People Over Cars: What does it mean to pedestrianize a quarter of NYC streets?

2021-03-23T10:34:00-04:00

Over the past year, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, urban life has been transformed. This seems especially true in New York where the pressure of the lockdown was released in a burst with last summer’s uprising against racialized police violence in May and June. With people anxious to spend more time outside, the city launched a series of programs including Open Restaurants and Open Streets. Intending to buoy the struggling foodservice industry and alleviate crowding in New York’s congested public spaces, with the stroke of the Mayor’s pen, restaurants could construct semi-enclosed structures—little cabanas—atop once-precious street parking, and city officials deployed temporary wooden barriers—essentially saw horses—at intersections to create new pedestrianized corridors. Overnight, New Yorkers could dine out in sheltered sidewalk cafes and stroll car-free lanes.

Showcase: Óbidos Technological Park Main Building by Jorge Mealha

2015-01-03T09:00:00-05:00

How does one create a main piazza in the absence of a surrounding urban fabric that typically encloses a Piazza? The design team around architect Jorge Mealha drew from its traditional Portuguese typologies and conceived the Óbidos Technological Park Main Building in the countryside north of Lisbon as contemporary interpretation of a Terreiro.

While just recently completed, the project has already garnered a respectable nomination for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award 2015.

Archinect - Features

People Over Cars: What does it mean to pedestrianize a quarter of NYC streets?

Showcase: Óbidos Technological Park Main Building by Jorge Mealha