screengrab of Examining MetroCard Usage from wsj.com

EXAMINING METROCARD USAGE
The Wall Street Journal has sifted through a year’s worth of data about MetroCard use, recently released by the MTA, to see what they could find out about how people move around New York. By breaking down what kinds of cards (unlimiteds, pay-per-rides, senior discount) are used where, patterns emerge across demographics and neighborhoods. A high percentage of senior discount MetroCards swiped at a station suggests an older population, and the variation in use of 30-day-unlimited cards versus pay-per-ride cards tells a story of where commuters go as opposed to visitors. The dataset also coincides with the most recent fare hike, which allows for additional analysis into how the cost increase has affected ridership city-wide as well as ways it has disproportionately affected people of lower income levels. Read more about the analysis here, or head straight to the interactive map to explore for yourself.

EAST RIVER FERRY EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS
When East River Ferry service launched early this summer, the city was optimistic that New Yorkers would take to the waters for a more pleasant commute away from subway crowds and service changes, but detractors claimed that waterborne travel was a flash in the pan, noting a drop in ridership once a month-long free pilot period ended. But now, word is that ferry use has exceeded expectations, drawing twice as many riders as anticipated (on weekends, ridership is six times higher than projected). Ferry operators are eager to expand service in response to enthusiasm and demand from both residents and tourists, and both the operators and the City agree that ferry service has the potential to bring economic activity and aid development in areas along the route. But city officials cite limited financial resources as a significant obstacle, and some are waiting until cold weather sets in to determine whether adding capacity year-round makes sense. Read more in The New York Times and The Brooklyn Paper.

Image by Massachusetts Institute of Technology via theatlanticcities.com

CAT SCANS FOR CITIES
Improved energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact are topics that dominate contemporary discourse about our built environment and urban spaces. Now, cities have a new tool to properly identify existing problems and better understand how to address them. A group at the MIT Field Intelligence Lab is advancing the use of “energy diagnostic imaging,” inspired by medical diagnostic scans like MRIs and CAT scans. Infrared cameras capture differences in energy use in the urban landscape in “thermal portraits” that divulge where insulation is failing or excess energy is being produced. Pinpointing the source of the inefficiency allows for more accurate and effective solutions, and a healthier city. Read more on The Atlantic Cities.

NEW ZONING FOR NEW YORK
The 1906 and 1916 zoning ordinances in New York City were landmark policies that combined use zoning and form zoning, and were incredibly forward thinking for their time, setting the standards for cities around the country. But our zoning ordinances, which have enormous impact on determining the form of our built environment, haven’t been comprehensively rethought for 50 years. Last week, during the Municipal Art Society’s second annual MAS Summit for New York City, a panel of zoning experts convened for “A New Zoning Resolution for the 21st Century: Its Necessity and Potential” to discuss the ways New York’s regulations don’t align with the changing needs of its residents and what could be done to make them better. Touching on land use codes, environmental review processes and contextual zoning, the conversation also focused on housing issues, such as the restrictive definition of what a “family” is according to zoning code. These topics were highlighted by panelist Jerilyn Perine, the executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council (and our partner in Making Room, the project we introduced earlier this month to address how we can make New York’s housing more responsive to the ways we live now). For more coverage of the panel, check out Streetsblog.

Video of “Rebuilding Crumbling Infrastructure” with Chris Ward, Vishaan Chakrabarti and Madelyn Wills from masnycsummit201

REGION IN CRISIS
Also at the MAS Summit, outgoing Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward expressed some big ideas for New York. Calling the New York metro area a region in “economic and environmental crisis,” he emphasized the need for the city to wean itself off its dependence on truck transport and instead advocated the expansion of freight rail service — a topic we explored in depth earlier this week. Equally transformative was his vision for the Brooklyn waterfront and Governors Island. According to Ward, the success of Governors Island rests upon moving the activity of the Red Hook Container Terminal further south, to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, and rethinking the use of different portions of Brooklyn’s waterfront, focusing instead on recreation and transportation to spur development. For more on Ward’s ideas from the Summit, as well as a recap of frequent Omnibus contributor Vishaan Chakrabarti’s thoughts on the advantages of intense densification for New York from the same session, click here. And to learn about Patrick Foye, Governor Cuomo’s choice to run the Port Authority when Ward steps down at the end of this month, click here.

MTA MANUFACTURING
Chris Ward’s proposal to shift industrial use out of Red Hook doesn’t mean the city is ready to abandon industry in the five boroughs. In fact, efforts are strong to restore manufacturing capabilities to some key sites. Building the Future, a conference organized a few weeks ago by “a coalition of union interests, policy organizations and sustainable-living advocates,” met to discuss options for encouraging the return of manufacturing to both New York City and State. One proposal: manufacturing for the MTA. The city’s public transportation system is in a constant state of disrepair — as many things that are loved and used constantly often are — but the production of repair parts and new vehicles is increasingly contracted to facilities out of state. Returning MTA manufacturing and repair to New York would be a boon for the economy and the job market, so what’s holding the MTA back from staying local? The buildings still exist, the workers are still here, but the money isn’t. Both the city and the state have decreased funds towards the MTA in the past three decades, and the proposals set forth by Building the Future would require unavailable public funds. Read more in The New York Times.

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

Brooklyn Army Terminal | archival images via brooklynarmyterminal.com

One week from Saturday, on September 17th, the Architectural League will be hosting the 2011 Beaux Arts Ball at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. The Ball is a tremendous event with historical chops. Started in the late 19th century by the École des Beaux-Arts, this tradition has since become a staple of architecture schools around the country. The League held its first Ball in 1990, and it now serves as an annual benefit to support the many programs of our beloved institution. Each year, the Ball is held in a different, architecturally-distinct place — including the Seagram Building, the Synod House of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Old American Can Factory , the American Academy of Arts and Letters — which is transformed for the event by an invited group of emerging architects (click here for photos from recent years).

This year, we’re heading to Sunset Park to party in the central atrium of the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT). The BAT has its own compelling history, one that is probably unknown to many of today’s New Yorkers. So, in anticipation of this month’s big event, we bring you a look back at the history of this sprawling waterfront complex. In addition to digging through the archives, we had a chance to sit down with Carmine Giordano, the BAT Facilities Director for the past 23 years and a lifelong resident of Sunset Park, to hear about the facility’s recent life.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, 2011 | photo by Varick Shute

In April 1918, the US War Department took over what was then the Langley estate on the South Brooklyn waterfront for the purposes of building a military depot and supply base. The architect placed in charge was Cass Gilbert, one of the founding members of the Architectural League, known for such works as New York City’s Woolworth Building, the US Custom House, the New York Life Building and the United States Supreme Court in DC. The utilitarian design of the BAT was an exception in Gilbert’s catalogue of projects in the Beaux-Arts and Neo-Gothic styles. Under Gilbert’s design, the original 97-acre site became home to two warehouses, three multi-story piers (two of which have since been lost to underwater termites), a rail yard and a network of tracks running between the buildings and through the atrium spaces. The central atrium — a massive, four million cubic foot space — is lined with concrete balconies, staggered to allow loading and unloading of goods from rooftop cranes. Covered sky bridges connect the complex’s buildings, and the installation of 96 centrally-controlled, push-button elevators was the largest of its time. “The military used Building B, which is 2.2 million square feet, just for supplies. People were stationed in Building A, which is 1.8 million square feet,” Giordano described. “When I first got here, the City hadn’t renovated Building A yet. There was still a bowling alley, a restaurant, their cots, a post office. It was amazing.”

After just 17 months of construction, at a cost of $30 million, the BAT opened on September 6, 1919. “They broke records,” Giordano noted. “This project was in the Book of World Records for how much concrete was poured and mixed in a day. And this was in 1918. Their equipment was a horse and wagon.”

Beaux Arts Ball 2011 Invitation | Brooklyn Army Terminal as photographed in October 1949 by Andreas Feininger. Courtesy of Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Barely open in time to see soldiers returning from WWI, the BAT would wait another 22 years to see its peak of activity. 56,000 military and civilian personnel were employed at the BAT during WWII, and an additional three million troops and 37 million tons of supplies traveled through. The activity often spilled into the neighborhood’s streets and sidewalks. “My father used to say that, once workers began to go home in the evening, you couldn’t come near this area until 10pm,” Giordano recalled from his childhood. “It took hours for the cars and the people walking to pass through.”

After the war, the facility remained active. Supplies and servicemen again passed through the BAT during the Korean War. In July 1956, survivors of the collision between the ocean liners Andrea Doria and Stockholm were brought to the BAT, as were thousands of Hungarian Revolution refugees in 1957’s “Operation Mercy.” This legacy of the site, providing safe passage to survivors of disaster, was revisited ten years ago when the BAT’s sole remaining pier was opened to help ferry people out of Manhattan on September 11, 2011. “They diverted the Staten Island Ferry to get people here from Pier 11,” Giordano recalled. “People were lost, they didn’t even know they were in Brooklyn. I didn’t go home for seven days.” But what might be the BAT’s most famous entry into the nation’s historical memory came in September 1958, when hordes of fans and photojournalists turned up to see Elvis Presley ship out to Germany.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, November 1947 | Photo by Michael Rougier from the LIFE Magazine Archives. For more photos from this series, click here.

In 1964, the Brooklyn Army Terminal was identified by US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as one of 95 military bases deemed unnecessary for national defense and thus should be closed to cut costs. By the end of 1966, all cargo and passenger traffic had been diverted to Bayonne, New Jersey.

News of the deactivation of the BAT immediately piqued interest from the City of New York, which announced an intent to acquire the site for maritime development. But it was the federal government that leased much of the space through the 1970s. “It lay unused for most of the 1960s,” Giordano said, “but in the ‘70s it saw some occasional use. There was a big fire at the US Post Office in the city. They used the first floors of BAT as a post office for a couple of years until they could refurbish the damaged space.”

New York City bought the complex from the federal government in 1981, with the intention of finding a developer to refurbish the space for commercial and light industrial use. When that fell through, the City began a phased renovation in 1984 under the management of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The final phase was completed in 2003, making a total of  2.6 million square feet available for use. Now, the BAT houses over 70 tenants from the arts, sciences, finance and technology. BioBAT, a non-profit partnership between the NYCEDC and the Downstate Medical Center, has taken over 500,000 square feet of Building A for life science research, development and bio-manufacturing space. Last year, the NYCEDC announced a call for proposals for a $10 million smart grid demonstration project that would install a 50,000 square foot photovoltaic panel array on the BAT roof.

The City’s efforts to reactivate light manufacturing and invigorate our working waterfront reach beyond the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Similar plans are in the works for the rest of the Sunset Park Waterfront, as outlined in the NYCEDC 10-year Vision Plan for the area. The Brooklyn Navy Yard has been the focus of an eight-building, 40-acre expansion and refurbishment. The NYC Department of City Planning’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, Vision 2020, highlights the support of waterfront industry as a crucial strategy in keeping our city vibrant, from improving regional freight rail to dedicating resources to increasing opportunities in industrial business zones. In pursuit of these goals — to develop and renovate pockets of our city to improve economic growth and revitalize neighborhoods, all while recognizing the value and longevity of well-designed, beautiful spaces — the story of the Brooklyn Army Terminal is one worth telling.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, 2011 | photo by Varick Shute

—Varick Shute

Factories have taken advantage of the efficiencies of verticality for decades. Through her research, Rappaport analyzes the evolution of factory design and the impact of shifting economies and markets on how and where manufacturing spaces are built, and uses that history as a basis for exploration of contemporary trends and next steps, including how recent technological developments in cleaner manufacturing processes might allow for greater integration of all aspects of urban living. By engaging designers and planners in that conversation, she hopes that this will be a first step towards redefining and reinvigorating urban industry. -V.S.

Toni-Molkerei Factory, diagram of system processes, Zurich, 1974-76 | © A.E. Bosshard and H. Widmer

In the future, cleaner and greener production methods could make vertical urban factories the new engines of urban revitalization, encouraging both economic growth and urban vitality as well as offering more sustainable solutions with production systems such as just-in-time manufacturing or increases in recycling. A missing part of the sustainable picture is where and how urban industry can contribute to new self-sufficient urban paradigms. With my ongoing project Vertical Urban Factory, the first phase of which is currently on view at the Skyscraper Museum, I want to provoke conversation about the demise of urban manufacturing and call on planners and architects to redefine and reimagine urban industry and its integration with city life. 

Throughout architectural history, the factory has been a place of design innovation for engineers and architects, a typology that provided freedom to explore new material and spatial organization. Nineteenth century vertical urban factories capitalized on power resources of water and then steam, harnessing energy through mechanized systems and gravity conveyances. The proximity of labor, transportation hubs and entrepreneurial energy in dense urban clusters meant that raw materials could flow directly onto factory floors and assembled products could be distributed to local markets in an integrated, industrial, urban cycle.

Fiat Lingotto, roof test track, Turino, 1913-26 | Courtesy of Archivio e Centro Storico Fiat

As the 19th Century gave way to the 20th, two main types of vertical factories dominated the urban landscape: the integrated and the layered. In the integrated factory, workers run the production flows from top to bottom, or vice versa, as components or raw goods are mixed, sorted or assembled, then carried by automated or gravity-feed conveyors or chutes. Examples include Albert Kahn’s design for Henry Ford’s 1909 Highland Park factory in Detroit and Giacomo Matte-Trucco’s Fiat Lingotto factory, in Turin, Italy.

The layered factory has separate stacked floors, occupied by one or more companies that share common areas and services such as lobbies, elevators and power. While the building is multi-storied, the processing may be on all floors, a single floor or gradually expand to other floors, as in the New York’s Garment District or the Starrett Lehigh Building loft spaces. Usually built as speculative properties, they are a resource for those who have smaller scale operations or less capital.

Ford Factory, Highland Park, Detroit, 1910 | © Albert Kahn Associates

During WWII, demand for larger scale, horizontally-oriented operations increased, and these vertical types began to disappear. Factories were suddenly windowless, hermetically sealed spaces with air conditioning and blackout panels. Eventually, a global system of expansive highway networks, container shipping and standardized digital supply chains turned manufacturing into a widespread series of vast groundscrapers. Companies became sequestered in industrial districts, leaving vacant urban sites behind and taking jobs with them. The idea of the urban factory as a place that participated in the city became marginalized and segregated from popular notions of urban vibrancy. Industries continued to move further from their prime markets, shifting economies and production methods. Today, digital connections between consumers in retail spaces and the factory floor have resulted in mass-customization, transforming the traditional demand-supply circuit.

Large-scale industry, for the most part, has left cities. But, in spite of this spatial and economic shift, significant vertical urban factories have developed in the past ten years, all of which are seeds of ideas that can inspire us for the future. Three types of contemporary manufacturing spaces have emerged: the Spectacle, the Flexible and the Sustainable. The “spectacle” factory is iconic in design, often with the intent to represent a company brand. The VW Gläserne Manufaktur (The Transparent Factory) by Henn Architekten in Dresden (2001), for example, advertises its clean manufacturing processes through the transparency of its walls.

VW Gläserne Manufaktur (The Transparent Factory), Dresden | Courtesy of Henn Architekten

The “flexible” vertical urban factory, often located in existing loft spaces, is easily changeable to fit new machinery and adapt to economic flux. In Los Angeles, for example, American Apparel has reused former eight-story factories for their integrated vertical production line.

The “sustainable” vertical urban factory can perform multiple functions and integrates ecological building with a variety of manufacturing systems. The current redevelopment of hundreds of acres of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is a prime example of this type of urban industrial redevelopment project.

American Apparel factory | Courtesy of Jessica Varner. Photo by Yan Wang

Cities offer valuable advantages for industrial sustainability. Density allows for shared resources that can support industrial symbiosis — one factory’s heat waste fuels another. Nano and biotech companies, such as those in the Bizkaia eco-industrial park in Bilbao and the new CleanTech corridor along the Los Angeles River, have formed clusters in industrial zones to use proximity to their benefit. Imagine the New York waterfront returning to its manufacturing strength as clusters of vertical factories, linked by water, high-speed elevated rail systems or overhead conveyances, become hubs of production and distribution.

But the benefits of urban factories exist across scale. Today’s urban industry requires a redefinition: to embrace smaller scale shops with highly-skilled labor, the production of niche goods, such as furniture, food, garments or high-tech products, and a collaborative environment where designers (who are often city dwellers) and fabricators work together on high-design items.

With rising costs of oil, manufacturers will need to produce locally to save money, a shift that will also help to limit CO2 emissions. Methods in industrial management, such as lean manufacturing, just-in-time production and cradle-to-cradle recycling, are beginning to reduce production waste. Goods made on demand, without stockpiled materials, allow for smaller, cleaner assembly plants, wherein workers can produce for a more dispersed network. With the advent of open-source manufacturing software, computer numerically-controlled-machines (CNC) and 3D printers, designers can quickly make prototypes and develop a product in small batches.

The vertical urban factory could be reinvented so that supply meets demand for space and is kept flexible for new and future economiesThe viability of vertical urban manufacturing in our postindustrial urban centers is challenged by rising land prices and must be encouraged through financial incentives and zoning adjustments. Neo-cottage industries could be located in new incubator buildings with government support. Local entrepreneurs with shared resources can operate out of existing loft spaces and former factories as a new production market. Industrial zoning should allow for taller, denser, diversified and performative, rather than prescriptive, development. The vertical urban factory could be reinvented so that supply meets demand for space and is kept flexible for new and future economies.

Besides its economic value, a factory has social value and the potential to be a welcome part of a community. It can engage and educate the public about manufacturing. It might circulate information about processes, elevating workers’ social and cultural significance and further influencing interest in local industry and branding, as has been done with various Brooklyn artisanal food companies. In an area such as the Garment District, windows could allow people to see factory production, like in the VW Dresden factory, and entice people to engage with the products being made, thus participating in the inner workings of the city.

Advancements in ecologically-responsible technology mean that clean manufacturing can exist adjacent to residential spaces, and that work and living can be hybridized in new ways. The architectural and urban issues addressing manufacturing in cities present not only an exciting design challenge of integrated systems, new fabrication technologies and emergent materials, but create a demand for new solutions. Vertical urban factories could produce energy rather than just consume it, and workers could recycle goods, rather than spew them out. This in turn would close the loop of making, consuming and recycling as part of a new urban spatial and economic paradigm.

Vertical Urban Factory, developed by Nina Rappaport and exhibited in its first phase in an installation designed by Mike Tower and Mark Kolodziejczak of Studio Tractor and Sarah Gephart of MGMT Design, is on display at the Skyscraper Museum through July 1. Images courtesy of the Skyscraper Museum and Nina Rappaport.

Buckminster Fuller, unbuilt automatic cotton mill, 1952 | Courtesy of North Carolina State University, College of Design. Photo by Ralph Mills.

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Nina Rappaport is an architectural critic, curator, historian and educator. She is the publications director for the Yale School of Architecture, where she edits exhibition catalogs, books and the bi-annual magazine Constructs. She directs and curates the project Vertical Urban Factory, which includes an exhibition series, dialogues and a book with Actar Press. She teaches an urbanism seminar, Alternative Urbanism, in the Syracuse in New York City program and has previously taught at Parsons and Yale. She is author of the book Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation (Monacelli Press, 2007), and has written numerous essays on structural design and architecture, and on industrial architecture and the global industrial landscape for journals such as Acadia, Praxis, Perspecta, Scapes, 306090, Architectural Record, Architecture, Tec21, Metropolis, The Architect’s Newspaper and Deutsche Bauzeitung.

She has curated shows on architecture and photography, including an ongoing exhibition of the work of Ezra Stoller’s architectural and industrial photography at the 1050 K Street Galleries in Washington, D.C; “The Swiss Section,” a 2004 exhibition at the Van Alen Institute focusing on infrastructure; and she co-curated “Saving Corporate Modernism” at the Yale School of Architecture in 2001.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

HUMAN IMPACT ON THE EARTH
It’s Earth Day! First up, take a look at this series of maps and graphics from NationalJournal.com that shows the extent of our impact on our land and in our oceans as a result of population density, land transformation, accessibility, electric-power infrastructure, commercial fishing, cargo shipping and more.

NEW BUILDING BENCHMARKING GRADES
A new benchmarking law will take effect on May 1st. According to The Architect’s Newspaper, owners of buildings over 50,000 square feet will be required to report water and energy use through the EPA’s Portfolio Manager Tool; non-compliant owners will get hit with fines. The data submitted will lead to an efficiency grade that tenants — or potential buyers — will be able to check on the Department of Buildings website. The hope is that as owners and tenants begin to understand how their buildings are performing, the market will shift toward efficiency, helping reach broader, zero-emission goals.

2009 Vision for High-Speed Rail via whitehouse.gov

HIGH-SPEED RAIL FUNDING: DE-RAILED
Last weekend marked the official elimination of the original $2.5 Billion set aside for high speed rail. Transportation on the whole was damaged by the cuts — as President Obama said at a DNC event last week, budget cuts do not just fail to include high-speed rail, but is “a vision that says we can’t afford to rebuild our roads and our bridges.” See more on the cuts to transportation in Infrastructurist’s coverage of the news or read a detailed report on the budgetary amendments in this House Appropriations Committee summary PDF.

BLUE URBANISM
“More than half of the U.S. population lives in coastal counties adjacent to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes.” Blue Urbanism begs the planning and design world to think about this fact, and see cities through the lens of the open water. As our planet gets bluer, cities are noticing. Traditional borders are moving and port cities are looking at the oceans a new ways. Beyond monitoring water quality or noticing the loss of marine biodiversity, coastal cities across the world are redeveloping plans to include sustainable waterfronts. The Cape Cod Planning Commission recently expanded an Ocean Management Planning District, including a half million acres of open ocean, to evaluate the scale, location and efficacy of offshore wind turbines. New York City just released the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan to increase use of waterways. Rotterdam is practically designing their city around the water. Read more on the growth of Blue Urbanism in Design Observer’s fascinating piece on this growing movement.

PROCRO NO MORE
Sick of hearing neighborhood names like SoBro, ProCro or SoHa — or trying to figure out where they are? The New York Times City Room blog recently reported that Brooklyn Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries is reeling about the realty practice of renaming NYC neighborhoods to feign desirability. Jeffries wants to introduce a new bill that would require a series of approvals for neighborhood renaming from the City Council, the mayor and community boards. “It’s the Wild West in New York City right now,” he said. “Brokers are allowed to essentially pull names out of thin air in order to rebrand a neighborhood and have the effect of raising rents or home prices.”

PRATT CENTER AND BROOKINGS REPORT ON URBAN MANUFACTURING
A report by the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and the Pratt Center for Community Development, “The Federal Role in Supporting Urban Manufacturing,” points to the changing geography of our nation’s production sector and how federal and municipal government should work to support its growth and development. The report highlights the need for smaller urban manufacturer support. To take a closer look at the recommendations see Pratt Center’s coverage, download the full report or download the case studies. In 2009, Adam Friedman, Director of the Pratt Center, gave Omnibus readers a primer on the importance of manufacturing to New York. Check it out here.

EVENTS + TODOs
The Skyscraper as Citizen: A Lecture by Henry N. Cobb. Center for Architecture is hosting an event to discuss “Reflections on the Public Life of Private Buildings,” with special attention to Boston’s John Hancock Tower. Monday, April 25, 6-8 PM, Monday, April 25th.

MAS Walking Tour: Rethinking the Sheridan: From Bronx River to Hunts Point Explore the impact of the Sheridan Expressway on the neighborhoods that border it from a pedestrian vantage point, Saturday, April 23, 11:00 a.m. Register here.

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

Obscura Day Poster | Image by Oliver Munday

Happy April Fool’s Day! For a little urban planning humor, be sure to check out Planetizen’s April 1st Edition — who knew those guys were so funny?
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INTERNATIONAL OBSCURA DAY
For its second annual International Obscura Day, Atlas Obscura offers excursions into unexpected corners of world cities — New York, of course, included. On April 9th, you have the chance to explore the inside of the Catacombs at the Greenwood Cemetery, tour the Ghost ships of Coney Island Creek (with promised tales of rum-runners, whalers and a home-made submarine), or grab a beer and hop on a bike for a bike tour through the historic breweries of Brooklyn and Queens, among other urban adventures.
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BRINGING MANUFACTURING BACK TO THE CITY
The Times reports on the place-based future of manufacturing in an opinion piece that heralds a field often assumed outsourced for good as an opportunity to create jobs and strengthen urban communities. The piece profiles the organizations SF Made and Made in NYC, which serve as networks for local manufacturing businesses, provide resources for small start-ups and connect consumers to locally-sourced products. This reinvigoration of the manufacturing sector and the press it’s getting suggest that people are increasingly turning to independently-owned, small-scale enterprises to boost the economy, perhaps hoping that acting local can accomplish the financial resuscitation larger corporations have been slow to spur. It also demonstrates a demand to integrate production with community in what Mike Dwight, founder of SFMade, calls “geographic ingredient branding,” which he defines as “a way to ‘brand’ the history, culture, personality and natural beauty of [a] city as a means to uniquely differentiate local manufacturers.” .

A BIG NIGHT FOR APPS
Redefining the “networked city,” urban apps are becoming an increasingly ubiquitous way to connect with a city and its citizens. Last night a committee of technology innovators and municipal leaders announced the winners of the 2011 NYC BigApps2.0 competition, selecting applications that alert users about important urban information ranging from nearby public art to restaurants in violation of health code. Architizer reports on the event, with a run down of some of the winning apps. Roadify, the Grand Prize winner last night, was profiled recently on Transportation Nation. This handy app fuses the urban trends of crowd-sourcing, smart phone navigating and MTA updates, allowing subway riders to update one another on the conditions of their commute and thus provide more immediate transit news than the MTA’s site. While the subway may not be wired, the creators of Roadify hope info from users entering and exiting the station will piece together an accurate picture of whats going on underground.
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STATES AND THE METRO ECONOMY
Over on The Avenue (a collaborative blog from Brookings and The New Republic), Jennifer Bradley asks when states will finally recognize their dependence on metropolitan economies. Her piece summarizes a longer article, co-written with metro-area evangelist Bruce Katz, in Democracy Journal and posits that the reflection prompted by the Great Recession should lead to a restructuring of state government, one that prioritizes the needs of metro areas. The argument is not new, but the historical overview, which reaches back to the pivotal ceding of states’ rights during the 1789 ratification of the US Constitution, is helpful and refreshingly well informed.
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TURNING TRAFFIC INTO ELECTRICITY
Feeling good vibrations in California, State Assemblyman Mike Gatto proposed a bill that will test the use of vibrational energy emitted by automobile traffic to harness electricity. Employing piezoelectricity – a technology that converts the work of physical motion into electricity (which Omnibus readers may recall from Carmen Trudell and Jenny Broutin’s fluxxlab project) — and following the design of similar systems in Italy and Israel, California’s plan will place sensors under roadways and then convert the strain placed on them by cars into an electric charge, which is then channeled into the grid. According to Gatto, a one-lane highway is able to produce 44 megawatts over the course of a year. As a post on the Freshkills Blog points out, piezoelectricity has been used to capture energy in wind, walking and even dancing, so lets hope more permutations of its technology travel to this city.
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Eduardo Souto de Moura's Braga Stadium | photo by Luis Ferreira Alves via Architectural Record

PRITZKER PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED
On Monday, the Pritzker Prize Committee announced Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Mora as its 2011 winner. De Mora’s designs, mostly built in Portugal, are softly modernist, employing smooth geometries and a design lexicon that reflects local heritage and a sense of place. As an article in Architectural Record points out, his attention of scale and subtlety affirms a trend among the Pritzker jury in recent years to favor “craft, local scale, and sensibility over architectural extravagance” – welcome values that preserve longevity and strong aesthetics in a time when we need to re-evaluate the impact of hasty, ostentatious building.
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
High-speed rail has been a hot topic for discussion of late, after the Obama administration committed $53 billion to the construction of a high-speed rail network and set a goal to connect 80% of Americans to its service by 2050. This project will undoubtedly transform the American landscape, and the Van Alen Institute is asking architects, planners and artists to envision what our high-speed future may look like. The Life at the Speed of Rail competition seeks design projects and imagined narratives that will address the impacts of new infrastructure, aiming to better inform the design decisions for the construction of the network. The deadline is May 21st, 2011.
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EVENTS
Over the next month, the downtown landscape will be transformed by a host of artists and cultural institutions – Urban Omnibus among them – leading up to the Festival of Ideas for the New City. Held from May 4-8, the festival is a collaboration between the New Museum, the Architectural League and a long list other cultural institutions, that will host an array of discussions, events and urban interventions to explore the themes of the Heterogeneous City, the Networked City, the Reconfigured City and the Sustainable City. Stay tuned for many more updates from us, including more details about Urban Omnibus’ own contribution to the event.

Next Wednesday, Omnibus Editor Cassim Shepard will be discussing some of the ideas behind and projects presented on Urban Omnibus in the context of other work he’s done at the intersection of urbanism and creative media-making. The lecture, at noon at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge (20 Cooper Square at 5th Street), is free and open to the public.

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

Screengrab of madeinmidtown.org

Earlier this month the Design Trust for Public Space and the Council of Fashion Designers of America released an initial study of New York’s Garment District called “Made in Midtown.” The study dispelled the myth that the district exists only in name, proving that—despite the area’s faltering manufacturing dominance—designers still rely on the Garment District as a hub for research and development and an integral launching pad for young designers and new labels.

To illustrate the study’s findings a website was created; and it’s definitely worth a visit. (Fair warning: You can lose a serious chunk of your day playing—there’s even something like a comic book!) It’s extremely visual — look for a series of charts, diagrams, and interactive features illustrating various facts and figures falling under one of three easy-breezy categories. They are: (1) What is the Garment District? (2) Why does the District Matter to Fashion? (3) Why Does Fashion Matter to NYC?

You’ll see how New York measures up to Paris and Milan (don’t worry, we kind of win); learn more about the process of fashion and why the neighborhood and other Creative Districts are an important part of the fabric (get it?) of any city; and delve into the minds of some of New York’s most New Yorkiest designers including Jason Wu, Nanette Lepore, Shelly Steffee, and Anna Sui.

Made in Midtown | Full Panel, June 8, 2010 | Photo by Giles Ashford

To get the word out and discuss exactly what to do next with the data, the Municipal Art Society of New York along with the Design Trust held two panel discussions at the School of Visual Arts Theater. The first such event was moderated by the always charming Tim Gunn and introduced by Deborah Marton, the executive director of the Design Trust. Additionally, it featured Sarah Crean from the New York Industrial Retention Network; Eric Gural, executive managing director at Newmark Knight Frank; Michael Meola, attorney and development consultant; fashion designer Yeohlee Teng; and Madelyn Wils of the Planning, Development and Maritime division of the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

The second, held a week later, was moderated by Marton (who traded the Louboutins she rocked the previous week for a pair of turbo-fierce Lucite disco pumps) and included Sarah Williams, a co-director of Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab and Made in Midtown Project Fellow; Simon Collins of Parsons School of Fashion; Fred Dust of IDEO (who talked mainly about Los Angeles…); Harvey Molotch, a sociology and metropolitan studies expert at NYU; and Andrew Oshrin, president and CEO of Milly (his wife, Milly designer Michelle Smith, was in the audience).

Everyone agreed that the Garment District isn’t dead. A “hub for research and development,” and central to smaller-batch and higher-end production, it also provides the opportunity for a young label, like Jason Wu’s, to go from raw sketches to showroom wholesaling without the massive capital investment or high-volume production required to bring talent in-house or inexpensively produce overseas. The process, next to impossible in cities like Paris or Milan, makes New York “the fashion start-up capital of the world.”

Furthermore, panelists agreed that zoning mandates created in 1987 to stave off real estate pressures and preserve manufacturing space were not working; and that recent controversial proposals for rezoning and/or consolidating the district’s businesses were not the answer. Zoning aside, most panelists also agreed that part of keeping the Garment District vital means improving life on the streets with interactive events and exhibits, beautification, pedestrian friendly features, and increased retail opportunity—improvements aiming to attract designers as well as tourists and residents who don’t necessarily have ties to the industry. Essentially, the area needed to become friendlier, more viable, “cool.”

Crean suggested a system calling for newly installed retail lessees and other higher-margin tenants subsidizing the rents of artisan and production tenants upstairs. Meanwhile, Gural envisioned a strange Colonial Williamsburg version of the Garment District in which tourists could watch newly-ordered clothing being made. Crean’s idea was better received than Gural’s.

Made in Midtown | Full Panel, June 15, 2010 | Photo by Giles Ashford

Collins—whose ties to Parsons and experience in the industry lends him a working rather than scholarly relationship to the area—balked at the notion that increased traffic was part of the solution. “Cool,” he said, creates foot traffic, higher rents, unnecessary retail and espresso bars and sidewalk beautification. Too much cool and the Garment District becomes SoHo—an area so removed from it’s artistic past it’s almost comical. That said, he supports another kind of “cool.” The kind of cool created by a buzzy upstart like Jason Wu basing himself in the area and paving the way for additional buzzy upstarts. And perhaps more importantly, the kind of cool that—through marketing and branding and special hang tags (and, more importantly, tax incentives)—makes producing clothing in the District cool. Using Ralph Lauren as his example, he commented that even if the label decided to produce a tiny percentage in New York (“maybe that tee shirt they make with the stars and stripes on it”) and publicize it, and make it cool, other labels would follow suit. Tradespeople, he said, “don’t need studies, they need orders.” Gee, how does he really feel?

Molotch—awakened by Collins’ frankness, or maybe just going for a laugh—agreed, saying the best way to ease real estate pressures on the area—or keep out the cool—is to stay seedy and reject any and all infrastructure improvements. In other words, “embrace porn.”

Teng, too, can do without the homogeneity cool generally creates. Her nightmare New York is a city of “bankers and brokers;” a place too expensive for upstarts or creative clusters brought up at the second panel. Additionally, and quite practically, she brought up a growing dearth of skilled craftspeople—pattern-makers, pleating experts, textile producers, fabric cutters—that could cripple the industry sooner than condos or Qdobas could. Training programs, she said, need to be created to ensure that designers have access to specific skill sets before an entire industrial sector dies with so many aging immigrant artisans.

Nonetheless, as Collins declared, the Garment District remains “absolutely bloody vital.” His Garment District is the perfect unofficial post-graduate environment for his Parsons students. He noted the relatively recent (and ongoing) successes of womenswear label Proenza Schouler. Founded by Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, two Parsons graduates, the pair simply returned to the businesses they came in contact with as interns to have their lauded initial collections produced. Eight years later the duo is at the helm of American fashion with dresses hanging in Barneys and grazing the backs Chloë Sevigny and Julianne Moore.

Which begs the question: Could Proenza Schouler—or any upstart for that matter—have happened without the support and the resources available to newbies within the loose confines of New York’s Garment District? Possibly, in some form or another, but why fix what’s working so well? Losing or moving the Garment District could endanger New York’s greatest fashion asset: fresh talent, start-ups, The Next Big Thing. We don’t have Burberrys or Guccis or Louis Vuittons, and we don’t have couture (just don’t tell Ralph Rucci that). But, New York’s apparel ecosystem introduced the world to Marc Jacobs and the slew of emerging talents (Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim, Richard Chai, the list goes on and on) who are in line to be the next Marc Jacobs. To that we can pretty safely say: In your face, Milan.

Photographs by Giles Ashford, courtesy of The Municipal Art Society of New York. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Frank Gargione is a freelance graphic designer working within the fashion and publishing industries while studying textile and surface design at FIT. A lover of all things fashion, he is a frequent contributor for Racked.com. He lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Alright, we know that many among you are journalists, filmmakers, urban designers or (if you’re like us) you fit somewhere in between. Well, our dear friends and fellow public space partisans the Design Trust just might have an opportunity for you, a fellowship on their new project Made in Midtown.

Two weeks ago we heard from Adam Friedman and learned about the need to maintain a robust manufacturing economy in New York. What better place to delve in deeper to some of these issues than Midtown Manhattan? With the threat of continued losses in the garment sector becoming real, one proposal popular in City Hall is to consolidate remaining garment workers into one building and designate the rest of the Garment District a commercial zone. According to the Design Trust, “New York remains a global fashion leader, but few outside the industry understand the vast networks and ecologies that establish both its competitive edge and the unique character of its physical spaces. Synthesizing findings about the fashion industry’s specific strengths and challenges, and its evolving role in the Garment District, Made in Midtown will make recommendations that respect and support New York City’s industrial identity, while balancing the many competing interests of Midtown’s stakeholders. The resulting study will help guide policies for light manufacturing industries citywide.”

The Design Trust, you recall, are the good people who brought us the Reinventing Grand Army Plaza Ideas Competition and got all pot-lucky with us along the Grand Concourse. If you respect their work as much as we do, and want to try your hand at applying your skills to this project, get involved. Here’s the deal:

Call for Fellows
Deadline to apply: Friday, October 30, 2009 by 5:00pm

The Design Trust seeks Project Fellows for Made in Midtown, a study of New York’s fashion industry and the Garment District, created in partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Phase I of this project will culminate in an interactive website and booklet which will illustrate the complex and interdependent connections between the physical spaces of Midtown, its businesses and its workers. The anticipated timeframe for Phase I is three months, beginning December 1.

For this phase, the Design Trust will select 3 fellows in the fields of journalism, film and video, and urban planning/design. All of the fellows will work closely with each other, and with Design Trust staff, who will manage the project.

Complete fellowship descriptions can be found here.

If, like me, you work elsewhere during weekdays, these factories can seem subdued or even dead. It’s hard to tell which ones have been converted into condos and which still house makers. When I have time, maybe I’ll go back and take pictures during the day of these great old buildings.

The site-specific aspect of the installation was great—it brought both arts-followers and passers-by together on street corners with the artist to watch what had been previously hidden.

One stop was ACME Smoked Fish. Their trucks and logo are familiar, but I had never really paid the factory much attention. Piles of coral-colored salmon made the video compelling and I could have watched all night.

Next was Royal Engraving, and its 250-year-old engraving machines. That’s history for you. That video was a little less striking at first—so much paper—but the subtle, rhythmic moves of the press and the workers responding to them became hypnotic. The satisfying thud of a stack of thick paper being tapped into alignment and the frighteningly efficient swish of a guillotine chopping the stack made for a great sound track. This video, like the ACME video, had only the sounds of work being done, no interviews or voiceovers, just feeling like a spy with x-ray vision.

The last stop was Dobbin Mill, where Robbin Silverberg makes fine art papers. Although this was also a view of fabrication, it didn’t fit in with the other two. Not only was the process less mechanical (though there was a brief view of an awesome paper press), Robbin Silverberg explained what she was doing as she worked, which made the video feel more like a PBS video and less like the vouyeristic view through the wall the other videos achieved. I understand that Sarah Nelson Wright was looking to connect craft and factory fabrication, but I think the three together would have been stronger if they had been more of a type.

That’s just quibbling, though—this was an amazing installation that changed forever the way I see those particular street corners. I can’t wait to see what project Sarah Nelson Wright dreams up next.


As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

All images by Kirsten Hively. Text adapted from an article originally published on Hively’s blog Catasterist.

Kirsten Hively received her MArch in 2007 from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Together with journalist Paul Lukas, she recently co-produced a show at the City Reliquary on the ersatz Candela Structures in Queens, and when not architecting she can often be found photographing or writing about New York City, where she lives and works.