In this issue:
· NYU Consolidates School of Continuing and Professional Studies
· A View from the Bay Windows
· Architecture Takes Flight in Dance
· Let There Be Street Art
· Arcadia Expands for the Common’s Good
· Shanghai Dreaming

NYU Consolidates School of Continuing and Professional Studies

7 E. 12th Street.

Mitchell/Giurgola Architects

New York University has plans to unite its Washington Square academic programs and services, now located in several locations in Greenwich Village, into a single 117,000-square-foot building at 7 East 12th Street. The 12-story building, designed by Harrison & Abramowitz in 1948, will give the School of Continuing and Professional Studies an identifiable and dedicated teaching, learning, and administrative environment at NYU’s main campus. Mitchell/Giurgola Architects will oversee the redesign, including a new, transparent façade, and the reconfiguration of the building into 65,000 square feet of administrative and faculty offices. The remaining 52,000 square feet will be dedicated to state-of-the-art classrooms, multi-use student lounges, and conference rooms. Occupancy is planned to begin in early summer of 2011.

A View from the Bay Windows

The Dillon.

© Michael Moran

The Dillon, aka 405-437 West 53rd Street, designed by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, opened where parking lots and derelict buildings once stood. The seven-story building has 150,000 square feet of residential space featuring a mix of 51 “flats” (studios to three-bedrooms), 22 duplexes, and nine triplex townhouses, with underground parking and outdoor courtyards. Walls are angled to draw the eye outside, and the building’s faceted façade featuring bay windows is intended to broaden views along the block. The residents’ lounge, with a service bar and a private dining room with catering kitchen, leads to a landscaped garden terrace and a fitness center. Montroy Andersen DeMarco served as the executive architect.

Architecture Takes Flight in Dance

Calatrava designed sets for Christopher Weeldon (left) and Melissa Baraki.

New York City Ballet

After receiving a personal invitation from Peter Martins, the ballet master of the New York City Ballet (NYCB), Santiago Calatrava, FAIA, has designed several multi-functional environments, each one illustrating the recurring theme of movement and flight, for the company’s new season titled “Architecture of Dance — New Choreography and Music.” This is the first time Calatrava has designed sets and his work will appear in world premiere ballets choreographed by Melissa Barak, Mauro Bigonzetti, Martins, Benjamin Millepied, and Christopher Wheeldon. This also marks the first time an architect has designed sets for the NYCB since Philip Johnson in 1981.

Let There Be Street Art

Urban Art Program.

Sage and Coombe Architects

More than 300 volunteers recently painted murals on 150 Jersey barriers lining pedestrian paths and bike lanes in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, as part of public-art project created by Otis Berkin with Sage and Coombe Architects, Niko Courtelis, Lucy Kalian, and Brenda Zlamany. The team was selected through a design competition sponsored by NYC Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program to enhance public space through art and improved street design and streetscapes.

Arcadia Expands for the Common’s Good

Arcadia University Commons.

Kliment Halsband Architects

As part of its At Home & In the World campaign, Arcadia University in suburban Philadelphia, has broken ground for a new three-story University Commons, designed Kliment Halsband Architects. Intended to create a gathering place at the heart of the campus, it will provide larger spaces for lectures, seminars, art exhibitions, fitness, performances, and many other student, faculty, and community needs. With a new façade and a 50,000-square-foot extension to the existing recreation and athletics center, the building completes the campus green. The curving silhouette of the roof defines the interior spaces by separating commons rooms and public spaces facing east to the green from private and service spaces to the west. A terra-cotta-and-glass façade relates to the materials of Landman Library, whose addition was also designed by the firm.

Shanghai Dreaming

Dream Cube.

Basil Childers

ESI Design, in collaboration with Yung Ho Chang, AIA, founder of Atelier FCJZ Architects and current head of MIT’s department of architecture, has designed the Dream Cube for the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. The 40,000-square-foot space was designed from the visitor experience outwards, creating synergies between the exhibition and architectural experiences. The interiors of the pavilion are shaped as a series of free-flowing organic forms wrapped by a dense, cubic volume of infrastructural network housing millions of LED lights encased in polycarbonate transparent plastic tubes made from recycled materials. The building changes its appearance in response to visitor interaction. The concept for the pavilion was inspired in part by fourth-century Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream in which he could not determine if he was a person dreaming he was a butterfly or vice versa. The Expo features 200 pavilions and will run through 10.31.10.