by: Linda G. Miller
In this issue:
· Culture Shed Nests Into High Line
· It’s Blue Skies for the Azure
· Times Square Redux, Part Deux
· Affordable Chelsea
· Ever Timeless Israel Museum Reopens
· Automobiles Stop at New Home in The Hague
Culture Shed Nests Into High Line
Northwest view of Culture Shed at High Line and Eastern Rail Yards platform level.
Courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro/The Rockwell Group
As part of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has awarded the Hudson Yards Development Corporation (HYDC) $100,000 to develop plans for Culture Shed, a collaborative design effort by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and The Rockwell Group. Located north of the High Line, the five-story building will be on a 22,000-square-foot site. Two deployable outer sheds will nest over the base and can be rolled out on tracks to form an exhibition hall of more than 55,000 square feet. The grant is one of 21 totaling $3 million.
It’s Blue Skies for the Azure
The Azure.
SLCE Architects
The Azure, a luxury residential condo on the Upper East Side that suffered a deadly crane collapse in 2008, has opened for occupancy. Designed by SLCE Architects with interiors by Studio Morsa, the 34-story glass tower contains 128 residences ranging from studios to four-bedroom units. The project offers more than 6,300 square feet of amenity space, including a kids’ playroom, game room, lounge and event space, private dining facility, fitness center, and two landscaped rooftop terraces. In addition, two glass panels by Weil Art Studios depicts the “Poet’s Walk” in Central Park. They are backlit with a responsive lighting system that adjusts to the time of day and season. A public school was demolished to make way for the condo, so the completed project includes a new red-brick middle school designed by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects for the NYC Department of Education.
Times Square Redux, Part Deux
The New York office of Snøhetta, one of the eight firms in the NYC Design and Construction Excellence program, has been selected to lead a team of NYC-based designers, engineers, and event infrastructure specialists to create a plan for the permanent redesign of Times Square. The scope includes the design of plazas with ample seating, new paving, and underground infrastructure to accommodate events. The project also includes the complete reconstruction of the roadways, including water mains and sewers, as necessary. The design team includes: WXY architecture + urban design; Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects; Billings Jackson Design; Leni Schwendinger Light Projects; Pure + Applied; Weidlinger; Buro Happold; BEXEL; Wesler Cohen; and Ducibella Venter and Santore. Construction is expected to begin in 2012.
Affordable Chelsea
The Elliott-Chelsea.
GF55
GF55 Partners has completed the design for the Elliott-Chelsea, a 22-story, 165,000-square-foot housing development in West Chelsea. The project will contain 168 affordable units, retail space on the ground level, and an underground parking garage. The development is in response to an RFP issued by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development and NYC Housing Authority in 2007, which called for the redevelopment of underutilized land to build mixed-income communities and providing safe, quality housing for working families.
Ever Timeless Israel Museum Reopens
“Turning The World Upside Down, Jerusalem” (2010), a new site-specific sculpture by Anish Kapoor created for the Israel Museum’s Crown Plaza, the highest point of its renewed campus.
© Tim Hursley, courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Originally opened in 1965, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, designed by Alfred Mansfeld and Dora Gad, is set to reopen with new galleries, public spaces, and two new large-scale, site-specific commissions on its renewed 20-acre campus. Led by New York’s James Carpenter Design Associates and Efrat-Kowalsky Architects of Tel Aviv, the $100-million project includes the comprehensive renovation and reconfiguration of the museum’s three collection wings, and reinstallation of its holdings in the fine arts, archaeology, and Jewish art and life. Echoing the Modernist geometry of the original buildings, the pavilions are shaded within terra-cotta louver housings, designed to soften and diffuse the bright light and create a dialogue between the interior and exterior spaces across the campus. Continuing the tradition of site-specific collaborations, with contemporary artists the museum commissioned Olafur Eliasson’s “Whenever the rainbow appears,” a 44-foot-long work consisting of 360 paintings installed at the end of the museum’s newly designed Route of Passage, and Anish Kapoor’s “Turning The World Upside Down, Jerusalem,” a 15-foot-high sculpture of polished stainless steel at the highest outdoor point on the museum campus.
Automobiles Stop at New Home in The Hague
The Louwman Museum.
Michael Graves & Associates
One of the world’s largest collections of historic automobiles and automotive art has found a home at the new Louwman Museum, also known as the National Automobile Museum, in The Hague. Designed by Michael Graves & Associates, the museum contains more than 230 pioneering automobiles from the late 19th century, racing cars, sports cars, and luxury limousines, and the world’s largest collection of automotive art. The three-story, 185,000-square-foot museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of the collection, with temporary and permanent exhibition galleries, a reception hall, auditorium, food service, and workshops for the conservation and repair of cars in the collection.