Barclays Center Arena at Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn | Courtesy of SHoP Architects

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, January 26, the League is hosting a Current Work lecture featuring Gregg Pasquarelli, founding partner of the New York firm SHoP Architects. SHoP’s work is highly recognizable in New York City — current projects include the Barclays Center Arena at Atlantic Yards, a two-mile esplanade and park for along the East River Waterfront, projects at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Porter House in the Meatpacking District, 290 Mulberry Street and designs for the development of South Street Seaport.

From the lecture description:

As both practitioners and educators, SHoP’s commitment to challenging the process of building seeks to prove that “beauty and technological proficiency are not mutually exclusive.” They state: “We look at an entire project and consider the site, the cultural and economic environment, a client’s physical needs and budget constraints, as well as construction techniques, branding, marketing, and post-occupancy issues…Great architecture demands that design, finance, and technology work together – we’re combining these forces in innovative ways to create a new model for the profession.”

In advance of the talk, the League’s exhibitions and digital programs director, Greg Wessner, sat down with Pasquarelli to talk about the history of the firm, rethinking practice and what’s next for architecture. Here is a taste of what they discussed:

What do you think is next in terms of architecture and technology? Most architects by this point have become pretty comfortable with design and fabrication technologies, so what do you think is next on the technological frontier for architects?
I think it’s going to be about embedding greater intelligence into parametric models, so that the buildings are learning from their contexts both before and after they are built. I believe we are still in this infant stage in terms of sustainability and what is next is to design buildings that are able to change and adapt to their environments. I mean, it’s good that at least people are talking about it, but we always just sort of roll our eyes at things like LEED points and the marketing of “Green” … it’s what we call “sustainable bling.” How many PVs can I hang on my glass building?  It’s ridiculous, right? SHoP believes the most important sustainable thing that you can do is build a building that people love. Because then they take care of it and they don’t rip everything out every few years and they don’t constantly renovate it. The other thing that is extremely important is to build efficiently. Getting the size of a building down ten percent is twenty-five times more sustainable than putting every bit of sustainable bling all over it.

Why are architects relevant–why should architects, to use a phrase we hear constantly, have a “seat at the table?”
Because it’s the one art that the entire public is faced with every single second of their day. And I think that the world is only going to become more and more urbanized. Urban living is the only way to save the planet, and if you don’t do it well, it’s going to be a miserable experience. If you want to save the planet, you better make architecture a big part of it. The mega-cities are going to continue to grow. You’ve got to figure out how to do them well. Things like infrastructure, movement, the environment, mental and personal health — these are the monumental tasks. If architects don’t have a seat at the table, it’s going to be a squandered opportunity of global proportions.

Pasquarelli was also the respondent for the inaugural “League Questionnaire,” an Inside the Actors Studio/Proust Questionnaire-style Q&A that reveals his dream to design Yankee Stadium, the influence of Tufte on his work, when he can be found dancing around his living room to Taylor Swift and how he feels about New York City:

What is your favorite city or town?
My hometown, New York. As my dear friend Vishaan Chakrabarti likes to say, it’s worthless to live in any metropolitan area that has less than ten million people. Anything less than ten million is a small town and don’t bother. I love all the global capitals since, to me, density equals intellectual inspiration. You know, I absolutely love London, but its one negative is that a huge percentage of the population is English. I am in love with Rome, but there really are a lot of Italians there. Tokyo is fabulous, there are a lot of Japanese. The best thing about New York is that it doesn’t have a lot of Americans. That’s what makes New York the most interesting in my opinion. It’s the only city where everyone is at home.

Tickets are still available for the lecture and can be purchased on the League’s website. As always, tickets are free for Architectural League members and are $15 for non-members. Full details and information about reserving tickets can be found here.

Current Work
Gregg Pasquarelli
“Out of Practice”
Moderated by Mark Robbins
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
7:00 p.m.
The Great Hall, The Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street
Presented by the Architectural League of New York; co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. AIA and New York State continuing education credits are available.

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Varick Shute is the managing editor of Urban Omnibus.

The Omnibus office is a collaborative work environment. Interns work closely with the staff on a wide variety of tasks. We expect all candidates to have a curiosity for and interest in design, architecture and urbanism and strong communication, organization and writing skills. Beyond those fundamentals, we welcome applications from individuals from all fields of study or interest. Aspiring journalists, cartographers, planners, graphic designers, writers, media producers, architects, technologists, artists, or urban enthusiasts of any sort are encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities vary from day to day, but often include research, writing, publication preparation, administrative tasks, or audience-building efforts. If an applicant expresses interest in any particular aspect of the job, we do our best to both nurture and mine those interests for the mutual benefit of both the intern and the project. Opportunities arise frequently for interns to write for our Forum, and we welcome pitches for potential features that would be developed in collaboration with the editors. This is an unpaid internship, though we are open to discussing independent study or credit opportunities. Hours are flexible, though regularity in schedule is preferred.

For more information about the internship and how to submit an application, download this PDF. Come join the Omnibus team!

Varick Shute is the project manager of Urban Omnibus.

Last week, New York City Commissioners Amanda Burden, of the Department of City Planning (DCP), Adrian Benepe, of Parks and Recreation (DPR), and David Burney, of the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), convened at the Great Hall of The Cooper Union for the third in the Architectural League’s series of Conversations on New York.  Moderated by New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger, the discussion focused on the two major questions posed by the League exhibition The City We Imagined/The City We Made: how has the physical fabric of New York changed in the last ten years, and what is the legacy of this decade for the future of New York?

Goldberger opened the conversation with a question about the recent Active Design Guidelines, an initiative of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that ultimately involved the DDC, the City Department of Transportation (DOT), DCP and the Office of Management and Budget. How did such a cross-agency collaboration come about? Burden credited this kind of approach to the Mayor, who from the start questioned why things never seemed to get done in city government. Dan Doctoroff played a significant role in increasing effectiveness by consolidating all City agencies with an impact on economic development under his authority, thereby allowing such agencies as DCP, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Economic Development Corporation to report to one deputy mayor. The result, said Burden, has been a coordinated and broad approach to planning that benefits both the agencies and the public.

Goldberger asked if New York City is inherently a fitter city than most, in the same way that our density makes us an inherently greener city — a question that drew attention to a voice missing from the table, that of DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. (A last-minute schedule conflict prevented Sadik-Khan from participating on the panel.) Benepe “wore the Sadik-Khan hat” and spoke of her well-known work with bike paths and bike safety as a significant contributor to the city’s overall health. Despite controversies, Benepe said, the bike paths work and they are safe. “But we,” Benepe, a cyclist himself, said, “are our own worst enemy.” The missing ingredient for the bike lanes’ ultimate acceptance is better cyclist behavior: running red lights and close swipes to pedestrians and drivers diminish non-cyclists’ openness to expanding the program.

Goldberger asked each panelist to take a step back and consider the overall evolution of the built environment of New York City over the last ten years. What, he asked, will be the legacy of this decade?

According to Burden, the legacy of the Bloomberg administration will be its focus on the public realm, vibrant street life, and quality design. She focused on the massive rezoning efforts undertaken by City Planning, the goals of which were to focus development around transit hubs in all five boroughs, recapture the waterfront for the public, and protect low-density communities that don’t have the transit infrastructure to grow from disproportionate development. Ultimately she hopes that the administration has allowed the city to “grow in place,” enabling each neighborhood to accommodate the new while retaining the assets it already had. “We plan on a Robert Moses scale, but judge ourselves on Jane Jacobs standards.”

For Benepe, this era will be remembered as “the most exciting period of park design and expansion in decades,” a time when appreciation of the landscapes of Olmsted and Vaux did not preclude pushing the envelope of park design. This administration has insisted that municipal architecture be of the best possible quality. As for the legacy of the Bloomberg administration overall, Benepe surmised that the way in which various City departments worked together, in a fashion that may never have existed before, will prove to be a landmark of these ten years.

Burney remarked on the undeniable influence of 9/11, and the way in which it “triggered a fundamental change in how we think about cities in general.” In the ‘70s, cities were going bankrupt and people questioned the value of cities on the whole, an uncertainty that resurfaced after the 2001 attacks. Ultimately, cities survived these losses of faith because our ideas of ‘what cities are’ changed. Burney stated that people live in cities now because they want cities’ “multiplicity of choices:” culture, educational opportunities, safety, recreation, quality of life – not necessarily because they are mercantile or industrial hubs, their primary attraction in earlier eras. If those offerings and opportunities are sustained, New York City will continue to be a place where people choose to live.

Goldberger, returning to parks, questioned Benepe on the increased privatization of public space and parks. While strained public budgets make this appear beneficial, is it “a Faustian bargain in the long run?” Benepe reminded the audience that the private conservancies and alliances in question were formed because the Parks Department had allowed the City’s parks to become frightening, decrepit places. Citizen participation and investment in the maintenance of parks is an energy the city wants to encourage, as long as “public interest always [remains] paramount.” Besides, Benepe asserted, the existence of conservancies and friends groups for the City’s most visible parks makes more city funding available for the ones without private support.

Turning to Burden, Goldberger challenged her characterization of the rezonings as intending to retain the fundamental character of city neighborhoods. What about the shiny glass towers that transformed certain areas and the complete demographic shift of some neighborhoods? Burden acknowledged the strength of the real estate market pre-crash and claimed that some out-of-character development shot up because developers saw the rezonings coming. But she did not apologize for certain noticeable changes. “The Bowery is a fantastic corridor,” she said, “It is exuberant, which is good for the city.” The city does, and should, change, and though the lasting appeal of certain styles will be a test of time, architecture helps keep a city young and important. “If we want to remain a global city, we have to compete. Architecture is one component of that competitiveness.”

In a question directed at Burney, Goldberger asked what the city is doing about affordable housing. Burney emphasized the challenges, pointing to the deficiencies, historically, of federal housing policy, which contributed to the fits-and-starts development of the city’s housing program. He acknowledged the good work being done by Shaun Donovan (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development), but noted that any advancement on the supply side, which is already hindered by budgetary constraints, is overwhelmed by the extraordinary demand. Burney called out Via Verde for commendation as a new kind of housing program that is worthy of attention, one that is creating a complete neighborhood in one piece – with mixed typology, mixed income, retail, and gardens.

Goldberger concluded the panel by asking how New Yorkers will look back on this period fifty years from now.

Burden hopes that they will talk about the waterfront and how the water’s edge is part of their lives. She hopes that they will think about the quality of life in the streets, the integration of nature into the urban environment, and improved walkability. And most importantly, she said, she hopes that the city is considered a truly five-borough city.

Benepe also focused on the waterfront, though he characterized the accomplishment as “taking it for the first time.” The waterfront, he reminded the audience, has been a location for business since the Dutch arrived. This is the first time the waterfront is being given to the people for recreational purposes. Overall this administration’s large-scale public works projects will be remembered as ushering in a new ethos of landscape architecture, one with more sensitive engineering and an increased integration with nature. Benepe also pointed out, to put the time frame of large-scale public works projects in perspective, that in fifty years, New Yorkers will just be seeing the completion of Freshkills Park.

Burney concluded the panel discussion on a cautionary note. We are at a crossroads regarding climate change and its impact on the world, he said. “Fifty years from now we might be in a Ridley Scott situation,” and it’s not looking good that we will turn things around. Citing failures of policy on both the state and national level, Burney called for action: “It’s the cities that are having to step up and take the lead to face these issues. What we do in the next ten years will determine what we’ll be seeing in fifty years.”

UPDATE: A podcast of the event is now available on the League’s website. Click here to watch Adrian Benepe, Amanda Burden and David Burney in conversation.

Varick Shute is the Project Manager of Urban Omnibus.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for wandering along Roosevelt Island’s waterfront. The Omnibus team and fifty of our friends spent the afternoon learning about the history of the masterplan, seeing one of the infamous pneumatic trash chutes in action, and getting a guided tour of the Fast Trash! exhibition (open for one more week!). Thanks are in order for Juliette Spertus, Judy Berdy, Jack McGrath, Adam Michaels, and Marianne Lau for taking us around.

Scheduled tour-guide Donald Richardson, one of the masterplanners of Roosevelt Island, was unable to join us at the last minute. Luckily, Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society was part of the group and stepped in to fill his shoes. Berdy shared her extensive historical knowledge of the island, from its days as Blackwell’s Island, home to a penitentiary, smallpox hospital and asylum for the insane, to its transition to a hospital complex, renamed Welfare Island, and its subsequent redevelopment in the late 1960s/early ’70s into the Roosevelt Island we know today. The original three-phase masterplan, developed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, anticipated housing and services for 20,000 residents and turned the island into a car-free zone, connected to Queens by the Roosevelt Island Lift Bridge and to Manhattan by tram and subway (though F train service did not come to the island until 1989). Ultimately only phase one was implemented, and car-free didn’t take hold (though the island is essentially a one-road town — Main Street, supplemented by a few service roads), but the island flourished and is now home to approximately 12,000 people. Development continues, with a newly modernized tramway opening later this year and construction underway for the FDR Four Freedoms Park at the island’s southern tip.

One element of the masterplan that did get implemented — and the topic that piqued the interest of many of our meet-up attendees — is the island’s pneumatic trash system.  Juliette Spertus, architect, curator of Fast Trash! and subject of last week’s Omnibus feature, explained more about the history and implementation of this unusual trash collection system. Together with Jack McGrath, the exhibition’s curatorial assistant, and Marianne Lau, an architect who lives on Roosevelt Island, Juliette walked us around the island, stopping to let us see the infrastructure in action. First stop: Riverwalk, courtesy of Charlie, a maintenance supervisor, who showed us one of the residential complex’s chutes. Next stop: the waste transfer station, where we saw the remarkably unassuming entry point where the island’s two central tubes converge to deposit the trash of thousands and peered in through windows at the facility.

While walking along the waterfront, we caught sight of another project of interest to Omnibus readers: the tidal hydropower turbine project implemented by Verdant Power and Keyspan to harness the energy of the tidal estuary that is the East River.

We wrapped up the afternoon at the exhibition space itself, watching a sample Lamson airtube shoot a capsule over our heads and across the room, looking at archival documentation of New York City’s now-defunct pneumatic mail delivery system, and learning about past experiments and current advances in pneumatic waste management in cities around the world. Juliette, Adam Michaels of Project Projects, who designed and co-organized the exhibition, and other members of the exhibition team discussed the research and inspiration for the show and pondered issues surrounding waste management and consumption on a broader scale. Our nation consumes at an excessive rate, producing a similarly excessive waste stream, one that is whisked away to far-off landfills, making it easy for us to ignore or deny the larger impact our habits create. The relative invisibility of our waste management system, it was argued yesterday, might detract from our perception of individual accountability. Would a centrally-located, highly-visible waste disposal system encourage better practices? How can we learn from the infrastructure investments being made in places like Stockholm, Barcelona or Macau? Both Juliette and Judy also rallied for individual and community involvement on a local level. The existing system is reaching its limits, and those who support its modernization, potential expansion to incorporate recycling, or even exploration of the technology’s plausibility beyond the island must make their voices heard. Sound advice from a Sunday afternoon walking tour.

As always, thanks to everyone who came out to join us. Don’t miss our next event. Sign up for our weekly email, become a fan of Urban Omnibus on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest.

Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society

Charlie, maintenance supervisor, Riverwalk.

Architect and Roosevelt Island resident Marianne Lau.

Project Projects' Adam Michaels and Fast Trash! curator Juliette Spertus.

Photos by Varick Shute or Cassim Shepard.

Fred Bland, managing partner at Beyer Blinder Belle and masterplanner for the station’s renovation in the 1990s, reminded those assembled that what is now a sprawling maze of passageways, stairways and platforms was previously a narrow, choked set of pedestrian corridors linking together the 10 lines of IRT and BMT trains (transfers between the two sets of platforms required paying a second fare until 1967). Now, with inspiration drawn from such unexpected sources as the piazzas of Italian hill-towns, the transverses are wide, brightly lit and bedecked with art. The impressive “Hook, Line and Sinker,” created by environmental sculptor and friend of the Omnibus George Trakas, is installed throughout the station, in the masonry that lines the passageway walls, along the banister that leads up to the 2, 3 platform, and above commuters’ heads in the shaft of what used to be the entrance kiosk and is now the source of natural light for the concourse below. How often do you enjoy natural light while making a daily subway transfer? Bland’s idea to repurpose the former Times Plaza station-house to structure the skylights also serves to orient passengers to where exactly they are underground relative to what’s going on above.

Ongoing construction of the soon-to-open LIRR Atlantic Avenue terminal leave some passageways still restricted. Karrie Jacobs, contributing editor at Metropolis magazine and frequent user of the station, evoked the sensation of walking through a dream while commuting, unable to shake the feeling that the spaces just don’t make sense to one another. Mazes and crowds aside, the tour allowed us to stop and look at what we typically experience as a blur while we all rush through the station, from the particular type of granite selected for wall accents to a small peephole looking in on Trakas’ sculpture from the street above.

As always, thanks to everyone who joined us. Check out some of our photos below, and if you came along and have some of your own, add them to our Flickr group and tag them “urbanomnibus.” Don’t miss out on our next event. Sign up for our weekly email, become a fan of Urban Omnibus on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest.

Photos by Varick Shute

Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder are launching a mobile media project this weekend that allows people to browse proposed, visionary, but unbuilt designs for New York City on your iPhone. (Reason #172 why I love having an iPhone.) Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures is a project Cheng and Snyder developed during their Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship, a program which supports advanced research and experimental practice that explores, challenges, and expands conventional definitions of public architecture. You might recall past Omnibus mention of other New York Prize recipients Alexander Levi and Amanda Schachter and their crossing of the Bronx River. This weekend’s event is equally worthy of our attention and attendance.

The press release explains further:

Users can view images and descriptions of speculative projects ranging from Buckminster Fuller’s dome over midtown Manhattan, to Antonio Gaudi’s unbuilt cathedral, to Archigram’s pop-futurist “Walking City,” all while standing on the projects’ intended sites.

Created by Van Alen Institute New York Prize fellows Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder, Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures is not only a window into innovative architecture, but a work of unconventional design in itself – a robust, database-driven contribution to the field of mobile media public art and part of the small but emerging genre of iPhone “app art.”

The project launches this Saturday, October 3, at 1:00 p.m. with a self-guided tour and scavenger hunt. Participants met at the Roosevelt Island tram station, and reconvene later in the day for a reception and prizes at the Van Alen Institute.

Individuals interested in participating in the tour and scavenger hunt must email rsvp@vanalen.org by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 30 to reserve a spot and to receive instructions on downloading the iPhone app. Those who do not have an iPhone will be teamed up with someone who does.

1:00 p.m. – Tour and Scavenger Hunt
Meet at the base of the aerial tram station on Roosevelt Island
4:00 p.m. – Project Reception and Prizes
Convene at Van Alen Institute
30 W. 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10010
(212) 924-7000

Go, appreciate some database-driven mobile media public art, and explore the unbuilt city.

Remember how much fun we had when we got together and made a difference in two days? Well, a team of North Carolinians felt like taking matters into their own hands, without warning and without ceremony. Design activist extraordinaire and organizer of our Make a Difference event, Bryan Bell, recently shared with us these photos. He had nothing to do with the objects; neither did the photographer, Rebecca Necessary. They found the designs with a note attached that reads: “Anonymous public gifting by Raleigh designers.”

Be inspired. Click the image above to view a slideshow of the Raleigh designers’ work.

All images by Rebecca Necessary.

The Pop.Park Call for Submissions (deadline September 1) reads:

POP.Parks will be public spaces produced from readily available, reclaimed or post-consumer recycled materials that will emerge from a regular, cardboard box. POP.Park competition finalists will be invited to construct their prototype on Park(ing) Day 2009 and entries will be judged by POPular text-message voting. The winners will be announced at T.A.’s annual REDUX event and the winning POP.Park prototype will be fabricated and sold on the T.A. website.

POP.Park prototypes should create a relaxing, safe and visually compelling environment for people. POP.Parks must provide physical delineation from traffic and be contextual to the city street environment. Physically, POP.Parks must fold into a box (or reusable bag or tote) that one person can carry while walking or riding public transportation. When assembled, POP.Parks should be no larger than 8′x15′ – the size of a regular car parking spot. The cost of building a POP.Park must not exceed $20.00

POP.Parks should be easy and fun to reconstruct and recreate over and over again on a neighborhood street. What’s in the box should be the structure – but the instructions can call on the creativity of the user to incorporate other commonly available materials or furniture items.

Click over to the website for more information, including submission instructions. You can also find out how to register for Park(ing) Day 2009, taking place on September 18th.