson. As a biologist, she has a fiercely acute perspective on how human health is affected by the many outputs of so many clever human inventions. Her latest book is Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis (Da Capo Press, 2011). In 10 elegantly framed chapters, Steingraber gives both a personal account of a family attempting to live a healthy life in upstate New York and a scientist’s look at the issues that make that so very challenging. The combination is powerful: The litany of facts about hydraulic fracturing, neurotoxins, and ecosystem services would leave readers grasping for hope. But the stories, such as why she uses a blade mower to mow her lawn, provide just that measure of hope.

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Photos: Robert Vizzini

It was one of the most profound pieces of public art I’d ever seen.  The tribute first appeared on the night of March 11, 2002, six months after the World Trade Center attacks: twin beams of light, pointed to the heavens, emanating from close to the site.  It literally stopped me in my tracks. I remember standing on the sidewalk—five or six miles away—looking up at the lights slicing through the clouds, disappearing into infinity, thinking: this is the ultimate memorial.

Tribute in Light—designed by John Bennett, Gustavo Bonevardi, Richard Nash Gould, Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda, with Paul Marantz as lighting consultant—became an annual event, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, appearing at dusk every September 11 and fading with the dawn of the following day. It has remained remarkably powerful, largely because of its impermanence. Read more…

Individuals send messages about themselves that they feel are important and set a mood through the way they personalize their homes – they make certain sorts of experiences more likely than others. Organizations also convey information and produce psychological effects through the design of public environments. HOK’s New York office is a place that works because it effectively uses its design, and particularly its art collection, to encourage desired conversations.

Photo: Eric Laignel

The art pieces and photographs used throughout the HOK office represent applied branding, while the views of exemplary architecture framed by the classic modernist windows in the space are integral to the office’s design. All three elements matter and have a significant influence on visitor experience, but the art and photos are the focus of this discussion.

During an interview, Rick Focke, the Director of Interior Design at HOK and lead designer for the New York office, explained in detail how the office’s designers used 8 to 9 pieces of purchased art and a collection of photographs and models from client projects, to put viewers in the mood for productive, thoughtful conversation. The art intrigues viewers and leads them to wonder what is being expressed in the piece, as HOK wants to inspire visitors of its offices to be inquisitive, alert, and questioning. Read more…

The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 was a visionary approach that reshaped New York’s underlying structure, separating Manhattan from the old organic cities, while still defining it today. To acknowledge the success of the grid model made possible by John Randel, Jr., and celebrate its 200^th anniversary this year, The Center for Architecture opened an exhibition, Mapping the Cityscape, on July 6, exploring the ways in which mapping influences our perception of the environment. The exhibition includes maps ranging from 1609 to present day interpretations, taking into account the technological advances and methodologies that are shaping our urban landscape.

Spanning across the walls at this exhibition are a wide range of cartographic representations, including ecological, cultural, planning, civil data, location-based, user-generated, Google and Tauranac transportation maps.  Read more…

Prior to moving to New York nine months ago, I knew and cared very little about architecture. Or at least I thought it would never be a subject that would interest me. But it was hard to stay ignorant to the built environment in this densely structured city, when it holds such a variety of architectural expressions. From neoclassical to Art Deco to high modern aesthetic, the distinguishing styles of the surrounding buildings define each distinct neighborhood in Manhattan, teaching its inhabitants to be aware of architecture.

Last Friday, I joined a group of 200 architecture-enthusiasts on the first day of their Archiprix International study program. Developed and sponsored by Hunter Douglas since 2001, the biennial architectural tour takes a large group of architects, manufacturers, landscape and urban designers to architectural landmarks in vibrant global destinations. The successful program has traveled to Rotterdam, Istanbul, Glasgow, Shanghai, and Montevideo in the past, and this year Archiprix brings its tour across the Atlantic to examine American architectural history and recent developments.

The 2011 program kicked off on June 3^rd, with a keynote presentation by New York’s chief urban designer, Alex Washburn, in the brightly-lit auditorium of the New York Times Building designed by Renzo Piano. Washburn covered a brief history of Manhattan, and shared the influential ideas of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jane Jacobs, and Robert Moses, all who shaped the city’s approach to planning. He explained the city’s efforts to prepare, with design solutions, for climate change. Washburn’s presentation was an informative introduction to the day’s activities, providing a foreign audience with the background and context for New York’s urban planning. We, members of the audience, discussed our fascination with the co-inhabitation of the High Line’s greenway alongside flashy new buildings by noted architects in the grungy Meatpacking district of former slaughterhouses.

After dividing into smaller collectives–my group included visitors from Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands—with representatives from Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. Guided by two knowledgeable New Yorkers, we navigated through the city on a small coach, observing the contrast between our back-to-back visits with a relaxing lunch in Little Italy in between.

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Places succeed when they support people’s activities. An office works when employees can collaborate and concentrate, whenever they need to do so. A concert hall performs well when the whole audience can see and hear. Such places are designed to support people who use them, psychologically and physically. They are honest expressions of need and intentions. 

One such supportive space is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Sackler Wing, where I like to visit when I’m in Manhattan. Read more…