The Omnibus Roundup – Happy Holidays Edition

Busby Perkins & Will Architects submission to Creative Room’s Gingerbread Competition 2009.

The Omnibus team is off to deck some halls and ring in the new year, but not without one more batch of links for you to peruse. If you are new to our site, we would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to catch up on all of the content you may have missed from this first year of the Omnibus. Explore by author, by recurring series (links appear at the right of the page, under the map), by tag (see the list below the recurring series), or just dive into the whole collection. If you like spending your video viewing time on YouTube or Vimeo, we also have channels on both for our Omnibus-produced video content.

Outside of the Omnibus, things haven’t slowed down for the holidays. It’s official, the master closing of the Atlantic Yards deal has gone through. Curbed has the full press release posted, while Atlantic Yards Report pointed out early this morning that questions raised by Senator Bill Perkins about possible fraud in the bond sale have not been addressed.

The City Council approved the rezoning plan that will allow developers of the West Side Rail Yards project to move forward with the eight towers planned for the site. The New York Times reports that 1,294 apartments in the neighborhood will be provided or preserved for poor and working-class tenants, and also notes that it may be years before any construction starts, considering the state of the economy and the lack of a commercial anchor tenant or a design for the residential buildings on the site.

But when something does crop up over there, subway riders will be able to access it a little more easily — the extension of the 7 train has reached the end of phase one, courtesy of a giant, very cool tunnel boring machine. And the underground team was kind enough to record the moment for YouTube distribution – check it out (via Gothamist):

While on YouTube, you might also check out the Port Authority’s new channel, a series of videos of progress at the World Trade Center site. The YouTube channel only has three videos posted so far, but the photo documentation, available on the Port Authority site and on Flickr, covers more.

Lastly, just because it’s Christmas, check out some architects’ contemporary responses to the traditional gingerbread house for a Vancouver auction. (Bidding has closed, but the images are still posted.)

Happy holidays from all of us here at Urban Omnibus and the Architectural League! See you in 2010.

 

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

The views expressed here are those of the authors only and do not reflect the position of The Architectural League of New York.