The NY Times' Michael Kimmelman reviews Adjaye Associates' Bronx 'DREAM'

2023-02-20T12:31:00-05:00

In this case, architecture is the issue and the engine of renewal. With its triple-height library and exalting, barrel-vaulted classrooms with huge punched windows overlooking Manhattan, the redesigned ice plant becomes one of the most spectacular school buildings in the city. [...] the historical arc of 20 Bruckner, as the building is called, is instructive and tells a larger tale about the Bronx, change and renewal.

The NY Times critic gets off the sixth train to explore Adjaye Associates' first American K-12 project in Mott Haven, The Bronx. Kimmelman mentioned his two best-known New York projects – 130 William Street and Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development – in addition to D.C’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for context and said its well-placed lightwells and other design features place a “premium on architecture [that] makes an obvious statement about the value of Dream’s students.”

He went on to add what seems like a heartfelt note on the tragic deaths of three immigrant construction workers on the site between 2019 and 2021. “I didn’t begin this column with that information because Assemblywoman Septimo is right," he wrote. "Stories about the South Bronx invariably start with trauma, casting the community as victim. For students, the new DREAM school is a place of hope and opportunity — a new chapter and good news for the neighborhood.”

It seems like a critic trying...

An adaptive-reuse project in the Bronx has become New York's most notorious construction site

2022-06-07T09:00:00-04:00

This site, where an old building is being transformed into a charter school, has just distinguished itself from the 40,000 other major construction projects in New York City by having its third worker fatality in less than three years. No other construction site in New York City has had this many separate fatal incidents since at least 2003, when the Department of Buildings began keeping electronic records. But despite the pattern of deaths, the consequences have been negligible.

In full view of the Major Deegan Expressway, 20 Bruckner Boulevard, known throughout the New York area as the site of the iconic former History Channel (and later iHeartRadio) billboard, was once the ice storehouse of a former Yankees owner and is now being transformed into a charter school by developer Maddd Equities, who has had a scant $28,000 in fines levied against them in the past years despite the record-high fatalities.

Being a construction worker is one of the most lethal occupations in New York City, with rates of injury and death rising ahead of the pandemic before falling slightly owing to the economic downturn. Most of the men profiled in the Times are nonunion immigrant laborers working for $120-per-day to start, with some being recruited from homeless shelters to meet demands. An OSHA investigation revealed that some deaths were not properly reported for weeks.

Previously on Archinect: Nearly 1 in 4 workplace deaths in New York occur in construction

Multiple stop-work...

Archinect - News

The NY Times' Michael Kimmelman reviews Adjaye Associates' Bronx 'DREAM'

An adaptive-reuse project in the Bronx has become New York's most notorious construction site