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Vishaan Chakrabarti‘s Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) has revealed a new set of renderings for the refinery building at the three million-square-foot Domino Sugar Factory mega-development in Williamsburg. The new plans are brighter and better connected than those previously... View full entry
Penn Station is much more than a transportation center. As the heart of the Northeast Corridor rail system, it has the potential to link downtown to downtown along the Eastern Seaboard in a way far more economical, expedient and environmentally sustainable than air travel.
But while the governor’s recently announced plan is a step toward this goal, more must be done. What we propose in addition is a completely new commuter station on the site of Madison Square Garden
— nytimes.com
The proposed plan for Penn Station's redesign comes by way of Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism. Previously, Chakrabarti was the director of Manhattan's Department of City Planning under former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where he also... View full entry
Vishaan Chakrabarti has amicably departed from SHoP Architects, where he was principal from 2012 to 2015, and has now launched a new firm, the Partnership for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU). — Fast Company Design
According to a press release, "PAU will offer two main business services – architecture and strategic planning. The latter will include tactical advice and advocacy, helping clients master plan and obtain entitlements for density and infrastructure at a macro-level, while also helping to define... View full entry
[takes action] is the fourth issue from Bracket, Archinect's collaborative publication with InfraNet Lab. Edited by a diverse collection of professionals from the intersecting worlds of architecture, environment, and digital culture, Bracket's content is sourced from an open-call for... View full entry
We cannot expect big American cities to reach their potential when the very professions that purport to defend and perpetuate urbanism recoil at the presence of towers. Left rudderless by the experts, we are forced to inhabit the bleak consequences of a poorly regulated marketplace, analogous to a population that must operate on its own cancers due to the confused surgeons who keep cutting away at the healthy tissue. — Places Journal
Americans are famously conflicted about urban development: somehow we've demonized both sprawl and density. But today there is a new conversation about the future of cities, driven by diversifying social desires, evolving technologies, and pressing environmental constraints. On Places, in an... View full entry
“They really don’t treat the water in this kind of eggshell kind of way that they do in the United States,” Mr. Chakrabarti said. “They reclaim the land, use dredging material, do a whole variety of things to reshape the shoreline, like we first did when we were New Amsterdam. The Dutch have unrivaled experience in dealing with flooding. They really know how to shape the water’s edge, and I think we really have to rethink the way we deal with the water’s edge, given what’s happened with Sandy.” — New York Observer
Architect and planner Vishaan Charkrabarti, director of Columbia's Center for Urban Real Estate and a partner at SHoP, has a novel idea to save New York from the next big one: Build some giant sea gates around the harbor, like they have in Rotterdam. Also, a barrier island or two would be good. View full entry
Mr. Chakrabarti said the firm is determined to shake things up in the world of architecture, development and planning. “Most master planning, you use pretty pastel drawings that rarely have anything to do with what gets built,” he said. “Planning has been static, it hasn’t been performative. Most of these plans, they get implemented over 20 or 30 years. Think of how much a city and the world changes in that span of time.” — New York Observer
The former city planner, developer and current chair of Columbia's real estate development program, the Center for Urban Real Estate, joins the hotshot New York firm. View full entry
