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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Flickr user misplacedparadox.


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

Update: You can now view Archipelago, an original Urban Omnibus video production, exhibited in The City We Imagined / The City We Made, that explores a day in the life of five New York neighborhoods: Hunts Point, Jamaica, Mariner’s Harbor, Downtown Brooklyn, and Chelsea, here on Urban Omnibus.

From tomorrow until June 26th, we are bringing you a unique opportunity to take stock of the range of design and planning activity that has reshaped New York City over the past ten years. The City We Imagined / The City We Made is the sixth in an ongoing series of Architectural League exhibitions about contemporary architecture in New York City. This installment chronicles the transformation the physical city in light of the convergence of an array of powerful forces: the events of 9/11, the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg Administration, the volatility of global and local economies, advances in material and construction technologies, and a new interest among the public in contemporary architecture. The exhibition consists of a chronological display of major projects, proposals of the past ten years; an installation of one thousand photographs, taken by a volunteer corps of nearly one hundred design professionals, that depicts New York today; video interviews with leading New Yorkers; and an original Urban Omnibus-produced video about the city as experienced in five neighborhoods that we’ll share with you guys in the coming weeks.

You should definitely come check it out. The show is at 250 Hudson Street, entrance on Dominick Street. Exhibition hours: Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 7pm. It’s quite an undertaking, and installing it has prevented us from rounding up the week’s worth of news and updates. But, nonetheless, here are some links to check out:

The Brooklyn Grange finds a site in Queens for its 40,000-ft rooftop farm.

A competition for data visualizations to “make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public.”

Speaking of data visualization, while we may have exhausted the Icelandic volcano eruption, check out this amazing visualization of what happened to plane traffic.

And also check out MIT’s progress on printable solar cells, MetroCard art in Williamsburg, and a simpler, safer Grand Army Plaza which reminds us of our detailed look at the plaza and the design competition to reinvent it. Check out the video we made about it below:

Cabrini-Green once housed over 15,000 people, but developed a reputation for high levels of crime and poverty. Its razing is part of a wave of high-rise project demolitions that have occurred in many US cities. Here are a few – among many – significant events in the history of public housing demolitions:

1972: Demolition begins on St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe housing project, less than twenty years after it was built. The massive complex was unsuccessful from the beginning, with violence and high vacancy rates. Because it was such a high-profile failure of a modernist housing scheme, Charles Jencks called the day of its demolition “the day Modern architecture died.”

1993: President Clinton starts the HOPE VI program, with the goals of improving public housing and reducing dense concentrations of poverty. Between 1996 and 2003, the program provided $395 million in grants towards the demolition of 287 public housing projects. Although it has funded rehabilitation and construction programs, HOPE VI has presided over a net loss to public housing units nationwide.

2007: The last of the buildings that comprised Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes is demolished. Once the largest public housing project in the country, the Robert Taylor Homes housed 27,000 people. It has since been replaced with “Legends South,” with low-rise, mixed income homes and apartments, community facilities, and retail spaces.

2010: The New York City Housing Authority announces plans to demolish Prospect Plaza, a complex of three high-rise towers in Brooklyn. The complex was not known for high rates of violence or drug use; rather, NYCHA claims that on this site, new construction is more financially and logistically feasible than rehabilitation. Heretofore, the City’s strategy has been to rehabilitate existing public housing rather than replace it. The Prospect Plaza project is the first significant exception to this approach.

NYU sociology professor Dalton Conley has argued that the form of a housing project does not affect the behaviors and overall living conditions of residents nearly as much as its socioeconomic makeup and ownership structure does. Coming soon on the Omnibus, we’ll hear some of Conley’s insights in his own words as he takes us on a walk up Avenue D, part of one of the largest swathes of public housing in New York. The destruction of Cabrini-Green reminds us that public housing – as public investment, as design product, as homes of choice or housing of last resort – is very much a reflection of broader cultural attitudes towards poverty, the role of government and the function of architecture, regardless of whether we decide to replace existing high-rises with new, low-rise facilities at great cost or focus on improving conditions within existing buildings.


Andrew Balmer is Project Associate for Urban Omnibus and a senior in the Barnard + Columbia Architecture program.

So, Mayor Bloomberg will be mayor for a third term. What will this mean for the architecture, planning and urban design that have received more policy attention from his administration than from previous ones? Thoughts, opinions, predictions? Send them our way.

Some will undoubtedly answer that question by pointing to megaprojects, such as Hudson Yards or Atlantic Yards, which have proved to be one of the pressure points of urban policy in the last eight years. A city always looking for creative ways to leverage market forces to develop local economies? A city in hock to developers? A city always reinventing itself? A city in paralysis? These themes and others are sure to be discussed at a major symposium taking place tomorrow convened by the Institute for Urban Design and its inimitable executive director, Omni-advisor Olympia Kazi. Arrested Development: Do Megaprojects Have a Future? will take place Saturday, November 7th at the Great Hall at Cooper Union, from 9:30am to 4:30pm. The roster of speakers – including stimulus-critic and train station aficionado Vishaan Chakrabarti – is a huge draw.

Another meeting of the minds that is sure to appeal to those of you passionate about transit is taking place at Barnard next week. Rights of Way: A New Politics of Movement in New York City will “examine the issues surrounding bikes and pedestrianization, and will explore sustainability, finance, public health, and the ways in which the street can serve as a fulcrum in debates about public space and urban life.” Next Thursday, November 12th in the James Room on the 4th floor of Barnard Hall (Broadway at W. 117th). Free and open to the public.

We’re always on the lookout for newfangled technologies and ideas, especially as they start getting installed and tested. East Londoners are the guinea pigs this time, as Pavegen Systems has installed a panel of energy-generating pavement on a busy stretch of sidewalk. The claim is that “just five slabs spread over a lively sidewalk has the ability to generate enough energy to illuminate a bus stop throughout the night,” so you can imagine the potential applications. The folks at MIT first brought this idea to our attention with their work on Crowd Farming, and it seems like harvesting energy from human motion is an approach ripe with possibilities. You can get all kinds of piezoelectric by dancing, driving, commuting, or even by walking through a door.

For one high-visibility project that we’ve been following, Coney Island, the question has been whether it will stay a mega-playground or become a mega-mall. The City came closer to ensuring that some of Coney’s most iconic amusements will remain in perpetuity with the Economic Development Corporation’s bid for the Wonderwheel.

Another way to fuse the recreational, architectural and the political is to… have a slumber party? An Arkitektur, a Berlin-based group of design radicals, will be hosting a live-in conference on Oppositional Architecture from the 12th to the 21st of November at a loft in Dumbo (Gair Building No 6, 81 Front Street). The discussions (and dinner parties) that will emerge while the group is in residence all critique the politics and production of space in capitalist society, and we’re especially looking forward to a discussion between economist David Kotz and architect Teddy Cruz on Saturday, November 14th. We were tipped off to this by Bryan Bell, who knows what it means to practice design as activism.

We’ll leave you with some further reading: Geoff Manaugh has tackled the question: Who would want to be an architect?, in response to an article by the same name in the Times. The piece is worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a taste that might spark interest in the Omni-fans out there: “architecture is the imaginative production of future worlds even as it is the act of building houses for the urban poor or the obtaining of technical skills necessary for rationally subdividing office floorplates.” If you’re on our site, you probably agree, and would expand the definition even more. Curiosity about the complexity of the architecture and design fields, and the infinite ways that design affects the world around us, is what gets us out of bed in the morning. Geoff concluded with a call for discussion – go join in.

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

The first part of the brief will be sent to registered participants on Friday, October 16 (that’s today!) On Saturday, the 17th at 2:00 p.m., the specific design problem will be given to participants at the Noguchi Museum to solve in roughly two hours. All work will then be pinned up and the invited jury will hold an open discussion and critique with participants. A critical conversation will emerge from the work generated and the questions posed by the original brief. Sign up now. Click here for details.

A trolley cart rolls below the old Myrtle-Wyckoff station.

For those who prefer walking to sketching, it seems the imminence of winter is not slowing the pace of walking tours around town. This weekend check out local historian and high school teacher Adam Schwartz as he leads a group of 30 (RSVP now!) through central Bushwick this Saturday, Oct. 17 at 11 a.m. and invites everyone to come along for a journey back into the days when trolleys rumbled down our streets.  The tour will begin at Myrtle-Wyckoff subway station and venture towards Broadway, passing the newest firehouse in the city, Hope Gardens, St. Barbara’s Catholic Church and the Bushwick-Linden Garden along the way. Tickets are $11 and space is limited to 30 people.

And for those who’d prefer to spend your weekend art-viewing instead of winter-wandering, then be sure to check out two exhibits that respond provocatively to issues close to the hearts of Omnibus readers and riders: traffic and trash. At Glowlab, the visionaries who have brought us the Conflux Festival for the past five years are currently exhibiting a solo show of the artist Heather Johnson, whose new body of work “fixates on the circulatory nature of urban movement, referencing the connections between city inhabitants, vehicles and public transportation systems.” And at Salon 94, architect and artist Maya Lin, known best for large scale earthworks and monumental memorials, shares some of her small-scale work, eight asteroid-like, spherical “sculptures made from discarded children’s toys and salvaged materials.”

In the news this week, straphangers sue to the annul sale of Atlantic Yards, one of the biggest real estate deals ever is on the brink of default, and the city’s largest Spanish language newspaper, El Diario, likens Mayor Mike to Hugo Chavez in its endorsement of William Thompson.

What’s your favorite smartphone app? New York Magazine put this question to some locals selected at random, “Some recognizable names, some not,” and more than a few of the answers reveal that smartphones have a lot to offer the navigation of our urban environment:

Jose Antonio Vargas, tech editor, Huffington Post
Favorite app: Exit Strategy NYC (iPhone/iPod Touch), $2.99
“I was running late last week and used it to figure out the exact subway car on the B to get on so I’d hit my exit at Broadway–Lafayette. It worked!”

Michael Goldberg, marketing exective, Zimmerman Advertising
Favorite app: CrossWalk (iPhone/iPod Touch), $2.99
“Punch in an address, and it gives you the cross street in two seconds.”

Eric Hahn, process server
Favorite app: UpNext (iPhone/iPod Touch), $2.99
“You can zoom in and see an outline of every building near you. Touch one, and a list of every business located in there pops up.”

Philip Blake, IT specialist
Favorite app: SitOrSquat (iPhone/iPod Touch), free
“It shows you the closest public restrooms. It’s comforting.”

Adam Benton, portfolio manager, Clearwater Analytics
Favorite app: Zipcar (iPhone/iPod Touch), free
“It’s new and freakin’ sweet. Once you rent a car, you can unlock the doors with your phone. The app looks like any other car-key remote.”

But if your app preferences tend toward the green, then check out TreeHugger’s list of more than 100 iPhone apps for a greener everything. We know what our new favorite app is… the Museum of the Phantom City. Get psyched for more of the backstory of and next steps for that project in next week’s feature, and get ready for a Halloween day meet-up with the app’s designers where you can really get your phantom on.


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

Photo found on BushwickBK.com

It’s been a busy week packing, moving and unpacking. And as much as we’ll miss our special Brooklyn canal and the weird infrastructural happenings of Midtown East, we’re settling into Soho and are certain to find some local obsessions at the intersection of design and the built environment to cover in this neck of the woods.

If JFK airport had a writer-in-residence, what would she write about? Poetic treatises on the ebb and flow within the top international gateway to the USA? The ghosts of art exhibit debacles past? The difficulty and expense of getting to Manhattan, despite the Airtrain? The new FAA rules for Hudson flyovers? Well, in case the Port Authority (which controls JFK, LGA and Newark airports, along with Stewart and Teterboro) decides to try a writer on for size, they’ll soon have a precedent from across the pond. Heathrow Airport has contracted Alain de Botton, author of the Architecture of Happiness, to render his observations of the world’s busiest airport in prose.

Another of our principal obsessions is, of course, urban exploration. So if thinking about airports depresses you and you’d rather buy into the whole “staycation” trend this Labor day weekend, join the folks of Hey! I’m Walking Here! for a 20-mile trek through the landscape of that other island. Hopefully, this will whet your appetite for a meet-up we got planned along the Staten Island Railway later this month. Stay tuned.

Speaking of rail systems in both the city’s past and future, the proposal for light rail between Red Hook and Downtown Brooklyn is gaining ground, and if the project ever happens, it may just find a way to resurrect Red Hook’s trolley tracks.

That sounds stimulus-worthy but far from shovel-ready. But even if longer-term projects were being funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, cities are still getting the short end of the stick. Streetsblog has a nice write-up of Vice President Biden’s admission that stimulus aid to cities is imperfect:

Congress’ decision to route stimulus money through governors has sparked open confrontations between urban mayors and governors over how to distribute funds to the most needy areas. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was particularly direct in urging that the stimulus provide direct aid to cities, bypassing the politicization that often dominates decision-making in state capitals.

Politicization, is that what we’re calling it these days? We’re about ready for some interesting primaries in local races in a couple weeks, from city council to the heated contest to be elected what may be the last public advocate.

While pondering that, check out some raw footage, posted today by the Daily News, of the tearing down of the old Yankee stadium’s facade.