Archinect - News

First photos of Edoardo Tresoldi's Fillmore wire-mesh sculpture in New York City

2020-01-28T19:04:00-05:00

A large-scale wire-mesh sculpture, suspended from the ceiling of Cathédrale restaurant in New York City, is the first commissioned artwork by Tresoldi Studio, the new design outlet founded by Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi.

Dubbed Fillmore, the installation takes inspiration from the historic architecture of the legendary Fillmore East concert hall in Manhattan's Lower East Side that once hosted The Doors, Janis Joplin, Elton John, and many others. The restaurant is part of Moxy East Village hotel designed by Rockwell Group.

Fillmore (Tresoldi Studio) inside Cathédrale restaurant (Rockwell Group) © Roberto Conte

"The installation outlines itself as an architectural precious wreck, a tribute to the cultural background that influenced not only New York City, but several generations worldwide," explains the project description.

"The deep chasms and the huge fragmented central dome of the six-meter...

New York City signals intent to close more 'zoning loopholes’

2019-07-16T08:30:00-04:00

The city recently enacted stricter zoning regulations to curb excessive mechanical spaces in residential buildings, the first in a series of steps geared toward eliminating zoning ambiguities exploited by developers. [...] Now, elected officials and preservationists are pushing the city to enact stern oversight on additional types of voids and other perceived zoning loopholes.

"Many neighborhood advocates felt the void amendment did not go far enough, and called for the change to recognize unenclosed voids—such as Rafael Viñoly Architects’ disputed 'condo on stilts' on the Upper East Side—as mechanical," writes Caroline Spivack for Curbed NY.

"They charge that such open-air voids should count toward a building’s floor area ratio. Meanwhile, elected officials urged the city to study how some developers 'gerrymander' zoning lots by slicing off slivers to avoid triggering certain regulations."

In May, the New York City Council passed a zoning amendment that will limit real estate developers' ability to inflate the overall height of new skyscrapers through targeted over-sizing of "mechanical void spaces" in order to drive up the price of units higher up in the building.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York has also signaled its support of new legislation addressing this issue.

NYC's super-tall mechanical void loophole is no more

2019-06-03T13:52:00-04:00

The City Council voted to close a zoning loophole that has allowed developers to boost building heights with excessive mechanical spaces—but it’s only the first step in addressing the issue, say lawmakers.

The zoning amendment will limit the city's notoriously over-sized mechanical spaces to 25-feet in height before additional space begins to eat into a project's allowable buildable area. New York City lawmakers are pushing to close other loopholes, as well, including rules impacting the use unenclosed voids in tall buildings to gain additional height and the agglomeration of "gerrymandered" lots to take unfair advantage of favorable zoning rules for certain parcels.

Curbed quotes Council member Ben Kallos of the Midtown East and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan as saying, “We are taking a significant step towards stopping developers from getting around zoning to give billionaires views instead of building the affordable housing New Yorkers need. This is only a start and we need to go much further.”

Ceiling heights in tall towers should be capped at 12 feet, argues New York state lawmaker

2019-02-21T16:25:00-05:00

A state lawmaker is gunning for more aggressive restrictions on the vast mechanical voids developers often abuse to boost their buildings’ heights as a “more robust” solution to the de Blasio administration’s recent zoning amendment. [...] Current zoning exempts mechanical voids from a building’s floor-area ratio (FAR)—a given property’s square footage—and puts no height limits on those spaces.

"Luxury developers often exploit this loophole in residential towers to hike up the price for apartments on higher floors," explains Curbed NY one reasoning behind the newly introduced bill by New York State Assembly member Linda Rosenthal.

A new ceiling for Philip Johnson's iconic The Glass House

2018-04-30T15:07:00-04:00

The scope of the project included the replacement of the entire plaster ceiling, metal lath, and fasteners. The ceiling replacement began on December 1, 2017 and took approximately three months to complete. The project team included EverGreene Architectural Arts, Silman Structural Engineers, Glass House staff and Ashley Wilson AIA, ASID, Graham Gund Architect of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

To see the new ceiling in person, make plans to visit this summer as The Glass House re-opens May 2018.

Ceiling replacement complete. Photo by Michael Biondo