Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
It’s hard to grasp his calculus. One of Mr. de Blasio’s big initiatives, Vision Zero, aims to improve pedestrian safety. Ripping up the pedestrian plazas in Times Square, restoring cars and forcing millions of people to dodge traffic again, runs headlong into his own policy.
As an exasperated Tim Tompkins, the president of the Times Square Alliance, put it on Thursday: “Sure, let’s tear up Broadway — we can’t govern, manage or police our public spaces.”
— nytimes.com
More about Times Square on Archinect:Times Square throughout the agesTimes Square and the routine of chaosJam to your heart's desire with Stereotank's "Heartbeat" installation in Times SquareMidtown Manhattan Wouldn't Be the Same View full entry
If it is possible, financially and technologically, to build a three-acre park in the river west of New York City, then why isn’t it possible to construct an artificial island at a higher elevation than downtown Manhattan that would serve as New York City’s sixth borough? Many of the city’s problems—real estate prices, developers purchasing blocks at a time, the astronomical cost of parking a car, or even a bicycle, even shoreline erosion—are problems of space. So why not just build more space? — theawl.com
Related: Visions of LoLo, a Neighborhood Rising From Landfill View full entry
The recent debate between Uber and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over whether the ride-for-hire company was exacerbating Manhattan congestion was fueled by incomplete, misleading data. There was no way of knowing exactly where Uber cars and taxis pick up passengers, and so the city agreed to a study of Uber’s effects last month as part of its detente with the company.
Now, thanks in part to a Freedom of Information Law request, we have data. A lot of data...
— FiveThirtyEight
The folks over at FiveThirtyEight processed a nearly-overwhelming amount of data on Uber usage in New York City and got some pretty interesting (if not entirely surprising) results. At the top of the list, their research verifies the ride-share company's claims that their doing a better job in... View full entry
Manhattan’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the focal point of Rockefeller Center and home to the NBC television network, has changed its name to the Comcast Building.
Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal will illuminate a sign with the new name and NBC logo atop the 850-foot (259-meter) building [...].
Comcast Building is the third official name for the landmark property, completed in 1933.
— bloomberg.com
Pritzker Prize-winner Álvaro Siza has been selected to design an "ultra-luxury condominium" in Manhattan, his first U.S. project. Deemed 611 West 56th Street by developers Sumaida + Khurana and LENY, the structure will rise 35-storeys in New York's Hell's Kitchen, enough for approximately... View full entry
Flying above New York City in a helicopter can be a beautiful thing, until you look down and see that someone has stolen and is living your dream life in a bucolic cabin on a rooftop in the West Village. Is there anything more enviable in the real estate racket of NYC than a house on a regular old apartment building's roof?
[...] the porch is basically a glorified bulkhead over a hole punched in the ceiling of the family’s loft to make way for a nautical stairway that rises to a landing [...].
— gothamist.com
Require a little more luxury for your Manhattan rooftop abode? A mere $250 million could buy you this. View full entry
Vornado's super luxury tower at 220 Central Park South isn't even out of the ground yet, but billionaire buyers seemingly can't wait to stash their stacks of cash in the 950-foot-tall tower. The Real Deal hears rumblings that a Qatari investor is eyeing a monstrous spread that would cost around $250 million, making it easily the most expensive home in New York City. It would completely obliterate the current record, the $100 million sale at One57. — ny.curbed.com
Robert A.M. Stern's NYC condo towers have a habit of attracting record bids (previously: NYC’s Most Expensive Condo to Be Listed at $130 Million). View full entry
Tadao Ando's first ever NYC building — the brutalist condo tower project 152 Elizabeth Street — is kicking into high gear with the release of new renderings, photos of the completed sales gallery, floorplans for the first residences coming on the market, the launch of a new website for the... View full entry
The architecturally and musically inclined can join in on Make Music New York festivities this year with a special orchestral performance called "Concerto for Buildings" on Sunday, June 21. Make Music New York is a one-day music fest on the first day of summer that boasts more than 1,000 free... View full entry
In the U.S., he isn’t getting asked to compete for new projects at all, he said, amid criticism of the rail project’s delays and costs. [...]
These overruns and years of delay have taken a toll on Mr. Calatrava’s reputation, with local press and some observers painting him as an architect prone to overruns—a point he believes is quite unfair.
“It has not been easy for me,” he said. After living in the city for 12 years and feeling pride in the city, “I have been treated like a dog.”
— wsj.com
Previously:NYMag talks to Santiago Calatrava about his WTC Station, budget, reputationHow Cost of Train Station at World Trade Center Swelled to $4 BillionLegal Troubles Dog Famed Spanish Architect Santiago CalatravaPATH/Fail: The Story of the World’s Most Expensive Train Station View full entry
"There's actually such a lack of transparency that it is difficult to understand what developers and property owners are actually planning ... There's no mechanism for us or the city for us to understand ahead of time what's in the planning" [...]
The board ultimately wants Mayor Bill de Blasio to take steps to create more comprehensive zoning laws that would assess the impact of large towers on open space and mitigate any potential impacts, like shadows on Central Park.
— wnyc.org
Listen to the full report from WYNC below: View full entry
[...] shadows even turn light into another medium of inequality. Light becomes a resource that can be bought by the wealthy, eclipsed for the poor.
[...] multimillion-dollar apartments in the sky will darken parts of the park a mile away. Enjoyment of the park in the park – a notably free activity in a high-cost city – will be dimmed a little to give billionaires views of it from above.
— theguardian.com
Related: Welcome to the permanent dusk: Sunlight in cities is an endangered species View full entry
Renzo Piano's versatility continues to win the hearts of NYC developers, and it looks like the starchitect is finally getting his chance to flex his muscle in the residential realm. Piano—who just cut the ribbon to the new Whitney to rave reviews—has been chosen by Michael Shvo and Bizzi & Partners to design a brand new 290-foot tower at 100 Varick Street in up-and-coming Hudson Square bordering Soho. — 6sqft.com
The tower will be Piano's first large-scale residential project in the U.S. View full entry
It's been over 50 years, but for many, the destruction of Charles Follen McKim's original Pennsylvania Station still stings (hey, even Mad Men mourned its passing). But now, there is a hopeful (if improbable) plan from Richard W. Cameron—principal designer at Atelier & Co—to bring back the civic jewel of a long-gone New York.
According to Traditional Building's's Clem Labine, Cameron's plan has three main goals [...]."
— ny.curbed.com
Previously View full entry
There's another project coming to Manhattan that's even thinner: 303–305 E. 44th Street, designed by Eran Chen of ODA Architecture.
At 47 feet wide, this one's the narrowest of the bunch. Developed by Triangle Assets, the tower will rise about 600 feet high, creating 115,000 square feet of residential space. [...]
The design for 305 E. 44th is predicated on a stack of volumes; nested between them are the project's signature amenities, private gardens.
— citylab.com