In this issue:
· Preservationists Have Something to Dance About
· Port Authority Gets Temporarily Fashionable
· Exhibition Documents Arrival of the Dutch
· New Law School Rises to Head of Its Class
· University Center Innovates With Local Materials

Preservationists Have Something to Dance About

Peridance Center.

Kohn Architecture

The future home of the Peridance Center located in the East Village and designed by Kohn Architecture is currently under construction. The circa 1903 Beaux-Arts building, designed by Jardine, Kent & Jardine, will suit the needs of the dance school’s expanding programs, featuring eight professionally equipped studios with high ceilings, column-free space , sprung floors, and a professional sound system. The ground floor will contain the Salvatore Capezio Theatre, café, a museum, and a store that sells dancewear. The two-story red brick and limestone building looks like it has an additional floor because of an exposed metal truss supporting a shed roof. Its façade is pierced by round and oval windows common to the style of townhouses built during the period. The former horse auction barn was slated for demolition, but a “standstill agreement” was reached with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission that paved the way for the building to be added to the Trust for Architectural Easements, guaranteeing the building will be preserved in perpetuity.

Port Authority Gets Temporarily Fashionable

Port Authority Bus Terminal’s temporary fashion retail and art exhibition space.

super-interesting!

Super-interesting! architecture.design.strategies has transformed an unused 2,500-square-foot storefront in the Port Authority Bus Terminal Building into a temporary fashion retail and art exhibition space that will provide young fashion designers and artists a visible stage to display and sell their work. Off-the-shelf fluorescent strip lights function as a chandelier, merchandise lighting and giant LCD-style signage reflect off a glossy black floor. Oversized, translucent lace super-graphics and white-painted thrift store wood chairs give the space a stripped-down-to-suit-the-economic-time look. Due to budgetary constraints, the firm decided to manage and coordinate the construction, organizing licensed trades people, and set builders from the film industry to execute the highly custom-designed details. The firm worked with the Times Square Alliance and The Fashion Center BID on the project.

Exhibition Documents Arrival of the Dutch
Urban A&O has been selected as the lead designer for the 400th Henry Hudson anniversary exhibition, “The Island at the Center of the World,” at the South Street Seaport Museum, on view 09.10-12.31.09. Working in collaboration with Thinc Design, the exhibition will be categorized into three themes — what the world was like at the time the Dutch were exploring Manhattan, the history of New Amsterdam, and the various groups of people living there at the time. Four galleries will exhibit historical maps, and books. Portrait Stations will allow visitors to sit and listen to stories of early Dutch immigrants and their diverse backgrounds while viewing portraits of contemporary Dutch New Yorkers. The approximately 4,150-square-foot show will utilize 34 transparent acrylic tables of varying sizes and will be arranged to form a dynamic relationship with the four existing gallery spaces and serve as an organizational device.

New Law School Rises to Head of Its Class

Lewis Katz Building at Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law.

Polshek Partnership Architects

Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law celebrated its 175th anniversary with the opening of its new 114,000-square-foot Lewis Katz Building, designed by Polshek Partnership Architects. The focal point of the building is its glass-enclosed law library with a 100,000 volume capacity and seating for 294 students. The design draws from the idea that the law library is the theoretical and physical heart of the legal educational experience, and was conceived as a floating element, sheltered from the rest of the school’s program beneath.

The ground plane flows unimpeded, linking interior and exterior space to foster the feeling of openness and accessibility. Within, the library’s continuous looping circulation system offers several different types of study environments. Beneath this aerial form is a series of volumes clad in local sandstone that contain the classrooms, auditorium, and courtroom. These elements surround a broad commons area that opens to the landscape and follows its stepping contours, directly connecting the school’s interior programs to the surrounding campus. The project was constructed to meet LEED certification requirements, and from its continuous planted green roof to its reintroduction of pervious surfaces on what was a massive parking lot, the building helps reduce the amount of rainwater runoff generated by the site.

University Center Innovates With Local Materials

University Center expansion.

Holzman Moss Architecture

The University of Southern Indiana in Evansville recently broke ground on its new $18.4 million University Center expansion, designed by Holzman Moss Architecture. The project will convert the university’s former 60,000-square-foot library into dining, lounging, meeting, and student organization spaces and replace the existing conference center bridge linking the old library and existing University Center. The project features a 103-foot-tall, conical stone tower at the center of campus, and incorporates local and reclaimed materials. Key design elements formed from select materials produced by leading regional manufacturers include the dome-shaped ceiling in the central atrium decorated by a geometric pattern created out of 1,200 intertwined chair legs from Jasper Chair Company, and the stone-clad tower featuring quarry-faced roughback limestone from BG Hoadley Quarries. A series of solid aluminum ingot ends will be transformed into benches for the lobby as well. Scheduled for completion in 2010, the expansion adds a total of 20,815 square feet of space.