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


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

Click image above to visit the Rising Currents website

The creative upwelling that you will soon be able to see at MoMA is one of those unique points of public focus that come along only every decade or so. With a name like “Rising Currents” it’s easy to ask if anything will actually float up to the top. Or will all the ideas take in water and lie in suspension until its just too late? Already the blogosphere and comment boards such as the one over at New York Magazine’s website are filling up with decriers: “Don’t people know that global warming has been debunked?” That our “methane is worse than our CO2?”

Nevertheless, just think for a moment if somehow we managed to bring back vibrant aquatic life to the shores of our inner harbor. If a resurgence of oysters and shellfish ate up all the bacteria our sewage treatment plants cannot. If New York Harbor waters were actually made to be swimmable again, would that be a bad thing? Let’s not waste the opportunity to ponder these questions. Grab your date book and pencil in “March 24th – October 11th.” It isn’t often the stars in our cultural, design, and media worlds all focus on the same topic, and for this reason alone we should all pay close attention to what’s presented and dare to ask, “So what do we do next?”

The exhibition prompted five New York architecture firms to each come up with architectural solutions for the problem of rising ocean waters around Upper New York Bay. The choice of sites ignores the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge – where rising waters are already being blamed for disappearing marshes – and the Rockaways – where barrier islands are populated heavily by senior citizens as well as low income residents. But we can forget that for a moment and delve into the deep pool of talent applied to this imminent challenge. See the map below for how the Upper Bay was divided up amongst the designers:

0. Architecture Research Office (ARO) and dlandstudio,  1. Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects (LTL) 2. Matthew Baird Architects 3. nARCHITECTS 4. Scape Studio

For those who haven’t had the time to peruse the MoMA site or attend either of the open houses at PS1 over the last few months, here are a few things to look for when you go.

Matthew Baird Architects, Zone 2

In my mind the most compelling idea comes out of Matthew Baird Architects‘ look at the western part of New York Harbor and the Kill Van Kull.

This area isn’t even on most New Yorkers’ radar screen. Inside this industrial landscape – still home to tank farms, oil terminals, and even a Scottish “Links” style golf course (you look surprised?) – Baird’s firm proposes a new wave of industrial development. Combining the millions of cubic yards of silt and mud that are dredged up out of the harbor each year with the millions of tons of recycled glass collected throughout the region, a Seuss-esque harborside factory could roll out, in Jane Margolies’ words, “jumbo crystalline jacks” which could then be assembled on the bay floor and post a “free parking” sign for algae, shellfish and other aquatic life. At a time when everything in Washington and Albany alike seems to be retreating like a fast-moving glacier, it’s inspiring to see someone tackle two big problems – repurposing industrial waste and providing new habitat for marine life – with one potential solution.

Scape Studio, Zone 4

Across the Harbor, the Gowanus Bay and Buttermilk Channel team – led by Scape studio – starts with a much, much smaller building block: the oyster.

Oysters, that most-celebrated bivalve, are enjoying a resurgence throughout the region, from Soundview in the Bronx to Somerville Basin in Jamaica Bay. A whole network of oyster-lovers, cultivated by New York-New Jersey Baykeeper, is itself now spawning a new initiative that is so big even the US Army Corps of Engineers is getting on board. That Agency’s goal – to restore 500 acres of oyster reefs around the estuary – makes this ecological vision something that could actually happen if we just help nature get started and then move out of the way. Some might say that this team had an easier assignment, given the huge amount of study and consideration the Gowanus Canal has been given for more than a decade. Still, a close look at their proposal beneath the surface of the water reminds us that the health of the Canal is linked to the health of Gowanus Bay and to the adjacent Bay Ridge flats.

nARCHITECTS, Zone 3

Heading south to the Narrows, the team of nARCHITECTS had probably the most challenging study area.

Southwest Brooklyn’s waterfront, with its acres of landfill and piers and the sliver of Belt Parkway, doesn’t pair simply to the Clifton and Stapleton areas of Staten Island. The urban fabric and scale of uses are very different in each place, and the only unifying element here is the mouth of the Upper Bay at the Narrows. Given the assignment - “to re-envision the [New York Harbor] coastlines … with adaptive ’soft’ infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology” – surge barriers may seem an obvious solution to suggest. However, to bring this effort into its larger context we must not forget the need to create new barriers along the Arthur Kill and Long Island Sound. Just like Times Square, there are many, many ways to get to the Upper Bay. The team succeeds by creating a new vertical reality: a semi-submerged housing typology where blue space downstairs becomes the “front” yard and the roof garden becomes the “back” yard. One can almost imagine the concrete and steel lobbyists now gathering at the Hilton to figure out how to make this modular prototype of residential construction the new Celebration, FL – on FEMA’s dime.

Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis, Zone 1

Moving clockwise along the clock face of the harbor, LTL had a simple and yet very challenging project area in the form of Liberty State Park, Jersey City.

In this study area, the question arises: wipe the slate clean or protect and strengthen the existing uses? LTL’s treatment represents, in my mind, the maturation of public design competitions today. Wiping the slate clean is easy. Ask anyone who has ever done an historic renovation and they will agree. But nowadays one cannot really do that – you end up fending off attacks rather than interpreting your ideas. The “monumental inundation” the team prepares for seems still bound by its historic geometry. As an old railroad yard in the 19th and 20th centuries, the site bears almost all straight line edges and has but a few curves. But here they find in the old railroad terminal (built in 1889, it is the oldest ferry terminal still in the Harbor) an iconic template which they inflate to the whole scale of the Park and study area. The ferry racks – which face the red brick Richardson-Romanesque building – are like the jaws of beetles waiting to grab the vessels arriving from New York and especially from Ellis Island. Today they are largely intact, but wholly and almost strangely unprogrammed. LTL inflates these slips into giant piers, cramming onto each of them some combination of uses which already adorn the giant park. The resulting construct is on a scale that might speak to and even welcome vessels visiting from outer space. Big thinking indeed!

Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio, Zone 0

Ending this Palisade Bay runaround and returning to Lower Manhattan we return to the realities of our existence today: huge amounts of financial capital embedded in schist, just a Frisbee toss from the rising tide.

ARO and dlandstudio hark back to the colony’s founding: the canals that became the first local arteries of commerce. The wetlands, which Mannahata reminded us used to be here, have been mercilessly filled in as we haved marched to progress and prosperity. Bravely, this team seems to insert even a few new buildings in towards the edge, albeit with a program that is much more stratified and cognizant that ground floor space in Manhattan may actually not always command such a premium.

Visit the area today and you’ll see, right outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal on Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan, three steps at grade for you to walk up, before you go down a couple dozen to get to the subway. Many years ago, the public agencies that drive capital construction in NYC realized that the impact of large storms and surges was not simply a threat, but a reality. In low lying areas like Tribeca or parts of Chelsea they are building accordingly, raising grates and station entrances to keep the water from pouring in.

Now with Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront about to open at one of the city’s most celebrated cultural institutions, the question is not at all “whose scheme is the best?” Rather, when do we bring the Cost Estimators in? There are dozens of good ideas here. The challenge is, who will build some of them to see how they work?

Image by Cameron Davidson/John Blackford via www.siliconbeat.com | This image is not associated with the MoMA exhibition, but it bears keeping in mind: we ignore the premises of Rising Currents at our peril.

Carter Craft is a waterfront planner and co-founder of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. He is a licensed Captain working in the private sector and teaches the Waterfront Planning seminar at Pratt Institute. This summer he will co-teach the Sustainable New York City course at Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus.

]]> http://urbanomnibus.net/2010/03/a-deep-pool-of-talent-what-will-rising-currents-yield/feed/ 0 40.760992 -73.977599 http://urbanomnibus.net/2010/02/the-omnibus-roundup-37/ http://urbanomnibus.net/2010/02/the-omnibus-roundup-37/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:02:27 +0000 Urban Omnibus http://urbanomnibus.net/?p=13153

App-lovers take note: the NYC Economic Development Corporation has presented the winners of its NYC BigApps contest. The winners, who received cash prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000, include the grand prize-winning WayFinder NYC, an augmented reality application that helps users…

App-lovers take note: the NYC Economic Development Corporation has presented the winners of its NYC BigApps contest. The winners, who received cash prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000, include the grand prize-winning WayFinder NYC, an augmented reality application that helps users find the nearest subway station, Taxihack, which allows users to share reviews of their taxi drivers, and the Popular Choice Award winner NYC Way, which combines over 30 iPhone applications that sort, by proximity, information about nearby swimming pools, wifi hotspots, post offices, emergency rooms, street vendors, and more.

The pedestrian plazas in Midtown have people buzzing once again, and this time not about the chaise-longues. The New York Times got word from an unidentified city official that the anticipated traffic flow reduction has not met the DOT’s expectations. It is not clear whether the experimental project will be made permanent, but in the meantime both supporters and detractors are eager to see the data made public. Streetsblog reminds us that traffic flow is not the only indicator of success for this project, noting a significant reduction in pedestrian deaths in the area and the support of local businesses and such groups as the Times Square Alliance.

Vishaan Chakrabarti’s Double Down on Density has sparked quite a bit of conversation this week, both here on the Omnibus and around the web. Questions are being asked and comments are being made about the Northeast Corridor, how regional configurations come into play, how infrastructure spending is often cast as “debt and pork,” and our nation’s consistent cultural tendency towards highways and sprawl. The discussion, with Chakrabarti’s responses, continues — join in. There is plenty more to talk about.

Also garnering some attention lately is Vanessa Keith’s recent feature Clip-on Architecture. Fans take note: her piece was adapted from a more extensive article that is now available for download here (PDF). And in other climate-aware news, a panel of experts this week presented over 100 recommendations for how to make New York City’s building codes greener. The measures are referred to as “suggestions” for now, and the panel acknowledged the need for financing and incentives for developers, but Bloomberg sees this as a key advancement in his goal to reduce greenhouse emissions by 30% by 2030. Stay tuned to see how this plays out.

In other transportation news, consulting firm Frost and Sullivan released a report last week that car sharing is up 117% since 2007 (via TreeHugger). Additionally, Streetsblog reports that the Seward Park Houses foray into community-specific car sharing has been wildly popular. The program is run by Hertz and makes use of two of Seward Park’s parking spaces, with claims that each shared car replaces 14 personal cars. Lower East Side residents take note: The program is now open to the general public.

We’ll end this roundup with some fun with maps, photos and archi-art for your weekend perusal. Map lovers, expect to waste some serious time exploring both the New York Public Library’s brand new georectification (!) maps site (via Gothamist) and the 1924 aerial map on NYCityMap (via Curbed) — though Omnibus readers might remember (as Steven Romalewski mentioned in the Curbed comments) that OASIS offers a look back as far as 1609 and explorations of more recent development, in greater detail, from 1996 to the present. For an alternately angled New York City view, WNYC has posted two photo slideshows by Stephen Nessen of underground happenings: one of Grand Central from one hundred feet below and one of the tunnels for the 7 train extension (via The Infrastructurist). Finally, we recently discovered the blog butdoesitfloat and its architecture-centric art eye candy. We highly recommend perusing the archive for a stunning collection of images ranging from a David Maisel photography series on mining to an unearthed LIFE magazine photoessay on Le Corbusier in his studio:

Top image: 100 feet below Grand Central Station, photo by Stephen Nessen, via WNYC. Bottom image: Photo by David Maisel, via butdoesitfloat.com. The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

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