Archinect - News

PAU releases updated renderings for Niagara Falls Heritage Gateways project

2023-12-12T17:17:00-05:00

Preliminary renderings for the $12 million Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU)-led Niagara Falls Heritage Gateways project have been released following a public meeting to discuss plans in the border city.

The multi-phase initiative will strengthen the connection between the city’s downtown and Niagara Falls State Park and Riverway Tree Walk. Four canopied gateway structures will be enacted as part of its design, offering tourists views of the nearby American Rapids and Goat Island and connected by a “network” of promenades and shaded open spaces.

Rendering of the Riverway Tree Walk at night. Image courtesy PAU

The initial phase calls for the redevelopment of Hydraulic Power Plaza and Niagara Gorge Gateway Park followed by the construction of the Tree Walk, which includes a viewing platform to be placed at a wooded clearing and serving as a beacon for visitors between downtown and the Riverway.

Hydraulic Power Plaza. Image courtesy Hargreaves Jones Landscape Architecture

“T...

Studio Gang to design new home for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Upstate New York

2023-12-01T12:29:00-05:00

Studio Gang has revealed plans for the new home of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Upstate New York.

Located in the town of Garrison, the 13,850-square-foot performing arts space is set to become the first-ever LEED Platinum theater design in the United States when it is completed.

Nelson Byrd Woltz will provide landscaping for the site, a 98-acre former golf course that was donated to the company in 2020. Anchored by an open-air theater, the design frames the surrounding natural landscape to allow for actors to emerge from the topography.

Image courtesy Studio Gang

A timber-framed shell with wooden columns that supports the proscenium arch is carefully oriented to frame the surrounding Wey-Gat (or “Wind Gate”) for the audience and players. The remaining program calls for the construction of several small pavilions that will house the company's back-of-house operations, theater concessions, and standalone public restrooms. Costs of the project were not available at press ...

Take a look inside Magazzino Italian Art's new minimalist Robert Olnick Pavilion

2023-10-05T12:26:00-04:00

Alberto Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo of MQ Architecture have delivered a new 13,000-square-foot expansion to the ten-acre campus of Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, New York.

Sited on the grounds perpendicular to Quismondo’s existing L-shaped main museum building from 2017, the Robert Olnick Pavilion repeats the scale, cornice lines, layout, and materiality of the older structure while adding much-needed room for educational and events programming in time for the start of the fall arts season. The pavilion was inaugurated in September, joining OMA and Cooper Roberston’s new AKG Art Museum expansion in Buffalo as one of the most important American cultural and museum sector commissions of the year.

Photo by Javier Callejas. Courtesy Magazzino Italian Art.

The scheme is designed to showcase the museum’s arte provera, Murano glass, and ceramics holdings, with two airy, light-filled galleries complemented by another cube-like “isotropic room” from Baeza elevated above the main v...

Architecture Research Office reveals plans for Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape in Upstate New York

2023-09-21T19:38:00-04:00

Architecture Research Office (ARO), in partnership with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (NYS OPRHP) and The Olana Partnership (TOP), has today revealed a new plan for the Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape at the Olana State Historic Site in Upstate New York.

The new Center is the centerpiece of a larger master plan designed in 2015 by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW). The scheme includes a restoration of the famed Hudson River School painter’s self-designed farm and homestead, which was constructed on the property between 1860 and 1900. ARO’s Center will serve as the new visitors arrival gateway overlooking the Catskills range at the site’s historic core, ensuring that their experience will be compatible with the surrounding landscape and vistas beyond.

Featuring a mass timber design, the total 4,500-square-foot structure includes a broad outdoor terrace and large bird-safe glazed windows. CLT roof panels combine with e...

Worrell Yeung designs sleek porous spa shed for family home in upstate New York

2023-06-28T13:41:00-04:00

As part of a residential project within the agrarian landscape of Westchester County in upstate New York, Worrell Yeung designed a simple, yet striking, sculptural spa shed. The structure joins a collection of new and existing buildings for this family home.

The firm’s North Salem Farm project combines a renovated and expanded main home, a new photography studio/garage, and spa shed on the northwest side of a 8.7-acre triangular lot. The home is integrated into the landscape as it slopes downwards from the street towards a pond and hillside.

Drawing: Worrell Yeung

The team employed a site strategy that shields the main house from the adjacent street and focuses views from each structure toward the landscape. The three buildings reflect the archetypal form of the American barn, however, they are distinguished by various approaches to cladding and material detail.

Photo by Naho Kubota

“We didn’t want a monotonous experience of moving from one dark clad building to the next,” says co-p...

PAU to lead the design of a new gateway enhancement project at Niagara Falls

2023-01-06T09:00:00-05:00

Vishaan Chakrabarti’s Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) has been selected to lead the design of the new $12 million Niagara Falls Heritage Gateways project, the studio unveiled via a press announcement on Thursday.

The project’s brief calls for the creation of four gateway structures and will supposedly enhance connections between downtown Niagara Falls and the popular state park in an extension of a previous strategic plan begun by PAU and the state in early 2021.

Images courtesy of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU)

"We're thrilled to continue our work with New York State in Niagara Falls with an expanded team including landscape architects Hargreaves Jones," Chakrabarti said of the new collaboration."The Niagara Falls Heritage Gateways project is a chance to demonstrate how thoughtful design can restore rather than remake our cities."

Images courtesy of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU)

"It is by building on a foundation of shared history — instead ...

Maya Lin's second academic building will deliver a new performing arts studio to Bard College

2022-10-26T14:19:00-04:00

New York’s Bard College has announced a new commission from architect Maya Lin that will deliver a performing arts studio building to its 540-acre Annandale-on-Hudson campus.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer will team with Bialosky and acoustic specialists Charcoalblue to deliver a 25,000-square-foot space just west of the school’s Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center.

According to Bard, the sloping green-roofed building will contain five separate “state-of-the-art” studios connected by a series of “gathering hubs” that will host the school’s Fisher Center LAB residency program while doubling as a font for creative exploration for Bard students and faculty.

Lin is in the midst of a banner year following two high-profile commissions for the new Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan and the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. The school notes this will...

Meet crafty collaborators Lang Architecture: Your Next Employer?

2022-06-07T12:47:00-04:00

For the inaugural edition of our Meet Your Next Employer series, we shine the spotlight on New York-based Lang Architecture.

From their studio on Broadway in Manhattan, the firm is led by principal Drew Lang, who started the practice having settled in NYC after his architectural training at Yale University: A journey he outlined in a 2020 feature on Archinect.

Now counting over a dozen members, the firm is currently advertising for three positions on Archinect Jobs: a Project Architect, a Project Designer, and an Interior Designer.

Chelsea Townhouse by Lang Architecture

Through what Lang calls “generational sustainability through connected design,” the studio places a strong emphasis on collaborations, dialogues, and partnerships in its work. This attention to dialogue includes client-facing discussions about needs and desires but also extends into the design community itself. “Collaboration with artists, craftspeople, and the design community is essential to our approach,” Lang no...

Marc Thorpe Design launches design & build agency focused on delivering affordable solar-powered homes

2022-05-03T19:51:00-04:00

NYC-based architecture and design studio Marc Thorpe Design has launched a design & build agency in New York’s West Catskills dedicated to the development of affordable solar-powered homes.

Called Edifice Upstate, the agency was formed in collaboration with local builders and green technology companies. It serves to make available, affordable, contemporary homes equipped with sustainable technology.

The initiative was driven by the increased demand for simpler, more remote lifestyles that became sought after following the pandemic. Edifice Upstate follows the development of the team’s housing concept called The Edifice, a 500-square-foot, solar-powered cabin, in 2019.

As stated by the architects: “The Edifice is an exercise in reduction, to live with only what is necessary and self-reliance.” This is evident in the home’s physical isolation and self-sustaining infrastructure. The program of the dwelling is divided into four zones: live, cook, dine, and sleep, and the systems that su...

An army of gamers is building a Minecraft version of New York's state capital

2022-01-21T12:43:00-05:00

Minecraft lovers may soon be able to wander around a virtual Albany. A voluntary group of builders associated with Build the Earth Northeast USA is building the city and other parts of the Capital Region into the game.

The organization is made up of thousands of volunteer gamers who have produced successful virtual versions of other cities distributed across regional networks. Building in the hugely popular MMOG has seen a renaissance of late thanks to a mod intervention which produced construction techniques that lead to the ability for designers to create taller and taller structures using something called cubic chunks. The groups ask applicant designers to construct a virtual Long Island test home as part of their official vetting process.

The Albany build is being overseen by a splinter called Build the Earth Northeast USA. The group says it is currently in the process of constructing the state’s capitol building (itself designed in tandem between 1867 and 1899) and has already finished former Governor Nelson Rockefeller's obsessive dream Empire State Plaza and the marble Erastus Corning Tower and has preparatory plans for the New York State Museum to follow. Project managers say they have st...

Cooper Robertson tapped to lead major downtown Utica redevelopment project

2022-01-19T16:55:00-05:00

An important but underutilized piece of the cultural fabric of Upstate New York is getting a makeover thanks to a new master plan for Utica’s Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute from Cooper Robertson.

The 103-year-old institute’s campus features a Pratt-affiliated school, performance center, and centerpiece International Style art museum designed by Philip Johnson in 1960. The master plan will address space issues within the existing campus buildings in addition to authoring changes that will aid the institute in its expanded effort to offer itself to the surrounding community as an enhanced public resource.

"This project will be about making the entire Munson-Williams environment into a more welcoming destination,” Cooper Robertson's Mike Aziz said in a statement. “We see so many opportunities for the campus to open up, embrace a broader community, and strengthen its role as an anchor for the neighborhood, the city, and the region.”

The project will also include the constructi...

Frank Lloyd Wright’s upstate mushroom-shaped house asks $1.5M

2017-11-06T14:46:00-05:00

In Pleasantville, New York is a 1947 Usonian community of 50 houses that blend in with their surrounding landscape. All were approved by Frank Lloyd Wright, but three were built by the architect himself, the Sol Friedman House being one. Famous for its mushroom-shaped roofs and carport, the incredible home is now for sale asking $1.5 million.

courtesy of Houlihan Lawrence

UPSTATE at Syracuse University

2012-03-15T16:04:00-04:00

UPSTATE was created [as a] framework for sustained collaboration with the community and the city—in our case a post-industrial city in upstate New York that's been grappling with a shrinking population, eroding tax base, crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools, cash-strapped services. The challenges aren't new—they're the challenges of cities all across the rust belt—but they're real, and they're intensifying.

Continuing a series on university design centers, Places editor Nancy Levinson interviews Julia Czerniak and Joe Sisko of UPSTATE at Syracuse University.

The slideshow features work by Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Cook+Fox, ARO and Della Valle Bernheimer, Onion Flats, the Near West Side Initiative, and others.