In this issue:
· Water Filtration Plant Is Hole In One for NYC
· Fortune Shines on West Harlem Affordable Housing
· Get Taken to the Couture Cleaners
· Luxury Hilton Rises in Liberty City North
· The Sun Never Sets on New Marc Jacobs Store
· Welcome Center Tells a Story
· Shade Machines, Social Brackets Inspire 4 Tower in 1

Water Filtration Plant Is Hole In One for NYC

Water filtration facility at Moshulu Golf Course.

Grimshaw

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Parks and Recreation have partnered to build the city’s first water filtration facility, currently under construction on 35.6 acres in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, beneath the Mosholu Golf Course driving range. The filtration system will become an integral part of the city’s infrastructure and deliver 290 million gallons of water per day, or 30% of the city’s water supply.

The plant itself has been designed by engineering firms Hazen and Sawyer and Metcalf & Eddy in a joint venture. Grimshaw and Ken Smith Landscape Architect are creating the site and above-ground structures, which, when completed, will be a sustainable and low-impact example of storm water management and gray water systems. According to the design team, the concept for the project was influenced by the water lily, which catches rainwater as it falls, filters it for its own use, and returns the excess into the pond below. Recreational facilities include a clubhouse and driving range, tee boxes that are discreet structures fully integrated into the landscape; atop the treatment plant’s green roof is a nine-acre driving range. The project is budgeted at $95 million and is expected to open in 2012.

Fortune Shines on West Harlem Affordable Housing

Fortune Society.

Jonathan Rose Companies

The Fortune Society, whose motto is “building people, not prisons,” and Jonathan Rose Companies recently broke ground on a $42 million, 110,000-square-foot project that will bring affordable housing to the West Harlem community. It will provide supportive permanent housing and service space for formerly incarcerated homeless men and women, and generate ongoing revenue to support the services the Fortune Society offers its clients. The new complex is adjacent to the Fortune Academy, familiarly called “The Castle,” which includes transitional housing for homeless men and women just released from prison.

Designed by Curtis+Ginsberg Architects, the 114-unit development aims to complement the historic character of the Fortune Academy, and will be environmentally responsible and efficient to operate. The project is seeking LEED-NC Gold certification, and is participating in programs from Enterprise Green Communities and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). A roof garden will feature a rainwater harvesting system and offer views of the Hudson River. Aluminum solar shades on the south faç ade are among other green features.

Get Taken to the Couture Cleaners

Madame Paulette’s flagship store.

DIA/WRKS

DIA/WRKS has put the finishing touches to the flagship store of Madame Paulette’s, a custom cleaner to the “who’s who” of fashion. The 2,000-square-foot space, located in Manhattan House, the modernist Upper East Side landmark designed by SOM’s Gordon Bunshaft in 1950, contains a 22-foot-long concierge counter, custom-made bronze tiles, Venini chandeliers, baroque furniture, and one-of-a-kind images of fashion icons. With the grand interiors nearly complete, DIA/WRKS will begin to revamp of the store’s faç ade, which may include displays of such world-renowned designers as Roberto Cavalli and Vera Wang.

Luxury Hilton Rises in Liberty City North

Conrad Hotel.

GRAD Associates

Newark-based GRAD Associates’ design for Hilton’s luxury brand Conrad Hotel in Liberty Harbor North in Jersey City, received the green light from the city’s planning board. The project will occupy a full block of this major redevelopment area, fronting a marina, with views of Lower Manhattan. The complex will contain a 300-room hotel, conference facilities, 470 luxury condominium units, fully mechanized parking for 738 cars, and two rooftop gardens (one for the hotel and one for the nine-story condominium development). Site preparation (Phase I) is scheduled to begin in April for the hotel, and the condominiums (Phase II) are anticipated to start soon after the hotel is completed early in 2011. The project is aiming to achieve LEED Platinum status.

The Sun Never Sets on New Marc Jacobs Store

Marc Jacobs store in Sao Paulo.

Stephan Jaklitsch Architects

Stephan Jaklitsch Architects has designed seven stores for Marc Jacobs that are scheduled to open in 2009 — five Marc Jacobs Collection and two Marc by Marc Jacobs stores. Since 2000, the firm has designed all the Marc Jacobs’ stores worldwide and continues to design site-specific boutiques, such as the recently completed first store in South America in the upscale Jardins neighborhood of Sao Paulo with a Collection shop on its first level and a Marc by Marc Jacobs on the second. Also recently completed are two stores in Bahrain.

In the works are a Collection shop in the ground floor of a 19th-century residential building near Grosvenor Square in London; a Collection store on the ground level of the new 60-story Elysian building in Chicago’s historic Gold Coast district; a Hong Kong flagship Marc Jacobs Collection store on the grounds of what once was the Marine Police headquarters and is now a new luxury shopping destination; and finally, a new free-standing Marc Jacobs Collection flagship store in Seoul.

Welcome Center Tells a Story

Rutgers University’s welcome center.

Murphy Burnham & Buttrick

Rutgers University has commissioned architects Murphy Burnham & Buttrick, in collaboration with exhibition designers Ralph Appelbaum Associates, to design a visitor center for its New Brunswick campus geared towards communicating the institution’s global reach and telling the Rutgers story. The new 12,000-square-foot building is strategically sited to serve as a gateway to the university, and will be used as a springboard for the 40,000 students, parents, and alumni who are anticipated to visit the campus each year. In addition to a series of exhibition spaces, the building, known as the Welcome Center, will house admissions staff and contain multipurpose spaces to accommodate large tour groups and university-wide events. The team began to imagine the center as a dynamic, people-filled “billboard” that would grab visitors as they turned off the highway and in to the campus. In addition, the building is designed to be completely “off-the-grid,” employing an array of electricity-generating solar reflectors as well as geothermal technology to heat and cool the facility. Construction is expected to be completed by fall of 2009.

Shade Machines, Social Brackets Inspire 4 Tower in 1

4 Tower in 1.

Steven Holl Architects

Steven Holl Architects has been selected as the winning firm to design the master plan of the “4 Tower in 1,” an office tower complex around the new Shenzhen Stock Exchange Headquarters in Shenzhen’s Futian commercial business district. The design is based on the concept of tropical skyscrapers as “shade machines,” with a “social bracket” connecting the towers and the street level. The design for the four towers utilizes circular building footprints to maximize the interior space and open views while minimizing the exterior envelope. The optimized office floors are connected via double- and triple-height social spaces on alternating sides of the towers. Automatic solar tracking screens made of perforated PV cells make one full rotation per day around the circumference of each building, collecting enough PV energy to cool the towers completely while allowing them to act as an urban clock.

Supporting programs for the towers, such as cafeterias and gyms, are combined with cultural programs such as art galleries, auditoriums, and a cinema. Its sculpted form allows it to negotiate between environmental restrictions and the requirements of the public programs. A continuous roof garden park collects storm water and recycles all the gray water from the four skyscrapers.