In this issue:
· Metal Shutter Houses Bi-Fold Their Way to West Chelsea
· USS Intrepid Completes Two-Year Makeover
· The Chapin School Grows
· The Show Goes On at SVA
· All Are Welcome at Freak Bar
· Concert Hall Sets Sail at Rensselaer
· Two Towers, Two Bridges, Two Orientations

Metal Shutter Houses Bi-Fold Their Way to West Chelsea

Metal Shutter Houses.

Montroy Andersen DeMarco

NY-based Montroy Andersen DeMarco was named architect-of-record for the Metal Shutter Houses now under construction in West Chelsea, designed by Shigeru Ban Architects in collaboration with NY-based Dean Maltz Architect. The 33,000-square-foot, 11-story building contains floor-through duplexes ranging from 1,950 to more than 3,300 square feet. Natural light enters the first floor, two-story art gallery via a skylight that spans the rear property line through the concrete superstructure. Each residence has a double-height loggia with electronically controlled, perforated metal shutters. When the shutters are retracted, 20-foot-high by 15-foot-wide bi-fold windows — a hybrid of one manufacture’s industrial bi-fold system and another company’s residential window product, are revealed. When opened, they create a continuous floor plan from the interior to the deck. Commissioned by HEEA Development, the project is slated for completion this coming spring.

USS Intrepid Completes Two-Year Makeover

USS Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

Skanska USA

The USS Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum reopened in time for Veteran’s Day after a two-year renovation project with a new paint job, new exhibitions, restored aircrafts, and a new public pier. As part of the final phase of construction, Skanska USA Building installed gangways to transport an estimated one million visitors onto the ship annually, and to permanently secure the USS Intrepid in the newly reconstructed berth at Pier 86 in Hudson River Park. The five gangways provide access from a 64-foot-high glass elevator tower and three stair towers, and contain galvanized aluminum panels and canopies that match the towers. The decommissioned carrier is plugged into utility “umbilicals” on the pier to connect it to the landside visitor’s center for utility sources. A series of flexible hoses transport water and waste, while a chiller plant supplies the ship with heat and air conditioning.

Skanska first removed the original deteriorated pier and built its replacement on 360 steel-pipe piles driven to bedrock. The pier structure is a “sandwich” of drainage mat, high-density traffic-bearing foam fill, gravel, soil, and finished concrete paving. The 782-foot by 150-foot deck surface pattern resembles the stripes on a waving flag. The Concorde aircraft has also been permanently installed on the pier.

The Chapin School Grows

The Chapin School.

Marner Architecture

Marner Architecture has completed the expansion of The Chapin School on the Upper East Side. The additions provide advanced technological developments in classroom design for urban independent schools. Built in 1928, the six-story American Georgian-style building has had various additions over the years. This latest glass-and-metal addition includes new faculty offices, a student resources learning center, and three additional classrooms. The materials used in the façade maximize building insulation while allowing ample natural light to enter the building. Sunlight is controlled by external sunshades and translucent glass panels above interior sightlines to optimize light penetration without glare while preserving thermal insulation.

The Show Goes On at SVA

School of Visual Arts new cultural center.

Courtesy School of Visual Arts

School of Visual Arts (SVA) will soon have a new cultural center for film screenings, lectures, and other cultural programs that support its educational mission. Laurence G. Jones Architects and Aragon Construction have begun renovation on a 25,000-square-foot site, formerly the two-screen Clearview Chelsea West Cinemas. Upon completion, one renovated theater will seat 480, and the other 280. Both auditoriums will feature new screens and draperies, expanded stages, and new lighting and sound system. Other improvements include renovating the existing basement and upgrading all of the theater’s mechanical systems, fire alarms, and electrical services. The lobby will be replaced with a design by SVA acting chairman, Milton Glaser. The venue’s façade, also designed by Glaser, will display a changing set of graphic and sculpture art related to the school’s arts curriculum and will serve as the theater’s signature element.

All Are Welcome at Freak Bar

Coney Island USA Freak Bar.

Photo by Paul Warchol, courtesy Philip Tusa, Architect (www.philiptusa.com/new.cfm)

Astroland may be closing, but the new Coney Island USA’s Freak Bar and Museum Gift Shop, designed by Bensonhurst-born architect Philip Tusa, AIA, has opened for year-round business. The bar is in the circa 1917 Child’s Surf Avenue Restaurant building, home to Coney Island USA (CIUSA), a not-for-profit arts organization that presents the Mermaid Parade and Sideshows by the Seashore, the only remaining “ten-in-one” live sideshow in Coney Island. The greatest design challenge was to incorporate the new spaces with the existing, achieved by “perforating” the existing dividing partitions with large-scale oculus and archway openings to form an interconnected whole that functions as CIUSA’s “Front Door on Coney’s Surf Avenue.” The renovation also revealed the façade’s arches, long hidden by plywood signs. Now one can belly up to the bar and have a cold Coney Island Lager with a fire-eater — in the middle of winter, no less.

Concert Hall Sets Sail at Rensselaer

Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center.

Courtesy Davis Brody Bond Aedas

Doors opened at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. Grimshaw Architects in collaboration with Davis Brody Bond Aedas and Buro Happold designed the 220,000-square-foot building that occupies a steep hillside. The $200 million facility houses a 1,200-seat concert hall, a 400-seat theater, two adaptive environment studios, an audio and video production suite, artists-in-residence studios, and a dance studio. To accommodate the steep hillside, the design team located entrances at both the highest and lowest elevations. From the entrance, patrons descend through the seven-level central atrium serving as the building’s social hub.

The concert hall is wrapped inside a “hull” of curved cedar planks hovering inside a glass exterior, and provides a practical enclosure for the extensive mechanical duct spaces and surrounding circulation corridors, and serves as a structural component that supports the roof. The concert hall’s shoebox form is optimized for Romantic-era symphonic music, but adaptive acoustics accommodate jazz, amplified music, films, and spoken-word events. The 400-seat theater is a hybrid of a traditional fly tower/audience chamber configuration with an adaptable studio/theater-in-the-round design.

Two Towers, Two Bridges, Two Orientations

The LM Project.

Steven Holl Architects

Steven Holl Architects unanimously won the international design competition for “the LM Project” in Copenhagen. With a program that connects office towers and civic spaces with a public walkway 65 meters above the harbor, the concept is based on two towers carrying two bridges at two orientations, all intended to connect with the unique aspects of the site’s history. Due to the site geometry, the bridges meet at an angle to appear as if they are shaking hands over the harbor. A prow-like public deck contains public amenities such as cafés and galleries. Each tower carries its own cable-stay bridge that is a public passageway between the two piers. The façades have high-performance glass curtain walls with a solar screen made of photovoltaics. They are connected to a seawater heating/cooling system with radiant heating in the floor slabs and radiant cooling in the ceiling. Natural ventilation is provided on every floor with windows opening at floor and ceiling level for maximum air circulation. Optimum natural light is provided to all offices due to the reflective light performance of the screens. Wind turbines line the roof of the pedestrian bridge providing all electricity for lighting the public spaces.