Archinect - News

NYC free wifi-provider collaborates with Never Built New York with kiosks around the city

2018-07-16T15:45:00-04:00

An astounding collection of architectural projects that never made it into being are being displayed on kiosks around New York City. Based off the 2016 book Never Built New York, LinkNYC—which supplies the city with free wifi—is collaborating with curators and authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell to highlight some of the fantastical structures that appeared in their book, and almost graced the city's famous skyline.

While never actualized, many of these unbuilt plans for towers, bridges and parks, hold a unique place within architectural history and its collective imagination. Memorable proposals such as Moshe Safdie's 'Habitat New York', Robert Moses' Mid-Manhattan Expressway, and I.M Pei's 'Hyperbloid', are some of the works that will be on display. Placed on kiosks near the location they would have risen, the posters show what could've been, reminding passersby it's okay to dream.

One-to-One #45 with 'Never Built New York' authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell

2016-11-07T13:51:00-05:00

Never Built New York, by curators and authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell, is an astounding collection of architectural projects that never made it into being. The book features projects from the last two centuries, sited all throughout the five boroughs, that range from the monumental to the mortifying. Alongside infamous projects like Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Manhattan and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Key Plan for Ellis Island, visions for an alternate New York-urbanism abound: aborted reflections of their time, place and politics.

The book continues in the tradition of Goldin and Lubell's 2013 exhibition, "Never Built Los Angeles", including focused research on each project alongside gorgeous drawings and visualizations. I spoke with the authors about their curatorial approach to the book, and the projects that they were most excited by.

Check out a selection of the Never Built projects below and in the image gallery.

Listen to One-to-One #45 with Never Built New York authors Greg Gold...

The NYC that could have been – 'Never Built New York' to be released this fall

2016-07-27T20:16:00-04:00

The authors and curators behind 2013's Never Built Los Angeles, a collection of fantastical and aborted projects from LA's 20th century urban history, have now turned their attention eastward, to New York City.

In Never Built New York, Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin (with a foreword by Daniel Libeskind) uncover nearly 200 urban projects from the last two centuries that, for any host of reasons, failed to launch. Some of the showcased never-beens are Buckminster Fuller's glass-domed (Brooklyn) Dodgers Stadium, Stephen Holl's Bridge of Houses (destined for the spot where the High Line is now), and what would have been Frank Lloyd Wright’s final project: his dream city, the Key Plan for Ellis Island.

The book comes out in the U.S. on October 1. More info here.

Back to Never Land: Chicago exhibition honors remarkable never-builts

2013-08-22T16:48:00-04:00

The exhibition re-envisions a series of urban environments that are typical for Chicago in order to examine alternatives to the way architecture engages the city. It is a collaborative effort by five teams – David Brown, Alexander Eisenschmidt, Studio Gang, Stanley Tigerman, and UrbanLab – determined to find potentials for spatial, material, programmatic, and organizational invention within the city.

Same as it never was? What inspires a city to look back on abandoned plans? Along with the success of A+D Museum's "Never Built: Los Angeles", and anticipating the Bay Area's "Unbuilt San Francisco", The Atlantic Cities took a look at "City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future" at Expo 72 in Chicago. Originally presented at the 2012 Venice Biennale by University of Illinois at Chicago professor Alexander Eisenschmidt, the collection of alternate striking visions for the city will be on display through September 29.

The exhibition includes a panorama of the Chicago skyline, where viewers can use the Phantom City app to pinpoint 100+ of these remarkable, unrealized structures, including works by Adolf Loos, Frank Lloyd Wright and Stanley Tigerman.

"Unbuilt SF" showcases past and future Bay Area architecture projects

2013-08-20T21:49:00-04:00

If San Franciscans like to describe their city as “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world. Imagine a grand casino on Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

San Francisco is a small yet fierce city; its 7x7 mile girth is home to a rich history of social activism, tech start-ups, foodies, artists, composting programs and absurdist housing rates. Given its compact and hilly terrain, any addition or subtraction would drastically impact the city’s image -- how do you regard a San Francisco without the Transamerica pyramid, or with a giant freeway at the Embarcadero? As part of the Architecture and the City Festival, the “Unbuilt San Francisco” exhibition provokes citizens to consider their relationship to the city through its architecture, by examining designs for past and future landmarks.

This exhibition may sound familiar -- down south in Los Angeles, the A+D Museum is exhibiting similar themes of architectural potential with Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin’s “Never Built” show. As discussed here on Archinect a few weeks ago, the unrealized plans featured in “Never Built” are all about past imaginations of a city trying to choose its path...