Archinect - News

Testbeds is giving discarded architectural mock-ups new life in New York's community gardens

2022-12-08T12:13:00-05:00

A new project from New York-based duo New Affiliates is making headlines in the Queens neighborhood of Edgemere, where architects Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb have invented a radical new way of reusing one of the design processes’ most wasteful customs – discarded architectural mock-ups.

With the help of Columbia GSAPP doctoral candidate Samuel Stewart-Halevy, the pair have begun a pilot program called Testbeds that takes the temporary structures and repurposes them as toolsheds for community gardens around the city.

Previously on Archinect: The Founders of NY-based New Affiliates Discuss How Their Love for Arguing Betters Their Work

Beginning with the generally underserved neighborhood located on the Rockaway peninsula, Testbeds has been experimenting with a new way of adapting the notion of a “circular economy” into the built environment. The program got off the ground in 2018 with the blessing of officials from the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation's GreenThumb program, u...

The first phase of New York City's first net zero community has been set in motion

2022-01-03T12:55:00-05:00

In December, developers closed on $30.3 million in financing for the first phase of Arverne East, a master-planned community and revitalization project within a 116-acre oceanfront site in the Arverne and Edgemere neighborhoods in Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula. Led by real estate firms L+M Development Partners, the Bluestone Organization, and Triangle Equities, the project will be New York City’s first net zero community.

Funding for the first phase was provided by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). This stage will see the development of a 35-acre nature preserve between Beach 44th Street and Beach 56th Place, aiming to restore and promote native ecology. It will include a 6,000-square-foot, fossil-free building featuring a welcome center, park ranger office, comfort station, and a community center owned and operated by RISE, a non-profit organization that provides civic engagement and youth development programs for the greater Rockaway communit...

Yayoi Kusama 'Narcissus Garden' on view at the Rockaways this summer

2018-06-18T19:09:00-04:00

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama‘s reflective Narcissus Garden, which she first showed at the Venice Biennale in 1966, is set to open in the Rockaways on July 1. The work, which is comprised of 1,500 mirrored, stainless steel orbs, will be installed in a former train garage at New York’s Fort Tilden, a former US military base on the beach. Kusama’s Narcissus Garden was also on view at Philip Johnson’s Glass House in 2016 and at England’s Chatsworth House in 2009.

Gateway National Recreation Area at Fort Tilden, T9 building. Site of Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden for Rockaway! 2018. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Pablo Enriquez.

"Narcissus Garden was first presented in 1966 when Kusama staged an unofficial installation and performance at the 33rd Venice Biennale," explains the project description issued today by MoMA PS1. "The silver spheres, originally made from plastic, were installed on the lawn in front of the Italian Pavilion, reflecting the landscape of the exhibition grounds. Kusama herself stood among them, barefoot and dressed in a gold kimono, alongside yard signs inscribed with the words 'Narcissus Garden, Kusama' and 'Your Narcissism for Sale.' Throughout the opening day of the exhibition, Kusama remained in the installation, tossing the spheres in the air and offering to sell them to visitors for 1200 lire (approximately $2) each. The action, which was viewed both as self-promotion and a critique on the commercialization of cont...

The Jamaica Bay Greenway: A Resilient Ring for Southern Brooklyn and the Rockaways

2014-05-06T13:37:00-04:00

Among the most pressing issues facing New York’s new mayor is how his administration will pick up the mantle of the ambitious agenda established by Michael Bloomberg. How will the de Blasio administration address climate change and increase the resilience of those areas of the city most severely impacted by Superstorm Sandy? [...] The Rockaway peninsula, in particular, has been a veritable laboratory for designers exploring the implications of “resilience.”

Anti-Fragile: The Uncertain Future of Arverne East

2014-04-16T12:45:00-04:00

Superstorm Sandy brought the Rockaways into the forefront of New Yorkers’ consciousness for a period of time, [...] subsequently as a key reference point in debates about rebuilding versus retreating from the flood zone. [...] The last of these sites is Arverne East, 81 acres of City-owned land that have remained vacant since the neighborhood was razed in 1969. Below, Jonathan Tarleton and Gabriel Silberblatt consider Arverne East’s uncertain future.