WHY’S EVERYONE HATING ON CHRIS WARD?
Michael Powell, Gotham columnist for The New York Times, questions the accuracy and consistency of calls for reform at the Port Authority issued by Governors Christie and Cuomo in the face of what Chris Ward, the former head of the bi-state agency, managed to achieve at Ground Zero in his four-year tenure. In the article (but not in regional politics) the final word goes to Mayor Bloomberg, who dismisses the way an audit ordered by the governors characterizes spending under Ward’s leadership, pointing out that the “site is perhaps the most complex construction project in the history of the world, legally, politically, engineering-wise.”

US INTERSTATES, TUBE-MAP STYLE
By systematically compressing distances and limiting all angles to 45 or 90 degrees in his map of the London Underground in 1931, Harry Beck, an engineering draftsman who devised the scheme in his spare time, revolutionized urban cartography and created an icon of modern design. New York’s answer to the diagrammatic Tube map, designed by Massimo Vignelli in 1972, was passed over in favor of more geographic fidelity in the current version, designed by Michael Hertz in 1979. But the influence of Beck’s design still looms large in information graphics, and this week Co.Design highlights a smart and useful take on the US highway system whose clarity benefits from the Tube map’s principles of simplicity and elegance.

WHAT SPELLS ROMANCE BETTER THAN “AN INTERACTIVE, URBAN EMOTICON?”
Times Square has never been high on subtlety, and the architectural installations that appear when Valentine’s day is nigh — part of the robust public art program that we explored with Glenn Weiss last year – are no exception. In years past, designers of the iconic heart have included Gage / Clemenceau and Moorhead & Moorhead. This year, Bjarke Ingels has assembled a heart cube out of 400 special LED-filled tubes to create what Architizer has called “an interactive, urban emoticon.” So for those of you who like a little public art with your romance, bring your valentine through Father Duffy Square. Check out photos on The Observer.

DESIGNING GOVERNMENT SERVICES
When Laura Forlano investigated the emerging field of service design in 2010, the clients cited as the profession’s early adopters were primarily in the private sector: finance, health care, media. But often the services most in need of a design tune-up are those provided by government. This week in The Architects’ Newspaper, Branden Klayko looks at the work of a new non-profit called the Public Policy Lab to “to improve interactions between public services and those served by them through research, advocacy, and technical assistance.” First up, an “out-of-the-box” collaboration with the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Parsons’ DESIS lab to streamline how the agency interacts with developers, property owners and residents. The Public Policy Lab also has its sight set on improving user experience at the DMV. We wish them luck.

MAKING PLANNING POPULAR
This week we heard from Shin-pei Tsay about how urban planners could intervene directly in neighborhoods, just as artists and architects have increasingly found ways to do in recent years. Meanwhile, BLDGBLOG points to an exhibit that recently closed in London that aims to make planning not only more relevant and responsive to community needs, but also more popular, principled and understood.

"Wendy" HWKN's design for MoMA / PS1 | Image courtesy of HWKN via ArtInfo

WARM-UP 2012 DESIGNERS ANNOUNCED
While the summer may seem impossibly far away, the announcement this week of the winners of MoMA / PS1′s coveted Young Architects commission means we now know what one recurring summer-in-the-city tradition will look like in 2012: HWKN’s design, “a doozy, a mass of fabric spikes christened ‘Wendy,’” has been selected for its innovative merger of green engineering — the structure will literally clean the air — and the exuberant shelter and shade it will provide for summer party-goers. The air cleaning function is accomplished by coating the structure  with Titania nanoparticles, in which sunlight “triggers a catalytic and chemical reaction that neutralizes nitrogen dioxide.” Read a Q&A with the designers, Mark Kushner and Matthias Hollwich, on ArtInfo.

EVENTS and TO DOs

FORECLOSED OPENS
Next Wednesday, the Museum of Modern Art’s anticipated new exhibition, Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, will open to the public. On view will be the work on five interdisciplinary teams of architects, urban planners, ecologists, engineers, and landscape designers — led by MOS, Visible Weather, Studio Gang, WORKac, and Zago Architecture – who worked in public workshops at MoMA PS1 “to envision new housing and transportation infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation, particularly in the country’s suburbs.” In advance of that event, Jeanne Gang and Greg Lindsay, two members of team Studio Gang, authored an op-ed in today’s Times that looks at the under-reported phenomenon of new immigrants in suburban America as an inroad to understanding the role — and responsibility — of design and urban planning in redressing some of the damage wrought by the foreclosure crisis and our country’s extravagant land use patterns that precipitated it.

GRID LOVE CONTINUES…
Many thanks to the 87 people from around the world who submitted to our first essay competition, which urged writers to reflect on the Manhattan street grid as a paradigm, rubric or muse for urban life. We’ll announce the winner(s) early next month, but in the meantime, if your fascination with the grid and its evolution over the past 200 years is not yet sated, you have until April 15th to check out a pair of exhibitions at the Museum of City of New York (organized in collaboration with the Architectural League), and next week, the Museum is hosting a panel discussion with traffic and planning experts called “Gridlock!: Congestion and Flow on New York City Streets” that will look at the reshaping of traffic flows in the city thanks to the introductions of pedestrian malls, bike lanes, bus-only lanes and other traffic engineering innovations. Wednesday, February 15th, 6:30 pm at the Museum of the City of New York. For more information or to book tickets, click here.

LIVE INTERVIEW @ STUDIO_X: STANLEY GREENBERG
When we spoke with Stanley Greenberg about his photographs of infrastructure and construction projects, he mentioned his forthcoming book Time Machines, which chronicles the machinery of large-scale physics experiments around the world. The book is now available, and  he’ll be sharing stories, images and reflections on his process next week. Join him Thursday, February 16th, 6:30pm, at Studio-X New York.

DELANCEY UNDERGROUND / LOWLINE
That same night, the Tenement Museum is hosting Dan Barasch and James Ramsey to discuss the ”history, current state, and potential future of the abandoned trolley terminal below Delancey Street” and to ask if “it can be transformed into a cutting edge subterranean green space for the Lower East Side.” Thursday, February 16th, 6:30pm, at the Tenement Museum.

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

The Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse | Photo by Kathy Zeiger for No Longer Empty

A large, imposing and seemingly abandoned mansion occupies an entire block on the Grand Concourse between 166th and McClellan Streets in the Bronx. The building — a neo-Renaissance, limestone palazzo behind a black iron fence and a large, tree-shaded lawn — stands apart from the neighboring apartment buildings and the stately street wall of the boulevard. Across from the Bronx Museum and just a few blocks north of Yankee Stadium, the Andrew Freedman Home looks, at first glance, like an uninhabited relic forgotten during the decades of the Grand Concourse’s decline from grandeur. But closer inspection reveals a range of community-oriented activities that will be amplified this spring, when No Longer Empty, a young and nomadic cultural institution dedicated to bringing contemporary art to underutilized spaces throughout New York City, invites the public inside to experience a contemporary art exhibition of 30 new works that weave evocations of the building’s unique history into interpretations of contemporary realities in the Bronx.

Andrew Freedman, a self-made millionaire financier who died in 1915, left much of his fortune to build the place as a retirement home for formerly wealthy people who had lost their fortunes, so that these newly indigent could spend their final years in the manner to which they were accustomed: dinners served in banquet halls by servants with white gloves, readings in a wood-paneled library, entertainment in the billiard, card or ball rooms. The Home operated on this vision from 1924 until the 1970s, when mounting operational costs and a dwindling endowment forced it to charge for accommodations. In 1984, the facility was purchased by the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council (MBSCC), a non-profit formed by local residents in 1973 to provide direct services to the elderly and disabled that has since grown into a property developer of low- and moderate-income housing with a portfolio of 28 buildings throughout the Bronx and a suite of programs in economic development and children and family services. MBSCC attempted to re-start the retirement home under a more inclusive model in 1985, but the endeavor eventually proved unsustainable, and activity was restricted to the refurbished lower ground floor, where a Head Start program, a day care center and a job resource center operate at a remove from the vestiges of both luxury and penury upstairs. The function rooms on the main floor are recently refurbished. The bedrooms on the higher floors have been abandoned for almost 25 years, and amid the chipping paint and splintering furniture are the personal effects of former residents, from postcards to upright pianos, and the professional equipment of a nursing home, from medical cabinets to beehive hairdryers. It’s not hard to imagine how the combination of grand spaces and ghostly absences could inspire visual artists. And Manon Slome and Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, the founder / president and executive director of No Longer Empty respectively, have been hard at work since last September making that happen.

No Longer Empty’s mission, as Slome and Hersson-Ringskog explain in the interview below, is to use the presentation of contemporary art as a mechanism for community revitalization — through partnership with local institutions, increased activity and awareness from non-local visitors, and innovative live programming that engages both. This process corresponds well to MBSCC’s current plans for the site. According to Walter Puryear, who manages much of MBSCC’s real estate and is responsible for the development of several ambitious new programs, in order for the organization to realize its mission of comprehensive community development, the long-term employability of local residents is an urgent priority. The vision for the Andrew Freedman Home includes an array of ambitious workforce development initiatives, including training programs for culinary and hospitality services (in coordination with the opening of a bed and breakfast currently under construction in one wing of the building), a small business incubator, a media center and a green technology training institute. In the meantime, make plans to visit the building in its current state this April, when No Longer Empty’s new exhibition, This Side of Paradise, opens to the public.

- C.S.

The Library at the Andrew Freedman Home

Tell me about No Longer Empty. How did the organization come to be?
Manon Slome: As a curator, my interest has long been the intersection of art and social issues. I founded No Longer Empty in April 2009 and since then we’ve organized 12 exhibitions throughout the boroughs. Before that, I worked at the Guggenheim and at the Chelsea Art Museum, where I was chief curator. But when I started I wasn’t out to set up an organization, I was just thinking about an exhibition and a site for it. It was around the time of Lehman’s collapse and the broader economic crisis, and I was walking down Madison Avenue noticing how many storefronts were empty and how even the active businesses were empty of customers. I began to conceive of an exhibition called Empty, and when I thought about where to do it, an empty storefront seemed like a great space.

A friend offered us a storefront adjacent to the Chelsea Hotel, a former fishing tackle store. We put on a show of ten artists’ work in a very short amount of time, and given the store’s history and the fishing-related artifacts that were left in the space, we worked around a maritime theme. For example, the artist Michael Bevilacqua’s piece referenced the drowning of the economy in nautical terms. We found the notion of responding to the site to be very evocative.

Installation view of "No Longer Empty in Chelsea Hotel," June - July 2009 | Photo by Kathy Zeiger for No Longer Empty

What was most interesting to me was the reaction of people wandering down 23rd Street who popped their heads in and asked questions. We found that people who might not normally go to a gallery or a museum were comfortable coming to see this, and were interested in the work and in engaging in conversation about it. As a curator, there’s very little interaction with visitors built into the traditional processes of an art exhibition. For me, being present and available for conversation with visitors was very interesting.

After that, we were offered a second space in the Meatpacking District. It was a brand new condominium building with a vacant retail space. So, contrary to the fishing tackle store with its rich history, here was a site with no history. So we decided to reference the idea of a community in transition. We called the exhibition Reflecting Transformation and a lot of the works explored the notion of a neighborhood turning over and what that meant.

At that exhibition, we had our first panel discussion with thought leaders in public art, to probe the nature of what we were doing. The notion of a storefront as a semi-private, semi-public space was interesting to us; and orienting the exhibitions towards a wide public was very important for us. This launched our programming, which has since expanded to include children’s programming, artist-led workshops, roundtable discussions with the artists, and more. The programming and the community engagement became as important to us as the exhibitions.

Naomi Hersson-Ringskog: The art can have multiple purposes, and every time we go into a new neighborhood, we are actively figuring out how art is going to be used differently in a new context.

Slome: For example, when we held a show in the former Tower Records Store on Broadway and 4th Street, visitors’ nostalgia for the record store where they hung out in college informed their experience of an exhibition curated around themes of music and the changing nature of music distribution.

Hersson-Ringskog: Or when we did a show on Governors Island, at which a lot of visitors remarked on the magic of being brought into a house that was otherwise vacant to see art that referenced the history, the past, the people that lived there, or what the island might be without human inhabitants.

"The Island of Dr Mastrovito" by Andrea Mastrovito at "The Sixth Borough," Governors Island, June - October 2010 | Photo by Kathy Zeiger for No Longer Empty

How does your community research process typically work?
Slome: I come from an arts background and Naomi comes from an urban planning background, so our working together is a fabulous marriage of disciplines for community-based work.

When we go into a neighborhood, the first thing we do is get to know the organizations with deep roots in the community and partner with them to provide programming, to bring new people and new ideas to the community. And often community organizations are strapped financially, so our collaborative process is quite valued.

Take the Andrew Freedman Home as an example, which has a very particular history. All of that influences our ideas of what we might do here. First, you can’t ignore the history. But you also don’t want simply to mirror that history. This enormous abandoned building is a white elephant as it is on the Grand Concourse, so you don’t want merely to accentuate that. Rather, we want the exhibition to merge the history of the Andrew Freedman Home with the current day realities of the Bronx.

A third floor bedroom at the Andrew Freedman Home

Any representations of the Bronx have to contend with the borough’s history of disinvestment and poverty and also the feeling that everything that’s not wanted in Manhattan is pushed onto the Bronx. This led to a good discussion about the title. Poor, in Style was our working title, but then we moved onto This Side of Paradise with all of its associations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, with 1920s ideas of class and the class loyalty that Andrew Freedman embodied, and with the ambiguous, ironic notion that we assume Manhattan is the paradise and the Bronx is something else, so let’s see how we can shift that.

We did a lot of research into the art that’s produced here. We didn’t want to create a show of exclusively Bronx-based artists; we didn’t want to make another kind of ghetto. But we learned about some phenomenal local work. And we learned about some fabulous organizations working in choreography and music. Obviously, the legacy of the Bronx as the birthplace of hip-hop is incredibly important. All that will be reflected in the exhibition.

One of the things we’ve found in the Bronx is that it is a very fragmented borough. It is easier to get from here to Manhattan than it is to get to parts of the South Bronx. So it became very apparent that if we wanted people outside of the immediate vicinity to know about the show, we should partner with cultural organizations in other Bronx neighborhoods and work on transportation and cross-promotion. We’re going to be meeting with the Bronx Tourism Council to think about how we can realistically shuttle people around to various locations.

Beehive hair dryers on the fourth floor of the Andrew Freedman Home

Hersson-Ringskog: We’re exploring whether it’s possible to establish a pilot program that addresses the mobility issues here, like a bike-sharing program. Being able to move between different cultural organizations is an important aspect of having a vibrant arts scene.

An alliance is being formed called the Bronx Cultural Alliance, which will create a structure for collaborations between organizations like Wave Hill in Riverdale, the Point in the South Bronx, Lehman College in Bedford Park, Hostos College in the South Bronx, and others. The point is to create a tighter-knit cultural landscape in the borough.

Tell me about your curatorial process?
Slome: Most works we present, about 70%, are commissioned. The basis of our curatorial work is site-responsive or site-specific. In most cases, we already have interest in the artist to begin with: I’ve done a studio visit; I know the work. And because the sites we go into are non-traditional sites, there’s often phenomenal opportunities for the artists to create outside the box.

Community revitalization is also a part of your mission, how does that factor into your process?
Hersson-Ringskog: We take a potential liability to a neighborhood corridor – an empty building or inactive business can bring down a neighborhood’s quality of life by reducing foot traffic – and activate it with artwork, and with live programs that engage the community: panel discussions, children’s workshops, music or dance performances. In this way, we are advocating for interim use, for a more nimble, flexible and creative city. In addition to curating and producing the exhibition, we also research what’s unique about the area and create cultural maps that indicate to exhibition visitors all of the other cultural opportunities available in the vicinity – from parks to other art organizations to stores or restaurants.

A second floor corridor at the Andrew Freedman Home

Slome: We encourage our audience to discover the area. So we might arrange some sort of discount to a local restaurant for exhibition visitors, or try other kinds of things to keep foot traffic up and to keep people patronizing local businesses.

Hersson-Ringskog: And we track these effects through head counts, through measuring increased foot traffic and evaluating collaborations. Our research and analysis allows us a distinct and deep understanding of the site, the building details, and the area where it’s located. And we are able to relay some of that understanding back to the property owners. Further down the road, it would be interesting for No Longer Empty to have an arm that could advise on community conscious retailing or to provide other insights into community revitalization that emerge from our process.

In terms of the legacy of the projects we work on, the Bronx Cultural Alliance is a fantastic initiative that will continue forward. Art in Empty Spaces is another legacy project, where we work with Manhattan’s Community Board 3 to take No Longer Empty’s model and scale it up.

Postcards on a bedroom wall at the Andrew Freedman Home

Slome: The community board learned that storeowners and residents weren’t happy about the vacancy rates in the area. So they asked us to match arts groups up with these empty spaces and then to create a program that would get visitors to visit them. An organization we’ve talked to here in the Bronx is WHEDco, the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, which is working on a new site on Southern Boulevard. WHEDco surveyed how many local dollars are going out of the community because of the lack of stores and services. They’ve asked for our advice on how to activate the storefronts under an elevated rail-line, to get the community to recognize the stores’ existence in order to increase foot traffic and eventually attract the kind of retail they need. If you can draw foot traffic for an exhibition, you can demonstrate the demand for the right kind of retail.

If you produce quality programming, people will come. I’m always very concerned with issue of legacy.

Hersson-Ringskog: And after we conjure up an exhibition and programming, in the long term we are also giving people an opportunity to dream. People come into an exhibition and see a space transformed. I think that’s where, perhaps, crowdsourcing could come in: we could create opportunities for visitors to share their vision for the site or the area.

We are a young organization with a clear mission of knitting a vibrant cultural landscape through art and interim use. We know how to take over empty spaces and turn them into professionally curated art exhibits with programming, but in terms of creating and supporting a cultural landscape that’s sustainable, we’re working towards that, testing and learning different tactics along the way.

An abandoned Christmas tree at the Andrew Freedman Home

Manon Slome (PhD), President and Founder of No Longer Empty, is an independent curator working in New York City. From 2002 to June 2008 she was the Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York. During that time, she curated and oversaw a program of some forty exhibitions, symposia and museum publications as well as monographs and scholarly essays. Ms. Slome became highly involved with the Israeli art scene during her research for the exhibition, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on, (2005) and has followed and researched the Israeli scene for the last three years. Prior to the CAM, Ms. Slome worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum for seven years and was a holder of a Helena Rubinstein curatorial fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study program.

Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, Executive Director of No Longer Empty, has spearheaded community and real estate outreach strategies for No Longer Empty in order to study and measure the effects of art as a tool for re-activating corridors and making a local economic impact. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Masters Program in Urban Planning where she studied urban green sustainability, specifically green roofs. She is also recipient of the William Kinne Fellowship Award. Naomi has also worked for an information architecture firm in Washington DC. Currently serves on the Executive Board of the Columbia University’s Alumni Association.

Curbside Haiku Samples

TRAFFIC SAFETY HAIKU
With ubiquity comes invisibility. And words can be arranged with the same economy and elegance as high quality graphic design. These two precepts are the inspiration behind the DOT’s latest spate of traffic signs. By combining a little bit of poetry with well-designed visuals, the DOT hopes to call attention to hazardous intersections. According to The New York Times City Room, twelve curbside Haiku signs have been installed in over twenty locations (PDF) around Brooklyn and Manhattan with more locations slated throughout the boroughs, all of which correspond to highly trafficked intersections near major cultural institutions. Apparently, the notion of traffic sign haiku is catching on, as City Room’s readers have responded with some entertaining, seventeen-syllable poetry of their own.

DELANCEY UNDERGROUND
A couple months ago, a proposal to build an underground park at the site of the the abandoned Essex Street Trolley Terminal at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge began to circulate around the Internet. Dubbed “Delancey Underground,” the proposal excited interest, and, while its fate is still uncertain, the MTA definitely wants to open the space up to development. To that end, the MTA has released a video tour led by Peter Hine of the MTA’s real estate office (blogged earlier this week by Second Avenue Sagas). While leading the tour, Hine offers up some suggestions of what kinds of retail or commercial uses could inhabit the space, and he is particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of a nightclub: the former dispatch tower of the trolley terminal could serve as the DJ booth and revelers could enjoy views of active trains at the adjacent Delancey Street – Essex Street subway station. The video ends with an invitation to developers to get in touch with ideas about the “creative redevelopment and reuse” for this and other spaces belonging to the MTA throughout the city. For more information check out the MTA Real Estate Department’s website.

David Brooks' new installation at 46th street and 8th Avenue.

SUBURBAN DUNESCAPES IN TIMES SQUARE
A couple weeks ago, we spoke with Glen Weiss, former manager of the robust public art program at the Times Square Alliance. With the help of the Art Production Fund, Times Square has recently inaugurated a new series of installations ”that focus on raising environmental consciousness,” the first of which is a new, 5,000-square-foot sculpture by the artist David Brooks entitled Desert Rooftops. Constructed out of asphalt-shingled rooftops, the piece evokes strip malls, McMansions and other typologies we commonly associate with suburban sprawl right in the heart of New York City. Brooks’ synthetic landscape “examines issues of the natural and built landscape by comparing the monoculture that arises from unchecked suburban and urban sprawl with that of an over-cultivated landscape.” The installation is on view now through February 5, 2012 at Times Square, at The Last Lot project space on 46th Street and 8th Avenue. More information is available at the Times Square Alliance website.

DREAM CITIES
Reimagining cities has long been a favorite topic of discussion among architects and urbanists. Increasingly, the topic is capturing the attention of mainstream audiences as well. In September, The Atlantic unveiled its new online section, Atlantic Cities, which is devoted to “[exploring] the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today’s global cities and neighborhoods.” This week, Salon.com is widening the audience of those concerned with the future of cities even further with their new series, Dream City. The series, created to “explore the way we’re designing our cities of the future, cities in which we want to live, right now,” opened with a look at the possibilities of floating, water-borne architectures followed by a post on the removal of inner city highways. Both of these entries referenced New York City precedents: the Floating Pool and the proposed removal of the unloved Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx. We look forward to reading more.

DESIGNER SCAFFOLDING
While fun for the acrobatically-inclined child or cyclist looking for bike parking, the ubiquitous sidewalk scaffolding that protects pedestrians from falling debris at construction and demolition sites has always been an eyesore. In response to the ugliness, in 2009 the Department of Buildings invited architects and designers to submit proposals to the UrbanShed competition. The winning entry, from the team of Young-Hwan Choi, Andres Cortes and Sarrah Kahn of Agencie Group, was announced last January and their design is finally making it to the streets. For more of the coverage, check out the New York Times City Room and the Village Voice.

EVENTS and TO DOs

RAIL YARDS COMMUNITY INPUT MEETING: Now that all stakeholders have pledged to retain the final section of the High Line for recreational use, the team at Friends of the High Line are ready to move ahead with plans and designs for phase three. On December 6th, join them for a project update from representatives from the High Line design team, James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and voice your suggestions or ideas for the site. For more information about the Community Input Meeting, visit the Friends of the High Line’s website. Tuesday, December 6th, 6:30pm, at Public School 11 Auditorium, 320 West 21st Street.

Button Agreement Map, Day 5 | Stanley Greenberg

EVERY STREET IN MANHATTAN
Photographer Stanley Greenberg, who spoke with us last year about his long history of documenting infrastructural spaces and systems, has embarked on a new project, the Button Agreement. Greenberg will walk every street in Manhattan. He will go on at least one walk a week, documenting the walks with photographs and maps showing which streets he’s been on. The documentation will be made public on his blog.

A book of his previous project, Time Machines, photographs of high energy physics experiments, is now available. Join Greenberg for a discussion and book signing next week in Brooklyn. Wednesday, December 7th, 7pm at BookCourt, 163 Court Street.

AIDS MEMORIAL COMPETITION: When the AIDS epidemic hit New York City in the early 1980s, St. Vincent’s hospital was at the epicenter of the crisis. St. Vincent’s has closed and the hospital is being redeveloped as luxury condominiums, but the NYC AIDS Memorial Park Campaign has succeeded in designating the triangle adjacent to the hospital a future park and memorial space. The triangle, bounded by Greenwich Avenue, West 12th Street and 7th Avenue, which has traditionally served as the loading dock for the hospital, will now serve as a “memorial park and teaching space to honor and recognize the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died from AIDS.” Architizer and Architectural Record have launched a competition to design the memorial park. The competition will be juried by Michael Arad, Kurt Andersen, Barry Bergdoll, Liz Diller, Ken Smith, Robert Hammond, Bill T. Jones, Richard Meier, Dr. Marjorie Hill and Suzanne Stephens. Find more information at the competition page. Deadline: January 21, 2012.

JOIN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY BOARD!: Community boards serve a vital role in the life of New York City. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is hosting a series of informational meetings about the roles and responsibilities of community board members, the newly increased role the borough’s community boards play and how to become a board member. The meetings will be held Tuesday, December 6th, from 6:30 – 8:00pm in the Municipal Building, 1 Centre Street, 19th Floor; Wednesday, December 14th, from 6:30 – 8:00pm, at 163 West 125th Street, Room 8C; and Thursday, January 5th, from 6:30 – 8:00pm in the Municipal Building, 1 Centre Street, 19th Floor. RSVP to conference@manhattanbp.org.

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

Manhattan Flood Zones Under 4-Foot Sea Level Rise | LDEO & Civil Engineering, Columbia University | via transportationnation.org

FLOODED SUBWAYS
When Hurricane Irene was headed towards New York City, the MTA made the bold choice to shut down the entire subway system, anticipating widespread flooding of the tunnels which could cause significant damage to transit infrastructure. Though our subways escaped harm this time, the flood threat looks to be a harbinger of a future norm — unless we make some changes now. Last week, Columbia, CUNY and Cornell released Responding to Climate Change in New York State, a report commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The document is the result of three years of study into the potential local impact of sea level rise, temperature fluctuation and precipitation increases on infrastructure, economy and public health. The report offers adaptation and preparation recommendations for policymakers, managers and researchers. (Read more in The New York Times.)

Meanwhile, Andrea Bernstein at Transportation Nation points us to Flooded Bus Barns and Buckled Rails, an August 2011 Federal Transit Administration (FTA) report addressing climate change adaptation needs specifically in the realm of public transportation. Bernstein talks with Columbia professor and transit and climate change expert Klaus Jacob, who has worked with the MTA to model some worrisome future scenarios, and MTA Climate Adaption Specialist Projjal Dutta, who is working to implement preventative strategies. Of course, the MTA’s financial woes are well known, and these are costly measures — but Irene’s threat demonstrated that the possible impacts of climate change are closer at hand than we like to believe, and if you think mitigation strategies are expensive, imagine what would happen if we do nothing. According to Jacob, recovering from a full flooding of the subway system could take as long as 29 days, a timespan that would affect economic activity in the city to the tune of $4 billion a day.

photo via civiccenter.cc

BEFORE I DIE I WANT TO…
Candy Chang, public installation artist, designer, planner, TED Fellow, Omnibus contributor and part of the team that designed urbanomnibus.net and our 50 Ideas for the New City posters, has taken her project Before I Die to cities around the world. The project presents a huge chalkboard, painted on a neglected or underutilized wall, repeatedly stenciled with the sentence “Before I die I want to _____”, entreating passersby to fill in the blanks. Chang’s intention is to help people remember what is important to them and, in some small way, to acquaint people with their too-anonymous neighbors. Over the past few weeks, the corner of Adams St. and Fulton Street Mall in Downtown Brooklyn has joined the ranks of New Orleans, Amsterdam, Querétaro, Lisbon, San Diego, Almaty, Ponta Delgada, Portsmouth as temporary home to Before I Die. From the looks of these photos from the Civic Center website (the design firm Chang started with James A. Reeves), Downtown Brooklynites aren’t short on hopes and dreams. Go check it out for yourself while you can and add your own aspirations to the jam-packed wall — the installation, on the construction boards of the future Brooklyn Shake Shack, will only be up through next Tuesday, November 29th.

© Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos | via todayspictures.slate.com

BUILDING THE VERRAZANO-NARROWS
For the past couple months, Slate has been presenting an incredible series of photographs from the collection of Magnum Photos. This week, we were treated to a series of the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, a vital piece of transit infrastructure whose lasting impact on Staten Island, New York City and the metropolitan region we explored in the third of our City of Systems videos. These shots document the human side of that story, with poignant portraits of construction workers assembling the “142,000 miles of twisted wire… and 8,000,000 bolts and rivets” that made this engineering marvel possible.

IS ROBERT MOSES FINALLY DEAD?
The Verrazzano pictures don’t just chronicle workers toiling on a massive public works project, but testify to an era when infrastructure investment was a political priority. The bridge was one of the final achievements of Robert Moses, whose legacy has been picked over and argued since his less than ceremonious expulsion from power in 1968. Beyond his reputation as power greedy and insensitive to the needs of neighborhoods, no one disputes that he embodied an era of consistent investment in infrastructure on the part of American governments at all scales. The end of that era, argues Matt Chaban in the Observer, begs serious questions about our current political climate’s failure to produce civic works responsive to contemporary needs. He takes Governors Christie and Cuomo to task for what he perceives as short-sightedness, and he calls out other leaders across the country who have done what Moses once thought impossible: they have pulled up stakes on active projects, prioritizing short-term political gain over jobs creation, regional planning and national competitiveness.

EVENTS and TO DOs

SEED AWARDS: The Social, Economic, Environmental Design (SEED) Network, a group of individuals and organizations dedicated to building and supporting a culture of civic responsibility and engagement in the built environment and the public realm, has announced the second annual SEED Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design. The awards aim to showcase and promote projects that help create socially, economically and environmentally healthy communities, judged according to SEED metrics. Submit a project for consideration before January 16, 2012. Six winners will receive a $1,000 cash prize and an all-expenses-paid trip to present at the Structures for Inclusion conference in March, an annual event dedicated to highlighting the social and economic impacts of design, and will be included in a documentary series by The UpTake. Deadline: January 16, 2012. Find more info here.

WHERE IS NEW YORK?: Last week, Senator Chuck Schumer and NY State Senator Daniel Squadron announced that $14 million had been secured for the redevelopment of Pier 42 into a public park. On Monday, Columbia University’s Urban Planning Program is hosting a panel discussion addressing questions of the future of Pier 42, the role of community plans in urban development and how to activate civic participation. The panel includes three of the authors of the 2009 community plan A People’s Plan for the East River Waterfront, Jason Cheng (CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities), Anne Frederick (Hester Street Collaborative) and Damaris Reyes (GOLES), moderated by Kaja Kuehl (GSAPP). Monday, November 28, 6:30pm. Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, Columbia University GSAPP. Free and open to the public. Find more info here.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1969 | via nydailynews.com

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
The Omnibus is signing off until Monday. Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

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

In 1982, the MTA launched a multi-billion-dollar capital improvement program to rehabilitate the transit system. During that campaign, in 1985, a program was created to introduce original and integrated artworks into MTA stations and spaces and to promote design excellence as part of the rebuilding effort: Arts for Transit. Today, Arts for Transit oversees a number of programs that bring visual art and performance to the MTA network. They are most well-known for the Permanent Art program, which incorporates commissioned works of art into capital construction or renovation projects throughout NYC Transit, Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road and NYC Bridges & Tunnels. But their work isn’t limited to the permanent, or even the visual. They showcase the work of photographers in rotating temporary exhibitions, fill unused advertising space with posters by illustrators and other visual artists, and present thousands of musical performances annually at 25 subway and train stations.

Last week, we had a chance to speak with Arts for Transit Director Sandra Bloodworth, an artist herself, who first joined Arts for Transit in 1988 as a manager, before becoming deputy director in 1992 and then director in 1996. While sitting in front of the newly-installed Sol LeWitt in the 59th Street-Columbus Circle station, we talked about the power of art to help turn a failing system around, activate spaces of infrastructure, and improve rider experience and quality of life.

- V.S.

Times Square Mural (2002) © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Times Square–42nd Street Station, A, C, E, N, Q, R, S, 1, 2, 3, 7 lines, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

Tell us about Arts for Transit and your role there.
I am the director of Arts for Transit and Urban Design at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The role of Arts for Transit is really two-fold. One part is arts — visual and performing, the temporary poster program, the Art Cards, Lightbox, and the larger mission of commissioning permanent art for stations being rehabilitated under a capital program. We have over 230 works of art installed in MTA NYC Transit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro North, and MTA Bridges and Tunnels’ facilities.

The other hat we wear is that of urban design and promoting design excellence in the agency. We advocate that good design does not have to cost more money. In fact, really excellent design can save you money. The best example of how we work in that role is what happened when the MTA decided to implement vending machines for MetroCard sales. The MTA wanted to make sure riders not only accepted the new system, but saw it as a good option, a better option. In conjunction with NYC Transit, Arts for Transit worked with the designers, Antenna Design, to ensure the machines were user friendly, appealing, and not incongruous with the station environment. The machines were installed in 1999 and they have served us quite well. People like them and use them. And they showed that a government agency can change how it does business in a positive way.

Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel Clock (1992) © R. M. Fischer, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, MTA Bridges and Tunnels. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Paul Warchol.

In a way, the same thing is true with the art installations, though that’s a less definable topic. We started introducing art into the subway environment at a time when the system was on the brink of collapse, in the mid-1980s. The concept of putting art into that environment was a novel idea.

Around that time, New York City’s Percent for Art legislation was passed, which requires that one percent of the budget of capital projects is allocated for art. Even before that was passed into law, the MTA knew it was pending and used that momentum to advance the idea of dramatically changing the underground environment. Ronay Menschel, an MTA board member at the time, was the one who realized this would need to be managed internally and played a key role in establishing Arts for Transit. Wendy Feuer was hired as the founding director. Arts for Transit immediately engaged with the role of aesthetics within the architecture and industrial design of the MTA, and advanced the idea that if we’re going to spend real money on improving the system, let’s be sure to design it well.

What was the intent in installing quality artwork in the transit system? Did you want to enrich the community experience? Did you want to interrupt the routine commute and make people engage with the space?
It engages the public, yes, but it also sends a huge message that someone truly cares about this space and, accordingly, about the riders. People see the MTA as this big, anonymous agency. They might recognize some of the leadership from the press, but they don’t often think about the people that are behind the scenes, the architects, the engineers, the Arts for Transit folks, the designers, the rapid transit guys, all of these people that get up every day to make this all happen, or, in the mid-‘80s and ‘90s, were driven to turn this place around. Introducing quality art tells the public that there are all these people invested in the space.

Blooming (1996) © Elizabeth Murray, Lexington Avenue–59th Street Station, 4, 5, 6, F, N, R lines, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

These are works by the same artists you see in museums — Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Murray — but now you can see them on your way to the museums. Elizabeth was one of the first major recognized artists that did a project with us. She waived her fee and gave the public a phenomenal project at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. When developing the collection, if you will, we don’t only look to the art world. We also look to who is riding the trains and using these spaces — and those worlds very often overlap. The real challenge is to select works that speak to the ridership, that have a relevance to the place where they are installed. And I mean that in a more conceptual way, I’m not talking about only pictoral images referencing the site, like Heins & LaFarge’s depictions of Columbus’ caravel over on the Columbus Circle IRT platform — it’s a myth, by the way, that the caravels were meant to provide station information to people who couldn’t read the name tablet. They were purely ornamental.

We’re sitting in front of the perfect example of how the art can be about the people and the place, Sol LeWitt’s “Whirls and twirls (MTA)” at 59th Street-Columbus Circle. LeWitt captured the movement of the subway, the flow of people through the station. When you look at this artwork, you feel the motion around you, the energy — and the riders get it, it’s intuitive, we don’t have to explain it.

We’ve always felt that it’s not our role to be a gallery. We are creating work that becomes a daily part of people’s lives, as they travel their same route every day — or, when they take a different route, we want them to be excited about seeing something new.

Whirls and twirls (MTA) (2009) © Sol LeWitt, 59th Street-Columbus Circle Station, A, B, C, D, 1 lines, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

How do you identify the artists you want to work with? The commissions range from the renowned, like LeWitt, to the lesser known. What’s the selection process?
At 59th Street-Columbus Circle, we had the opportunity to invite Sol LeWitt to create one of his wall drawings for this station. However, the vast majority of our projects are the result of an extensive selection process defined by MTA policy, with the understanding that we’re procuring artwork.

Every time we do a project we invite artists to submit through an open call on our website. Now, because everything is digital, we keep a bank of entries and review all artists for every project, though we ask artists to notify us if they are particularly interested in any specific commission.

We then have two meetings with a selection panel, which changes each time and is comprised of arts and cultural professionals and community advisors. In conjunction with our government and community relations staff, we work closely with the local community boards, to help us understand what the community wants, and to help us communicate how our work relates to them.

We narrow down the field of artists to about four finalists, who then come in for an orientation on the project. We ground them in the space, the architects provide an overview of the design of the station, and we visit the site. Then, they come back to us with a formal proposal. The voting panel selects the proposed artwork they think is right for that location, work that speaks to the community and is of the highest quality.

The process has served us well. We have an amazing collection from a diverse group of artists, both emerging and established.

Given the quality of the artwork, which you talk about as a true collection, what is your approach to maintenance or conservation, especially considering the pieces are installed in highly-trafficked sites that are difficult to keep clean?
We have always known that there would be limited resources to maintain this collection. So we have been rigid in what we allow to be installed into the system, with some exceptions to allow us to reach beyond what we know. Mosaics, ceramics, glass mosaics, those are durable materials. We’ve seen examples where pieces have lasted for over 100 years. So that was a logical direction to take. Many of our works, certainly our underground works, are ceramics or mosaics.

We also work closely with our Stations Department on how they maintain the pieces, and if there’s ever any question, they call us and we work as a consultant. Arts for Transit maintains and repairs things that we can do ourselves. Beyond that, we just want to make sure that we’re keeping our eyes on everything we’ve installed. Staff members are responsible for visiting a portion of the collection bi-annually to do condition reports. We want to be sure that the art is always in the best shape it can be.

You mentioned that you make some exceptions in the type of work you commission, to learn new things and experiment with different materials and media. What are some examples of that? I know that Leo Villareal will be installing his LED light sculpture “Hive” in the renovated Bleecker Street station…
Leo’s piece is a very good example of the kind of exception I was talking about. We worked with our Chief Electrical Engineer Stan Karoly to make sure that the work is durable and can be maintained routinely. The engineers were very excited about his piece, because it really celebrates their field. So yes, we are trying it out as a pilot, to see what our limits are. We probably can’t have twenty projects like Leo’s, but we can have one!

Union Square in Motion (2011) © Anezka Sebek and Joshua Spodek, with Jeanne Kelly, Hilal Koyuncu, Rose Maison, Umut Ozover, Josefina Santos, and Jaqi Vigil. Lightbox project commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

Tell me about some of the temporary projects that fall under the purview of Arts for Transit.
We have a few special projects. For example, we just installed a zoetrope underneath Union Square that was designed by a group of Parsons students. In some ways it is a pilot for us to activate unused advertising space and illustrate how dynamic it can be, and to experiment with new media.

We also have a number of temporary projects that we do on a more routine basis. We have our Transit Poster program and our Art Cards that you see in the trains, which are often created by illustrators and graphic designers. Then we have our Lightbox photography project, which showcases the work of photographers that either relates to transportation, the system or to the local community. Those are on view on the lower level of Grand Central, at the 42nd Street and 6th Avenue station, at Atlantic/Pacific and Bowling Green.

Traveling Dinosaur Chicks (2010) © Takayo Noda. Art Card commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit.

How do you view the interface between the Arts for Transit works and station advertising? Especially as some ads, through technology or design, hover in a more ambiguous creative space — I’m thinking of things like the new 60-foot digital video wall on the other side of this station, currently being used by an Asics ad, or the large MoMA poster installation in the Atlantic/Pacific subway station in 2009.
Yes, advertising is blurring the lines. Those are both 100% advertising campaigns. Some of it is very exciting, but it can be a double-edged sword. We hope that we can capture some of that technology and energy and bring more interactive, video-based works to the public on a limited basis. And it’s no secret that the MTA needs to capture every dollar in order to provide the best service we can. And if any institution has the budget, the funds, to do a campaign, then we support the MTA capturing those dollars.

Also, the visual interface is more than just the advertising and the art. The MTA’s signage is so present in the world’s perception of New York City. If you ask people to visualize words of New York, they’re probably going to see them in Helvetica. We’re an icon of New York now, and it’s important that we keep that in mind when we think about how people interact with these spaces.

Music Under New York performance at 42nd Street-Grand Central

Tell me about the Arts for Transit music program Music Under New York.
There are a lot of myths about Music Under New York. We are not giving licenses or permits to people to play in the subway. Any musician — anyone, really — can go into a subway station and play music or do what they want, as long as they respect the rules of conduct. We are presenting a roster of musicians daily, over 7,000 performances annually, in 25 locations throughout our system, which we identified with our station personnel to make sure we don’t interfere with transit needs. We simply want to present quality music on a regular basis.

We hold auditions every May in Grand Central, and we hold a roster of about 100 acts at any given time. Once you’re in the program, you’re in. For many different reasons musicians move on, so every year we lose about 25 and add about 25.

What are some of the other projects in the works?
We have a number of projects coming up on the Pelham line in the Bronx, and in the Rockaways, either just installed or in the middle of installation. Jason Rohlf will be installing a piece at the Mott Avenue A station. Barbara Grygutis recently did the Whitlock Avenue 6 stop in the Bronx, which received an honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society’s MASterworks this year — it’s a remarkable project. Barbara designed sculptural furniture that exists within the windscreen. And, of course, the mega-projects: Jean Shin and Sarah Sze are both doing projects in stations along the new 2nd Avenue line, and Xenobia Bailey is doing a piece for the new 7 station at 34th Street. And James Carpenter collaborated with Grimshaw Architects to create a cable net to bring light into the Fulton Transit Center.

Bronx River View (2010) © Barbara Grygutis, Whitlock Avenue Station, 6 line, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Peter Peirce.

You are an artist yourself and you’ve worked with Arts for Transit for 23 years now. How do you define public art? What does it mean to you?
I started working, and still work, in public art because of the engagement between the built environment and the people who are in that environment — myself included. I’m an artist, so I was engaged with this environment before I worked for the MTA, but I felt it would be an incredible opportunity to be part of a team that affects the way your space looks.

People love to beat up on the MTA. But I’m still amazed to be part of an organization that has accomplished this type of change in the public environment. I believe public art changes the quality of life for everyone that walks through here. Maybe they are not aware of how or why, but ultimately it makes people feel good that someone makes this space a place where they might want to be.

And I think it has changed the perception of the New York subway. Plenty of people who ride the subway now don’t remember it when it was in really bad shape. But I remember when it was a sign of hope that if you could turn around the subway, you could change what was happening aboveground too. I believe that those went hand in hand. A lot of credit is given to a lot of different things for how New York turned around. But I believe there was no way it would have happened without the changes underground.

Sandra Bloodworth is the director of Arts for Transit and Urban Design at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. As director, she is responsible for the Arts for Transit programs, whose mission it is to commission public art that enhances the transportation environment. In addition to the Arts for Transit award-winning permanent art program, she is responsible for Music Under New York, the Transit Poster program and the Lightbox Project. She represents the MTA on station aesthetics and urban design issues, with a focus on promoting design excellence. She joined Arts for Transit in 1988 as a manager and became deputy director in 1992 and director in 1996. She is the co-author of Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit. Her previous experience includes working as a development associate for the Studio in a School Association. Sandra has taught Visual Art and Urban Design in the Department of Art and Arts Professions graduate program at New York University and studio classes in the fine arts departments at Florida State University and the University of Mississippi. Bloodworth is an artist and holds a B.S. from Mississippi College, an M.A. from the University of Mississippi and an M.F.A. from Florida State University. Bloodworth received the Fund for the City of New York’s 2005 Sloan Public Service Award in recognition of her work in the field of public art.

Photo by Iwan Baan | via thehighline.org

HIGH LINE PHASE 3
On November 1st, Mayor Bloomberg announced that all of the major stakeholders in the West Side Rail Yards have agreed to preserve the final section of the High Line for use as public space. CSX Transportation, a private freight rail company that still owns the undeveloped stretch of the elevated tracks, has committed to donating the remaining portion of the structure to the City; and the City, State and site developer Related Companies have all agreed to retain the structure and turn it into parkland. Meanwhile Friends of the High Line have been working hard to secure funding for phase three, helped by a recent $20 million donation from the Diller-Von Furstenberg Foundation. In his press statement, Mayor Bloomberg made it clear that this project was part of a collaboration between the City of New York and Related Companies to revitalize the West side of Manhattan in order to encourage commercial activity and in turn to promote the creation of jobs. Legal details and final negotiations are still in process, but confidence is high that a complete High Line, from Gansevoort to 34th Street, is in New York’s future. For more information, check out the Friends of the High Line website.

City Lights | photo via tphifer.com

SLEEK CITY LIGHTS
Head down to Church and Warren Streets to see the latest addition to New York City’s streetscape design. In 2004, a team led by Thomas Phifer and Partners won City Lights, a juried design competition led by the Department of Design and Construction and the Department of Transportation to conceive of a new streetlight for New York. Now, thanks to a reduction in cost of energy efficient LEDs over the past seven years, these sleek new lights are starting to appear on the city’s streets. For more pictures, check out The Architect’s Newspaper Blog and Thomas Phifer’s website.

TOKYO’S BACK-UP CITY
A consortium of Japanese political officials have proposed building a “back-up city” for Tokyo. — Wait, what? — After the devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit northeast Japan in March, and with seismologists warning that Tokyo itself is long overdue for a major quake, people are looking for a contingency plan. The Integrated Resort, Tourism, Business and Backup City, or IRTBBC, would house 50,000 residents and a working population of 200,000 (a far cry from the 13 million that currently live in Tokyo), and would serve to take over the major functions of the capital city in the case of a crippling disaster. The plan suggests using the site of the outdated Itami Airport outside of Osaka, 300 miles away. ”The idea is being able to have a back-up, a spare battery for the functions of the nation,” said Hajime Ishii of Japan’s Democratic Party. For more coverage, check out The Telegraph.

via theatlanticcities.com

SELLING HOUSING
The Atlantic Cities has a a delightful collection of vintage posters that tell the story of how New York City originally sold the idea of public housing to the pubic. The New York City Housing Authority was the first of its kind in the United States. While strategies for redevelopment of housing have evolved past in the past eighty years, the posters reflect the fundamental motivations behind the founding of NYCHA in 1934, to provide safe and secure housing for low-income city residents. Check out the series of posters advertising the new program and buildings here, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

EVENTS and TO DOs

Making Room Symposium: Tickets are still available for Monday’s Making Room symposium, where teams of architects commissioned by the Citizens Housing & Planning Council and the Architectural League present innovative ideas for new types of housing that might better match the contemporary demographic make-up of New York and how New Yorkers choose to live now. For an introduction to Making Room, click here. For more information about the symposium, click here.

Performa 11, the fourth edition of the visual art performance biennial, is now in progress. Performa brings together dozens of arts institutions and curators to present discipline-meshing performances that explore visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, graphic design and the culinary arts, in public and private spaces throughout the city. There’s also a Performa magazine, online TV show, radio program, film screenings, bookshop and lounge. For a complete list of events, running now through November 21, visit the Performa 11 website.

Poem Forest: This weekend, the Poetry Society of America is hosting Poem Forest, a walk along Thain Forest’s Sweetgum Trail designed by Jon Cotner (who recently took us on a walk through Fort Greene Park). Weaving together poetry and space, the self-guided tour relates lines of poetry from all different eras and regions with fifteen specific spots chosen along the trail.

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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.

Last month, when we spoke with Alyson Baker, former executive director of Socrates Sculpture Park, about the exhibition Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City, she made mention of her fervent belief in the creative potential of collaboration and hinted at a new program at Socrates:

We have just initiated a new project at the park where we are creating a forum where young architects and young artists work together, on separate projects, on their own things, but in the same studio. I think that kind of collaboration is important, especially when it comes to work within the public realm, and when you have so many artists who are interested in architecture, urban planning, design — a much bigger picture.

We’re pleased to announce that this “new project” is a collaboration between Socrates Sculpture Park and the Architectural League: Folly, a new design/build residency for architects and designers leading to an exhibition at Socrates next year.

Call for Proposals: Folly
A project organized by Socrates Sculpture Park and the Architectural League
Deadline: January 16, 2012

For more information and to download the full Call for Proposals, visit archleague.org or socratessculpturepark.org.

Socrates Sculpture Park and the Architectural League invite emerging architects and designers to apply for the opportunity to build and exhibit a full-scale project around the theme of an architectural folly. This residency was established to explore the intersections between architecture and sculpture and the increasing overlaps in references, materials, and building techniques between the two disciplines.

Socrates and the League welcome proposals for full-scale projects and installations that explore contemporary interpretations of the architectural folly. By definition a fanciful architectural form, built to lend interest to a view or serve as a conversation piece, the folly serves as an ideal launching point for a dynamic exploration of architectural form and its relationship to sculpture.

A jury of architects, artists, curators, and arts administrators will select a single project to be realized within the grounds of Socrates Sculpture Park. The recipient will receive a $5,000 production grant to fund the project, as well as full access to the resources and fabrication facilities of Socrates Sculpture Park’s outdoor studio during a two-month residency at the Park, beginning in May 2012. The completed project will open to the public in July 2012.

JURY
Alyson Baker, Director, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Yolande Daniels, studio SUMO
Richard Gluckman, Gluckman Mayner Architects
Christopher Leong, Leong Leong Architecture
Leo Villareal, artist

ELIGIBILITY
Architects and related designers are invited to apply. Applicants do not need to be registered architects. Architects and designers outside of New York City are eligible to apply but housing and transportation are not provided as part of the award. If selected, non-resident architects will have to make their own living and travel arrangements. Full-time matriculated students are not eligible to apply.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE
Applicants are strongly encouraged to visit Socrates Sculpture Park before submitting their application. Applicants must take into account the site’s rugged, urban outdoor environment and be aware that installations in the Park are subject to final approval by Socrates and League staff and must meet safety requirements to be able to withstand the effects of weather and public use. Additional application instructions are in the full Call for Proposals.

SUPPORT
Folly, a partnership of Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League of New York, is made possible through a generous grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

For more information and to download the full Call for Proposals, visit archleague.org or socratessculpturepark.org.

As Above, So Below | Photo courtesy of Bik Van der Pol

It is not often that one think about emptiness in New York. In a highly dense city, void inevitably raises questions about the production, ownership and use of space. Elements of Composition, a two-part project presented by the Rotterdam-based artist collective Bik Van der Pol, exhorts us to (re-)evaluate these issues. The project was one of nine commissioned artists’ projects about specific regional and historic concerns presented as part of Living as Form, an exhibition and series of public programs organized by Creative Time that explored a vast array of socially engaged art. [See a review of Living as Form on UO here. -Ed.] Elements of Composition was comprised of a public, site-specific installation in two parking lots adjacent to the Essex Street Market, and a series of daily walking tours around the Lower East Side led by urban planners, architects and activists. The walks were meant to help visitors contemplate the history and future of the neighborhood in the context of its built and its vacant spaces.

I attended Bik Van der Pol’s introductory tour and Todd Rouhe’s Common Circular walk. Both activities explored the past, present and future of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) and its surroundings by walking participants through the space. The area covers five plots of land near the Williamsburg Bridge, between Grand and Delancey Streets, acquired by New York as part of a 1965 urban renewal plan to tear down existing tenements and develop low-income housing. In 1967, 1,852 families were displaced with the promise of a new housing development, but the plots have sat empty for 40 years, used only as open-air parking lots, due to lack of investment and a conflict of interests between developers, the city and the community. But this year, CB3 and the City Council approved development guidelines for the site, and preparations are being made for a 9-month environmental assessment process. To help us understand more about the history, future plans and concerns surrounding SPURA, Bik Van der Pol co-founders Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol compiled a booklet of anonymous interviews with developers, anthropologists, local residents and more, which they made available to the general public and which informed their series of walking tours.

Todd Rouhe | Common Circular walk, Elements of Composition | Photo by Lucía Seijo

Architect and local resident Todd Rouhe, during his walk, described “the failure of a housing model,” referencing the 1972 demolition of St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe as a milestone in the public perception of this type of project. He also cited the Kerner Commission report of 1968, which recommended significant investment in affordable housing as one course of action to combat racial inequality and urban violence. SPURA has its origins in this belief. As we walked, the visual impact of its empty lots heightened our awareness of the aftermaths of a failed paradigm, and the consequences of unresolved disagreements between community stakeholders, developers and government representatives. We also considered how a neighborhood recovers when a housing model fails, as Rouhe described the present-day efforts to activate SPURA’s vacant space, welcome back former tenants and create local jobs, made by Manhattan Community Board 3, GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side neighborhood association) and others.

On their walking tour, Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol also spoke about how competing interests can influence the urban void, this time using Bernard Tschumi’s Blue Building as an example. There, emptiness was not perceived as a dearth, but as monetary value – through air rights. From nothingness, a commodity is being created. The Blue building obtained air from its neighbors in order to build higher. As we walked through the high-end condominium, the apparent dissonance with the neighborhood’s aesthetics and spirit confirmed that these transactions are not made to benefit the community. So, we questioned, who is involved when the urban void is used for economic gain?

Terrace of the Blue Building | Photo courtesy of Bik Van der Pol

Framing Elements of Composition was “As Above, So Below,” a text installation painted on the surface of the parking lots, visible from the ground, though most legible from above. The installation aimed to imprint the concerns addressed by this project into the history of the Lower East Side through its documentation in the Google Maps archive. The abstract phrase acted as a visual claim for SPURA. “As Above, So Below,” encourages us to consider all the elements that compose the urban fabric; including the ones that have been erased, are hidden or remain unknown.

The artists of Bik Van der Pol advocate for action at the SPURA site backed by an understanding of its history. During the walking tours, we approached the materiality and immateriality of empty real estate, and the ways in which monetary value and social factors influence developers and city agencies as they determine the spatial distribution of our built environment. It surprised me the little I knew about the processes behind the shaping of neighborhoods. In the spirit of Living as Form (not to mention the recent events of Occupy Wall Street), Elements of Composition made clear that the community needs to be a critical force for pursuing the integrity of the built environment.

As Above, So Below sample letter in SPURA parking lot | Photo courtesy of Bik Van der Pol

Lucía Seijo is an independent contributor to projects that approach the built environment through art. She has collaborated with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Columbia University’s Latin Lab. She is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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.