Tomorrow, Saturday, July 24th, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is hosting the third annual City of Water Day Festival. Head to Governors Island, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Liberty State Park and the Atlantic Basin for free harbor boat tours, a children’s festival, live music, and a film expo. (If you find yourself on Governors Island, don’t forget to visit the League’s current exhibition, The City We Imagined/The City We Made, on view in Building 110 through August 15!)

Park development and renovation has been a recent topic of interest for cities worldwide. Next Tuesday, July 27th, there will be a Freshkills Park Talk on that very subject. Entitled “Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities,” the lecture will feature Peter Harnik, Director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land. Reading from and talking about his book of the same name, he will discuss how these new parks are revitalizing previously unused public space and how city planners can add green space in built-out cities. In anticipation of the talk, check out Gotham Gazette for a piece on Harnik, his book, and the politics and planning behind open space in New York City.

New York City is becoming an easier and safer place for senior citizens to live. A number of small, “age-friendly” adjustments are already being implemented, such as increasing the duration of walk signs and providing school buses for trips to the grocery. But that’s just a start. The New York Times reports that the city is in the midst of establishing two “aging improvement districts,” an initiative presented to the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg’s office by the New York Academy of Medicine. The details are still in the works, but it sounds like the planning team should take a look at Interboro’s research into NORCs (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities) in NYC.

The revival of many New York City neighborhoods was tied largely to the renovation and refurbishment of thousands of apartment buildings in the city. However, given the current economic climate, many of these buildings are falling back into disrepair, as tenants are unable to pay their rent, or owners their mortgages. The city once owned many of these properties as a result of tax delinquencies and was widely criticized for how it managed their care, and has no interest in taking them over again. New owners for such buildings are scarce right now, and residents of central Brooklyn, the South Bronx and Harlem in particular are feeling the impact as their neighborhoods, after a period of revitalization, are deteriorating once again.

The Gowanus Canal, recently named a Superfund site by the EPA, has been fitted with a oxygenation system, temporarily replacing a flushing tunnel that is under repair. Part of a $140 million, four-year plan by the EPA, the added oxygen, which determines the water’s ability to sustain life, and repaired flushing tunnel will allow the Gowanus to meet recreational regulations for boating and fishing by the project’s end.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Photo by Flickr user cyu06.

The design for this canopy was selected at a Sketch120 charrette hosted by Design in 5, the Architectural League’s group for young architects and designers. Check in with them on Facebook to find out about their other upcoming events.

This week New York City was fascinated by the unearthing of a portion of an 18th Century ship during excavation at the World Trade Center site. CityRoom provided an account of the discovery and of the urgency of its archaeological documentation, noting that the 30-foot segment of the wooden vessel began deteriorating as soon as it was unearthed, “no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze.” Archaeologists state that it was most likely discarded as part of an intentional landfill that lay ground for what, by 1800, had become Washington Street. That conclusion inspired BLDGBLOG to dig up a 2007 post about San Francisco’s ship-hull foundations, in which another history buried in New York City landfill is reference: the FDR Drive is built atop rubble from World War II Britain.

Relics of more recent histories can be found in cities worldwide, often in the shape of industrial infrastructures left abandoned or deteriorating. Few (so far) have been able to come up with a successful solution for adaptive reuse, but eyes are turning to New York for inspiration. The success of New York’s High Line has prompted calls and visits from public officials and planners from Chicago, Memphis, Rotterdam and Hong Kong, just to name a few, who hope to create similar public amenities back at home.

Record heat has been hitting New York City, but, compared to during heat waves in years past, power outages have been noticeably few. GOOD credits smart-grid technology and demand-response initiatives that alleviate consumption during peak usage to avoid brownouts and blackouts. Two-way digital connections between power providers and consumers’ thermostats or air conditioners can slightly reduce or cycle on/off air conditioning when a threat of an outage occurs. Meanwhile smart meters that allow residents to monitor their usage are becoming more common, a technology that is also being implemented by New York City to track individual water use.

Another way to reduce energy consumption is to turn off the A/C and go outside. New York Magazine has compiled a list of the top nineteen New York City playgrounds for your summer enjoyment. And on three Saturday mornings in August the Department of Transportation will again bring Summer Streets to Park Avenue — but this time with dumpster-style swimming pools!

On Wednesday, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled an electric car charging station in a parking lot near the Lincoln Tunnel. The mayor was joined by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, who explained that the pilot program is about more than reducing our reliance on fossil fuels: “By creating jobs manufacturing and installing charging stations for electric vehicles in nine metropolitan regions around the country, we are partnering with industry to provide a low-cost transportation option for tens of thousands of families.”

A few weeks ago we featured Kirsten Hively’s visit to the Candela Structures at the World’s Fair Marina. If that piqued your interest, she just uncovered a research paper from 1966 dealing with the design and construction of those structures themselves.

Plans for a mixed-use development — set to include 600 housing units, 420,000 square feet of commercial space, a YMCA and a park – in what is currently a 1,100-car parking lot is stirring up ethnic tensions between Chinese and Korean business owners.  The businesses surrounding the lot are predominately Korean and rely on the lot for customer parking, while the majority of the Chinese businesses are blocks away, and many Korean owners fear that without nearby parking, their customers will simply turn elsewhere.

And finally, happy 75th birthday to the parking meter!

Photo by Flickr user misplacedparadox.


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With temperatures in the triple digits earlier this week, residents in major cities like New York, Washington and Philadelphia felt the heat more so than those living in more rural areas due to the heat island effect. That said, a new study out of Georgia Tech posits that among cities, the wider the sprawl the greater the affects of climate change. In other words, get dense to get green! Back in January, the Omnibus brought you Clip-on Architecture: Vanessa Keith’s bold vision for how to knit green interventions into our existing urban building stock in order to redress the affects of tropical deforestation. Keith is hardly the only one turning attention to the roof in attempts to cool buildings, and thus the city, down. By creating the roofs out of a light-colored special polymer, or installing a rooftop garden, or “living roof,” you have the ability to reduce temperatures by almost half, as well as save on cooling costs. While the initial costs of installing such systems has often scared owners in the past, perhaps the weather of the past week will have them reconsider the option. One local enterprise, the Brooklyn Grange Farm, recently installed a green roof at their home in Long Island City, and also sell their goods at various markets around the city.

The design company IDEO is now using video and social media to promote positive thinking about climate change and its future impact on the Earth through their Living Climate Change project. They also recently announced the winner of their video challenge, which allowed filmmakers to showcase what their vision of the future shaped by climate change will be. Below is a short video explaining the premise behind it all (via Flavorwire):

Our Invitation To You from IDEO on Vimeo.

Public transportation has long been touted as one way to lead a more sustainable life, but many New York City buses often move at the same speed as pedestrians, leading to frustration from passengers and city officials alike. However, thanks in part to an $18 million federal grant recently won by the city, plans for the 34th Street Transitway are one step closer to becoming a reality. With over 90% of the traffic at Herald Square coming from pedestrians or transit riders, the plan calls for buses to have their own corridors to allow them to function similarly to the subway, and hopefully be faster and more efficient. Hopefully this project will be the first of many successful ventures to revive the whole city bus system.

Images via WebEcoist; Left – exterior of the pavilion; Right – interior view of the “forest”

Green space may be at a premium in most major metropolitan areas, but DUS Architects out of Amsterdam created a small, wooded retreat for city dwellers with their Unlimited Urban Woods pavilion. From the outside it was just a small, unassuming box, but once you stepped inside they were able to create the illusion of a never-ending forest through the use of just one planted tree and carefully angled mirrors.

In recent years, New York City has been creating, expanding, and renovating numerous parks along the city’s waterfront, most recently the Brooklyn Bridge Park, which opened the first phase to the public in March of this year. However, one op-ed writer for the New York Times, offers the argument that while many are stating that we are “reclaiming” the waterfront, we’ve never really had control of it until now. When it was dominated by shipping and manufacturing in the 19th century and first half of the 20th, the waterfront was a dangerous, crime-ridden place, one that many New Yorkers did not dare to explore. According to the author, Nathan Ward, we’re not reclaiming it, we’re claiming it.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation has recently announced that it is seeking proposals to develop a new hub in the Bronxchester Urban Renewal Area in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx. In addition to the new Yankees Stadium and plans for the Grand Concourse, the City is hoping to further encourage revival through the introduction of a mixed-use development including commercial space, community and educational centers, and other public and semi-public spaces.

Long Island was home to some of the first suburbs in the country, and back in March, the Long Island Index sponsored a competition to ‘Build a Better Burb’ and reconsider the notion in todays economic climate. The 23 finalists were recently announced, with many ideas centered around the concept of walkable, sustainable communities, and are now inviting the public to vote on the “People’s Choice” award. Winners will be announced in October 4th.

This weekend, July 9-11, the Anthology Film Archives is presenting “The Outer Boroughs on Film.” A majority of the documentaries being shown were filmed during the 1970’s and 80’s, when crime, disinvestment and a major fiscal crisis threatened the rapid decline of many neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

If you’ve ever been intrigued by what it takes to be a window cleaner, and what exactly they are thinking working high above the city streets, the New York Times recently had a two-part question and answer series with Andrew Horton. Horton was a window washer for over two decades and now runs the city’s main safety training program.

Robert Moses certainly left his mark on the city in the 1930’s, but one that has been unseen by most is the “Freedom” Tunnel, named after the graffiti artist Chris Pape, that runs under the Upper West Side. Used briefly by Amtrak, it then became home to many of the city’s homeless population, and a prime canvas for Pape and other graffiti artists. Functioning as an active train line once again, it offers urban explorers a world of stunning contrast to explore, as seen below (via Wooster Collective)

Freedom Tunnel from Charles le Brigand on Vimeo


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Photo credits from left to right: Kyle R. Brooks; Steven Yavanian; Frank Guittard; Jason A. Tax.

Be sure to join us on July 8th for the latest in the Architectural League’s Conversations on New York series of public events. This one features former Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff, who set in motion many of the most significant urban projects of the past decade, from the Olympic Bid to congestion pricing to PLANYC 2030. Doctoroff will be in conversation with Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker. (Thursday, July 8 | 7:00 p.m. | The Great Hall, The Cooper Union | 7 East 7th Street | 1.5 CEUs).

And that’s not all that’s going on next week. On July 7th, there are two stimulating panel discussions to choose from. Up in East Harlem, a panel discussion and tour of Tapestry, the new mixed-use, green building, will highlight affordable housing and sustainable design. If you’re more up for a debate on what housing in 2050 will look like, the Forum for Urban Design is hosting a moderated discussion of their own. With the American population projected to grow by another 100 million by then, you can listen to two men with very differing opinions talk about how they think the American urban and suburban landscape will have adapted by then.

Speaking of ideas about the future, Crains, in honor of their 25th anniversary, reached out to a variety of New Yorkers from all disciplines and has come up with 25 ideas to create a better, future New York City. These ideas include topics familiar to Omnibus readers, such as how to rethink Governors Island, how to develop the local food chain, and how deal with New York’s traffic.

Back on May 3rd, ground broke on the Via Verde project in the South Bronx, a new mixed-use development that will include a variety of living environments for a multitude of income levels, and is also slated to certified LEED gold upon completion. The project will also help the city get to Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of an additional 165,000 affordable housing units by 2014. Shaun Donovan, the U.S. Secretary for HUD was at the ground-breaking ceremony, was recently interviewed by Architectural Record to discuss the effects of the stimulus package on affordable housing, and the role that architects have in reshaping urban communities. With $13.6 billion in stimulus funds allocated to HUD, that money has been critical to the continued construction of multi-family homes, and both HUD and architects have an unique opportunity to create a new sustainable model for lower-income communities.

The former Domino Sugar refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront has long been the source of contention within the neighborhood regarding future plans for the abandoned site. This past Tuesday, the City Council gave its support for the $1.4 billion development plan to turn the site into a 2,000 unit residential development. With this approval, the project is expected to gain final approval from the City Planning Commission next month. 660 of the units will be for lower income and working class families, and the Community Preservation Corporation, the developer for the site, conceded to reducing the height of the two tallest buildings (although the total number of units will remain the same), and will keep the main refinery building and the 40 foot tall Domino sign intact. Shuttle buses to the nearest subway stop will also be provided, but with the large number of parking spots that are planned for, many fear that the development will not encourage sustainable living in any regard, and have a negative impact on the surrounding community.

Making Policy Public, a program of The Center for Urban Pedagogy, has released their latest poster, “I Got Arrested! Now What?,” the sixth in the series that explores complex public policy through graphic design; past topics have included street vendors and predatory equity. This one deals with the juvenile justice system, following “Chris” from his arrest through trial in court, explaining each phase of the process and even giving important tips.

Image by Iwan Baan via Fast Company

The Summer Warm Up begins this Saturday at P.S 1, featuring Pole Dance by SO-IL, winner’s of the Young Architects Program. Constructed of a large mesh net set on a 16′x16′ grid of metal poles, bungee cords connected to the poles allow visitors to manipulate the net and the yoga balls atop the net. Perhaps the most interactive (and fun!) of the past few installations, you can also manipulate the sound of the poles or watch real-time visualizations of the installation from its own website.

That sounds like a great way to kick off what for many New Yorkers is a three-day weekend. Fireworks are along the Hudson River again this year. Below, a time-lapse video of last year’s display on the Hudson:

NYC Time Lapse July 4th, 2009 from BoB Coon on Vimeo.

If you’re staying in the city, take advantage of the summer weather, and check out Time Out’s guide to the long weekend. And for those that want to stay in Brooklyn, there are a few patriotic events there as well, including a bar crawl in Greenpoint that culminates in a “Most Patriotic” costume competition.


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