Archinect - News

Weiss/Manfredi, Hood Design Studio, and Moody Nolan to design new Amsterdam Avenue enhancements at Lincoln Center

2024-03-04T16:32:00-05:00

The new Amsterdam Avenue face of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will be designed by a team that includes Weiss/Manfredi, Hood Design Studio, and Moody Nolan, the beloved New York City cultural institution announced Monday.

The revitalization plan entails first a radical overhaul of Damrosch Park, which will be transformed into a dynamic new outdoor area for artistic performance and public gatherings. All three firms will impart their extensive experience in public realm designs that has recently included work on the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina and master plan of the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, respectively.

East side of Amsterdam Avenue, north of 62nd Street. Photo by Lawrence Sumulong

The design will take shape in response to a participatory planning process that drew the opinions of over 3,400 New Yorkers and surviving former residents of San Juan Hill, the neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the 14-y...

David Adjaye, Mariam Kamara depart major Liverpool waterfront project

2023-03-29T17:04:00-04:00

Two big-name architects are departing from the National Museums Liverpool (NML) scheme to create a new public realm at the city’s Canning Dock, according to a report published earlier today by the Architects’ Journal.

David Adjaye and Mariam Kamara are now out of the project team for the redevelopment, which includes Asif Khan, Theaster Gates, Arup, and a host of other UK-based firms.

The team first was first announced as the winners of an international competition in October of 2021. Adjaye will reportedly remain on to finish their International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum restorations, which are both separate projects. Neither architect has provided a statement addressing the changes at press time.

An aerial view of Canning Dock. Image: Gary W. Smith

A spokesperson from the museum told AJ simply, “Once the direction of the project was established, the collective agreed that Khan and Gates would take the project forward.”

Ultimately, the £75 million ($92.4 million) project wi...

Don't expect much from King Charles' reign architecturally, these two of his constituent critics say

2022-09-26T12:25:00-04:00

Poundbury, Paisley and Perspectives all ultimately failed to conquer the complex commercial and political challenges they faced. Their royal patron’s attempts to create human-centred townscapes have led to car-dominated suburbs. His efforts to uplift grand historic buildings have carved them into dreary flats. Our King is someone who sees the right problems but, ensconced in the very establishment that prevents meaningful solutions, he can only meddle around the edges of effecting real change.

The new British King is memorably the originator of the panned Poundbury estate that has failed to fall in line with its stated goals towards sustainability and car-free pedestrian orientation, according to Phineas Harper. He thinks the scion is hemmed in by a stolid commercial banking system and arcane land ownership laws and that class differences have otherwise made Charles' ability to gain perspective on the needs of his constituents otherwise impossible. As the Open City director sees it: “His view of society, as of architecture, is restricted to what can be seen from the tinted window of a chauffeured car.”

Previously on Archinect: Richard Rogers challenges Prince Charles to public debate over built environment

Meanwhile, in a different corner of the empire, new ArchitectureAU monthly critic Elizabeth Farrelly says she felt he “proved himself thoroughly unrepentant” during his time as Prince, citing his statements in support of traditionalism, and asking, “is he, as a constitut...

Meet community engagement champions CIVIC: Your Next Employer?

2022-08-15T09:00:00-04:00

Following last week’s visit to Los Angeles-based OPEN OFFICE, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series east to Providence, Rhode Island, where we find CIVIC.

Founded by architect Manuel Cordero, and based in Providence’s Innovation District, CIVIC’s work is defined by an inclusive vision of the built environment, and in particular, the public realm. Their portfolio has thus developed to include a collaboration with Arup on a masterplan for public spaces across Providence, as well as ongoing educational and community projects.

The firm now seeks to expand by advertising for a multidisciplinary designer role on Archinect Jobs. For candidates interested in applying for the position, or anybody interested in learning more about life as an architect, we spoke with CIVIC founder Manuel Cordero for a behind-the-scenes look at the studio.

CIVIC's workspace is in CIC Innovation Campus in Providence. Image via CIVIC

How did CIVIC get started?

I am a licensed architect, but have alway...

The Asphalt Art Initiative expands to more cities as new statistics point to improved pedestrian safety

2022-04-19T20:06:00-04:00

Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced a European expansion of its Asphalt Art Initiative on the heels of a new study from the organization and Sam Schwartz Consulting that revealed some eye-opening statistics about the improvement of blacktop spaces in urban areas. A total of 20 new cities will be given grants of $25,000 each as part of the program’s next round of funding, which has to date gone to fund 45 projects in 41 different locations across the United States.

The joint study of 22 different U.S. test cases revealed that arts-driven transportation projects produce, among other outcomes, a 50% drop in the rate of crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists, a 37% drop in the rate of crashes involving serious injury, another 25% drop in road rage incidents between pedestrian and motorist, and a 27% increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians who have the right-of-way, suggesting tremendous public health and safety benefits overall.

Asphalt Art Initiative, Amsterdam. Lead artist: ...

BIG and WXY propose public realm improvements for Downtown Brooklyn

2019-12-27T16:29:00-05:00

A new plan by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership—a consortium of three business improvement districts—seeks to make room for all of those people by curtailing car access and installing protected bike lanes, colorful street furniture, and monumental gathering spaces.

Despite rapid population growth, Downtown Brooklyn seems to be missing the appeal for the increasing number of pedestrians and cyclists.

The newly unveiled Downtown Brooklyn Public Realm Vision, developed jointly by WXY architecture + urban design and Bjarke Ingels Group in collaboration with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, proposes a number of public realm, streetscape & green infrastructure improvements for an entire neighborhood.

Gallatin Place reimagined. Image courtesy of Downtown Brooklyn Partnership

Following Kansas City, Portland contemplates fareless public transit

2019-12-20T14:07:00-05:00

"I think the public needs to understand that as an agency, we are exploring what [a fareless system] could look like," [TriMet board member Kathy Wai] said. "These conversations are happening at a high level. … I think we are further along in 2019 on the conversation about the funding, what that could look like, and what those mechanisms could be."

Officials with the TriMet regional transit agency in Portland, Oregon have begun to discuss the possibility of embracing free public transit for area residents. The move comes after Kansas City, Missouri announced it would make its public transit free to ride.

Running alongside the push to make transit accessible and free, however, is a recently increase in fare-enforcement efforts in Portland itself and in other major cities nationwide, including Los Angeles and New York City. TriMet receives roughly 18% of its operating budget, roughly $90.9 million, from fare revenue. TriMet recently increased its Safety & Security budget by $4.7 million to $29.4 million in order to have "more people on the system checking fares and enforcing the TriMet Code."

Perkins Eastman reimagines NYC grid for increased pedestrian and shared space

2018-08-31T13:29:00-04:00

The city grid, which once served to organize the development of private real estate by providing access to land parcels, now has a more pressing role to play in making cities livable. Our reimagining of the grid starts from the premise that how we use public rights of way no longer meets the city’s needs, so we should transform the streets radically, dedicating them to pedestrians.

Jonathan Cohn and Yunyue Chen propose a new pedestrian plan for Manhattan's grid grouping blocks into larger neighborhoods and organizing streets into either thoroughfares or local streets. Cohn leads the transportation and public infrastructure studio of Perkins Eastman, while Chen received the 2017 Perkins Eastman’s Architectural Fellowship for the Public Realm.

Manhattan grid divided into thoroughfare and local streets. Image: Perkins Eastman.

Their plan is a combination of the Dutch shared street idea of woonerf and the Barcelona “superblocks”. Shared, local streets would include continuous, curbless, and textured surfaces with cues that conform drivers to speeds of about 6 miles per hour.

Example of a shared street with less vehicle access and more pedestrian space. Image: Perkins Eastman.

"Superblocks" are limited to local traffic inside and would be sectioned off by thoroughfare streets with local streets in between. Local streets would always be within a 5 minute walk of any...

Duvall Decker Architects combine greater agency and public outreach to benefit Mississippi (and the profession at large)

2017-02-21T18:12:00-05:00

Since they founded Duvall Decker nearly 20 years ago, the Deckers, as they’re known, have focused mostly on neglected corners in and around Jackson, Mississippi’s capital. To pay the bills, the two have redefined for themselves the ambit of a small architectural practice. They have become developers and even branched into building maintenance: a soup-to-nuts strategy that has allowed them more than just financial breathing room.

Helping impoverished Mississippi communities? Check. Making money while creating a business model that empowers you with the decision-making powers of developers? Check. Being notable and effective enough to earn your own profile in The New York Times by Michael Kimmelman? Done, done, and done for Duvall Decker Architects, which also was named one of 2017's Emerging Voices by the Architectural League of New York. What's especially enheartening about this profile is how by virtue of increasing the quality of their own professional lives, the architects have also vastly increased the well-being of their community.

Archinect's critical round-up: the week's best architectural critiques so far

2015-08-06T17:48:00-04:00

Over at the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Hawthorne eloquently pans the new addition to the 405 freeway, noting that "The expanded 405 might be the first L.A. freeway project to look haggard and disjointed the day it opened." His review comes at a time when infrastructure, especially in California, is starting to (violently) show signs of its age: last year, the University of California Los Angeles briefly flooded thanks to an aged water main breaking, and in July a freak thunderstorm collapsed a portion of interstate 10. Hawthorne's displeasure is focused primarily on the 405's haphazard design to please multiple neighborhoods, its tacky soil-nail construction retaining walls ("This technique is something like the comb-over of freeway design"), and its simple underwhelming-ness as a public works project.

Meanwhile, James S. Russell's thoughtful examination of Thomas Heatherwick in the New York Times delves into one of the perennially feisty debates of the architectural realm: just ...

London’s architecture lacks Berlin’s sense of culture, says Chipperfield

2014-12-01T14:00:00-05:00

[...] British architect Sir David Chipperfield has said that he regards private investment’s hold over new architecture in London as an “absolutely terrible” means of building a city. In Berlin, where he employs an office of 90, “there is still an idea of the public realm. We have given that up in London. We have declared the public realm dead; the question is how to get stuff out of the private sector. We are unbelievably sophisticated at that.”

Ediciones Vibok awarded with FAD Thought & Criticism 2011 prize

2011-05-31T07:49:07-04:00

Ediciones Vibok has been awarded with FAD Thought & Criticism 2011 prize for the book Collective Architectures, edited by the architect Paula Alvarez FAD Awards (Promoting Architecture and Design) were created in Barcelona in 1958 with the aim of promoting cutting-edge trends and recognize the quality of new approaches and open researches in contrast with traditional languages.

We are pleased to share with you very good news.
Ediciones Vibok has been awarded with FAD Thought & Criticism 2011 prize for the book Collective Architectures, edited by the architect Paula Alvarez

Collective Architectures, Vibok first title, has its starting point in an initiative by Santiago Cirugeda (Urban Recipes) which mobilized dozens of groups to recycle 45 containers-homes from a dismantled temporary settlement, into a multitude of self-built and self-managed spaces that were distributed throughout the Spanish territory. What began as a map of war of the Iberian peninsula, soon became a cooperation network extended to Latin America.

This book captures the whole adventure through a selection of ten projects developed between 2007 and 2010, as well as written contributions from different authors in what constitutes a coral essay on the possibility of connecting politics, life and architecture.

Paula Alvarez's edition commitment it to narrate this experience...