Archinect - News

BIG unveils design for new Freedom Plaza development along Manhattan's East River

2024-02-12T19:35:00-05:00

Plans for a four-tower scheme designed by BIG for the east side of Manhattan have been announced by developers Soloviev Group and Mohegan in advance of its commencement in Midtown.

Their transformative Freedom Plaza project will be realized on a 6.7-acre plot near the United Nations complex overlooking the FDR Drive and East River between 38th and 41st Street at First Avenue.

Rendering by Negativ

The program calls for two pairs of hotel and condominium towers connected via a skybridge, and addressing the Queens shoreline with a landscaped park and small Museum of Freedom and Democracy forming in the ground-level plaza underneath. A total of 4.77 acres of publicly accessible space will be included therein, flanked by the 1,325-unit residential component to the southern orientation. Nearly half (40%) will be dedicated to affordable housing, according to the project announcement.

Rendering by Negativ

A casino space tied to the developer's bid for one of three available gambling license...

Friends of +POOL responds to inventor Dong-Ping Wong’s ‘bittersweet’ thoughts on the project

2024-01-25T14:22:00-05:00

'Friends of +POOL' have issued Archinect with a response to our recent reporting of concerns raised by Dong-Ping Wong, the project’s inventor and architect.

Reacting to news that the long-planned project had received $16 million in city and state funding, Wong described the step as “bittersweet” in a post shared on Instagram before expressing various concerns about the scheme.

“+ POOL's record on swim education and swim accessibility for communities of color speaks for itself,” Friends of +POOL Managing Director Kara Meyer said in a statement provided to Archinect. “Friends of + POOL has made DEI a major priority in its policies and programs, which is why it was a centerpiece of both the Governor and the Mayor’s announcements at the Jan 5 press conference.”

Responding to Dong-Ping Wong's criticism of “the long-standing lack of diversity of the + POOL board,” Gabriel Einsohn, PR Advisor to Friends of +POOL, commented that “four of nine board members are women and people of color.” Wh...

New York +POOL creator Dong-Ping Wong says new funding is ‘bittersweet,’ voicing concerns over gentrification and accessibility

2024-01-15T11:36:00-05:00

The long-planned +POOL in New York City has moved a step closer to realization, with Governor Kathy Hochul’s office announcing the allocation of $16 million for the project. Originally conceived in 2010, the scheme is designed as a self-filtering, plus sign-shaped pool in New York's rivers.

Reacting to news of the funding, project inventor and designer Dong-Ping Wong commended the city and state’s commitment to the project, along with the “tireless work of the organization and collaborators after years of pushing.” However, the architect also described the news as “bittersweet,” and expressed concerns that the project may have departed from the ethos that conceived it.

“When I started + POOL the goal wasn't to just build a pool,” Wong explained in a statement on Instagram. “The goal was to see if it was possible to make big civic changes to the city from the ground up for places that often get overlooked. When we decided to start a nonprofit in 2015, it was based on the ideal that a...

PAU-designed The Refinery at Domino reopens Brooklyn's most iconic building to the modern workplace

2023-09-27T15:25:00-04:00

A landmark era of high-profile additions and architectural changes to the historic Brooklyn waterfront has ushered in a new chapter with today’s official public unveiling of the PAU-designed The Refinery at Domino office component at the 11-acre former Domino Sugar Factory site in Williamsburg.

The new, 15-story glass commercial space was constructed inside the building’s old brick masonry shell, offering tenants 460,000 square feet of Class A office space enhanced by carefully-inserted biophilic elements and marked by the firm’s attenuation to ascendant health and wellness considerations typical in modern workplace design.

Photo: Max Touhey

A 12-foot gap left between the new and old structures provides space for Field Operations’s 17-count in-house arboretum while standardizing a misalignment with the floors and helping to flood the bonetti/kozerski-designed office interiors with natural light and expanded access to vegetation throughout the day.

Photo: Max Touhey

A vaulted 27,000-s...

The long-awaited Plus Pool officially has a home in the East River

2021-05-10T13:44:00-04:00

Originally conceived in 2010 by design consultants Archie Lee Coates and Jeff Franklin along with architect Dong-Ping Wong, the self-filtering, plus sign-shaped swimming pool will allow New Yorkers to swim legally and safely in the polluted East River for the first time in more than 70 years.

After over 10 years of Kickstarter campaigns, benefit parties, filtration tests, meetings with stakeholders, advisors, and entities, from MTV to Mayor Bill de Blasio, presentations, design awards, board member inclusions, garnering public support, community outreach, and plan adjustments, the Plus Pool plan was progressing steadily until the COVID-19 pandemic halted everything.

However, it looks like the innovative pool is moving forward again. “We have an official confirmation to succeed with the next steps for the project,” says Kara Meyer, Plus Pool’s managing director, in a statement to Curbed. “We have a home. Mayoral candidates are talking about it.”

Going forward, the next major hurdl...

New York City seeks proposals for floating East River public pool

2019-09-20T18:30:00-04:00

[New York City's] Economic Development Corporation is seeking ideas for a floating pool that would filter the water of the East River to allow for safe swimming. A similar idea was first announced in 2010 by the nonprofit +POOL, which has been working with the city for years. The pool would likely be built between the north side of Brooklyn Bridge and the south side of Pier 35 on the Lower East Side, according to a request for expressions of interest.

According to 6sqft, New York City was once home to as many as 15 floating river pools, a tradition that originated in the 1870s.

Proposal submissions are due no later than 5:00 PM on October 4, 2019.

A look at some cities revitalizing their blighted rivers

2016-08-24T13:52:00-04:00

Los Angeles wants to rethink its river. [...] And LA isn’t the only metropolis looking to reclaim its once-mocked waterway. Cities around the world are realizing that water can be a cultural and recreational asset, not something to hide or pillage, and it seems no waterway will be wasted for long.

Trading the L Train for a giant inflatable condom?

2016-06-30T17:58:00-04:00

In 2019, New York City's Hurricane Sandy-damaged L Train tunnel will shut down for repairs, making it tricky to get across the East River without a new form of transport. In a competition sponsored by the Van Alen Institute to find alternatives, AECOM suggested building a fiber-glass fabric tunnel for pedestrians that could also double as a projection space.

The tunnel, which an AECOM designer likened to an inflatable condom in this DNA info article, would have segments above and below the water line in order to enable river traffic to pass over it.

However, the super-sized prophylactic ended up being a hard sell, losing out to the docking ferry proposal "Transient Transit" (pictured above) designed by BuroHappold Engineering and Kohn Pederson Fox Associates for the competition's $1,000 prize.

All the latest in river-design news:

From Trash to Beauty and Back Again

2011-10-27T19:53:54-04:00

a floating dome, built with the spokes of dead umbrellas and carried over the waves by the invisible power of empty soda bottles.... was due to begin a monthlong exhibit on Friday in a finger of water in Inwood, at the northern end of Manhattan. “We were floating it on pontoons to Inwood from the South Bronx.” A pause. “We shipwrecked,” she said. “On Rikers Island.” If this is failure, it is of a type rooted in genius.