In this issue:
· Tishman-Speyer Wins Big West Side Prize
· South Bronx Bank Note Building to House Artists, Food Market
· Brooklyn Goes Residential/Commercial Green
· A Cohousing Project to Grow in Brooklyn
· Toronto Gears Up for an Alternatively Fueled Future
· New Center Simulates for Med Students

Tishman-Speyer Wins Big West Side Prize

The Tishman-Speyer West Side Rail Yard proposal.

Courtesy tishmanspeyer.com

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor David Paterson, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Executive Director and CEO Elliot Sander, and MTA Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger announced the conditional selection of Tishman Speyer to develop the air space over the two development sites that compose the MTA’s John D. Caemmerer Rail Yard — the Western Rail Yard (WRY) and the Eastern Rail Yard (ERY). The design team for the project includes Murphy/Jahn Architects, master plan architect; Cooper-Robertson, master planner; and PWP Landscape Architecture. This decision ends a six-month bid process, which originally involved five competing developers. Tishman Speyer outbid a joint venture between the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust — by $112 million, offering to pay $1.004 billion for the rights to develop the 26-acre site.

The Tishman Speyer proposal would construct more than 12 million square feet of commercial, residential, retail, cultural, and community space while preserving and rehabilitating the High Line’s linear open space. The complex includes 13 acres of open public space, 3,000 residential units of which 379 units will be affordable housing, 550,000 square feet of retail space, a public school, and a 200,000-square-foot cultural venue overlooking the “Forum.” The project is pursuing LEED Gold certification. The majority of the High Line on-site will be maintained as a linear park, but the plan will demolish the spur over Tenth Avenue and part of the section along 30th Street.

South Bronx Bank Note Building to House Artists, Food Market

The Bank Note Building.

Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners

The redevelopment of the newly designated NYC landmark — the former American Bank Note Building in Hunts Point, has begun. Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners is redesigning the 420,000-square-foot, circa 1911 classical revival building. Taconic Investment Partners and Denham Wolf Real Estate Services purchased the building earlier this year for $32 million hoping to attract a tenant mix including visual and performing artists, architects, film production/studios, and a food market. When the building reopens in 2011 for its centennial celebration, it will be known as The BankNote.

Brooklyn Goes Residential/Commercial Green

439 Metropolitan Avenue.

Helder Design

Helder Design is aiming for LEED Platinum for a residential project on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The three-unit condo building will have two duplex residential units and one commercial unit. Green features include radiant floor heating in conjunction with continuous filtered ventilation with heat recovery, which will bring air quality to near High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) standards, and private photovoltaic solar panel arrays for each unit. Since the building faces south, it also uses passive solar heating. An art gallery will occupy a portion of the ground floor, and the ground floor and cellar will be Helder Design’s architecture studio.

A Cohousing Project to Grow in Brooklyn
Cohousing communities are managed by residents and combine the advantages of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living, including shared common facilities — such as a common dining hall and kitchen, children’s spaces, outdoor areas, and tool rooms. There are more than 100 cohousing communities in North America, the largest percentage being in California and Colorado. New York State currently has two such built communities — one in Ithaca, the other in Saugerties — with several more in various stages of formation. The new Brooklyn Cohousing Group is looking for a site within walking distance of Prospect Park that they can build from scratch or renovate to accommodate 30 families who will own their private apartments. Alex Marshall, senior editor of the Regional Plan Association’s newsletter, Spotlight on the Region, and his wife, Kristi Barlow founded the group a year ago. Now incorporated, they are working with Chris Scott Hanson, who has developed cohousing communities throughout the country.

Toronto Gears Up for an Alternatively Fueled Future

West Don Lands on the Toronto Waterfront.

Courtesy waterfronttoronoto.ca

Waterfront Toronto, which oversees a 2,000-acre tract of largely publicly owned land, has selected Steven Holl Architects (SHA) to design the 3,500-square-meter District Energy Centre (DEC) in the West Don Lands, which will provide centralized heating and cooling to the first new waterfront neighborhoods of Toronto. A network of underground pipes will extend to every development parcel in the precincts, and all new buildings must rely on this system. Initially the plants will be natural gas-fired, but will be designed for conversion to alternative fuels when they become approved for urban use. Toronto-based Bortolotto Design Architect (BDA) will be collaborating with SHA. The DEC is slated to begin construction by the end of 2008 and is expected to deliver heating and cooling by the beginning of 2010.

New Center Simulates for Med Students

CELA control room.

Donald Blair & Partners Architects

The Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment (CELA), a two-floor fit-out of shell space within a larger medical research building has recently opened at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN. Designed by NYC-based Donald Blair & Partners Architects, CELA is a state-of-the-art clinical educational facility designed to train medical students and medical staff with two distinct programs — the Simulation Technologies Program, and the Program in Human Simulation. In the former, robots are programmed to simulate medical conditions, and in the latter, actors are trained to “perform” as patients for students to evaluate and review.

Wired for audio and video recording and observed from control rooms, the simulation rooms are designed for flexibility and can adjust to different scenarios — operating rooms, intensive care rooms, and/or emergency room settings. A Virtual Reality Room contains procedural computer training machines. CELA’s overall design incorporates the need for a realistic healthcare environment — supported by the choice of finishes, materials, healthcare standards, and equipment — combined with a comfortable learning, conference, pre-encounter briefing and post-encounter de-briefing facility.