Modi Research Group / Columbia University | click image to access interactive map

MAPPING ENERGY USE IN THE CITY
In an effort to show the ways in which New York City dwellers consume energy, Vijay Modi, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University, and his student Bianca Howard have generated an interactive map that demonstrates energy consumption throughout the five boroughs at the block level. The map invites its users to explore the differences in energy consumption patterns throughout the city. It’s no surprise that Midtown Manhattan is the biggest consumer in the city that never sleeps. But it is more than a little alarming when Modi explains that Manhattan uses more energy than Kenya, and that the entirety of New York State consumes more than the whole Sub-Saharan region, a statistic that he hopes will change as awareness grows.

STEVEN SIEGEL’S NEW YORK
For more than thirty years, Steven Siegel has photographed and filmed the changing streetscapes of the five boroughs of New York City. The folks at Gothamist have been diligently mining his photo and film archives and interpret his images as documenting a fundamental shift from “from utter destruction to Disneyfication.” Siegel promises to continue recording these changes, and we promise to keep checking out his body of work as it evolves.

Newtown Creek Digester Eggs: The Art of Human Waste | David Leitner from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

FOCUS / FORWARD
For another series of artful and informative perspectives, check out this collection of short documentaries by leading filmmakers, each one spotlighting innovative people and projects addressing a broad range of challenges — a topic and approach near and dear to the Omnibus’ heart. Gary Hustwit — whom we interviewed about his urban design documentary Urbanized — is among the filmmakers, working with Jessica Edwards on a profile of the Delaware County Landfill in Upstate New York, an extremely efficient facility able to divert 70% of incoming waste through recycling and composting and able to convert the landfill gas it captures into enough electricity to power almost 400 homes. And among the projects featured is the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility, a place we’ve been following since we first visited the Nature Walk designed by George Trakas that rings the facility and provides a generous and beautiful public space as well as access to the water.

AS THE MILLIONTREES PROGRAMS EXPANDS, BURDENS GROW
As one of many PlaNYC initiatives, the MillionTrees program’s goal was to plant and care for more than one million trees across New York City in order to enhance the emotional and physical well being of city dwellers and the health of the urban environment that surrounds them. Although over 500,000 trees have now been planted, severe weather conditions and the challenges of ongoing stewardship have constrained the organization’s budget and plans for the program. Although MillionTrees has been successful in planting, the burden of maintenance has suffered from budget cuts. The New York City administration is preparing to plant another 500,000 and it is relying on many volunteers, community residents and neighborhood non-profit groups to help.

ARCHITECTURE ON SCREEN
This Friday and Saturday, the Center for Architecture in partnership with MUSE Film and Television will be screening international productions on architecture extracted from the 2011 Montreal International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA). Be sure to check out these innovative films filled with historical, political and poetic dimensions. For more information about the event, visit the Center for Architecture’s event page.

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

Also this week in the Omnibus roundup: Kimmelman looks at towers in the park; New York goes convention center crazy; Verdant Power gets a green light for the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project; President Obama forsakes infrastructure investment in “An America Built to Last”; the Asian American Writers’ Workshop calls for Creative Nonfiction Fellows; the South Street Seaport Museum reopens; Studio-X hosts a discussion on Roosevelt Island’s pneumatic trash tubes; the DOT calls for public art proposals; and Lead Pencil Studio exhibits in Boston.

“ARCHITECTURE IS NEVER DESTINY”
A viewing of the The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, a documentary by Chad Freidrichs, prompted Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic of The New York Times, to question the limits of architecture’s role in determining the success of failure of a public housing project. The piece once again confirms the writer’s commitment to interrogating the social and urbanistic implications of the built environment. He contrasts the fates of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe project in St. Louis — a complex whose rapid descent from model low-income housing community to a national symbol of urban deprivation and crime led to its demolition in 1972 — with Penn South — an example in Chelsea of the same towers-in-the-park building typology that has, according to the residents Kimmelman interviews, thrived. He notes that part of Penn South’s success has to do with the ways it serves the needs of older residents, which led to its official designation as a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community, or NORC, in 1986 (the nation’s first). Using the phenomenon of NORCs as a lens through which to reconsider towers-in-the-park — a typology maligned in the popular imagination specifically because of examples like Pruitt-Igoe – is an argument that the urban design firm Interboro introduced to Omnibus readers in “NORCs in NYC.” Read that feature again, wander by Penn South or some of the other NORCs in the city, and then go see The Pruitt-Igoe Myth at the IFC Center.

WAIT, HOW MANY CONVENTION CENTERS DOES NEW YORK NEED AGAIN?
If the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe signalled an end to a particular philosophy of urban problem-solving, what would the demolition of the Jacob J. Javits Convention Center on 11th Avenue in Manhattan signify? Especially if Governor Cuomo gets his wish of a replacement venue — intended to be the nation’s largest — at the site of the Aqueduct racetrack in Ozone Park, Queens, a place whose vibrant flea market we visited just before redevelopment plans shut it down for good. Skepticism about the long-term financial viability of a convention center has not dimmed the governor’s enthusiasm for the project. Nor has the new plan changed Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s mind about the need for a second convention center in Willets Point. Critics of both projects cite evidence that this kind of megaproject is rarely the panacea it claims to be, an economic analysis explored in depth in this 2009 article in Next American City.

Power Grid Scenarios | Illustration: Michael Loverich for Urban Omnibus, "East River Power," February 9th, 2009

GREEN LIGHT FOR TIDAL POWER 
The kind of urban infrastructure investment that looks forward rather than looking back is one that capitalizes on New York’s unique assets and seeks to provide viable and affordable energy alternatives. In the hope that tidal power might be the energy source to make that possible, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission awarded Verdant Power Inc. the first license for a tidal energy project for the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project, or RITE. Verdant will use the ten year pilot contract to test the commercial viability of the project as well as the environmental impact on fish and the river’s sediment. In an Urban Omnibus feature from way back in 2009, “East River Power,” we looked at some of the questions that the prospect of tidal power raised for New York City’s waterways, and for the framework of energy generation and distribution. As the first grid-tied system of tidal turbines, RITE will hopefully be a sign of things to come. Read more at Bloomberg and Inhabitat.

AN AMERICA BUILT TO LAST, SORT OF
Infrastructure investment was once a policy priority for President Obama, but was all but absent from his State of the Union Speech this week, entitled, “An America Built to Last.” Gone are the promises of high-speed rail included in his 2011 speech; gone was mention of an urban agenda. The President did cite America’s past endeavors to revitalize its economy during the Great Depression through large-scale building projects like the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, or to knit the nation together through the interstate highway system after World War II. But the larger focus of the address, the point to which he returned again and again, was to try to bridge the chasm between the two parties and redress growing income inequality. Check out more of the coverage at The Atlantic Cities and The Transport Politic.

South Street Seaport Museum | Photo by Andrew Hinderaker via dnainfo.com

EVENTS and TO DOs

OPEN CITY CALL FOR NONFICTION FELLOWS
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is about to start a new year of its Open City project, profiled last year on the Omnibus, for which a competitively selected group of writers documents and reflects on urban change in the three New York Chinatowns. The call for Creative Nonfiction Fellows has just been announced, so if you’re an emerging creative nonfiction writer passionate about New York City neighborhoods, apply today. The application deadline is February 17. Check out the call here.

SOUTH STREET SEAPORT MUSEUM REOPENS
The South Street Seaport Museum is reopening this week after an eight-month hiatus during which the museum was renovated to respond to its expanded scope under the creative direction and management of The Museum of the City of New York, which has thrown its full weight into the project. The re-opened space aims to connect more powerfully with its surrounding neighborhood, avail itself of the top two floors as exhibition space, and make the museum more easily navigable through signage and other measures. Read more of the coverage in The New York Times.

TRASH TUBES OF THE FUTURE
A couple of years ago we spoke to Juliette Spertus about her exhibition Fast Trash, about the Roosevelt Island AVAC (Automated Vacuum Collection System). Since then, she and Benjamin Miller have been studying the feasibility of upgrading Roosevelt Island’s AVAC system and also expanding the system to Manhattan using existing transportation infrastructure. Join them as they discuss their preliminary findings, followed by a discussion on the future of waste disposal in New York City featuring Vishaan Chakrabarti, Claire Weisz, Marcia Byrstryn, Juliette Spertus and Benjamin Miller. Tuesday, February 7, 6:30-8:30pm, at Studio-X. More information available here or here.

URBAN ART CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The New York City DOT has announced its open call for proposals for their pARTners and Barrier Beautification Projects. Both projects seek to create a more livable city with public art. The Barrier Beautification project asks artists to imagine how they would decorate the barriers that have become necessary in our bike friendly city, separating bikers, pedestrians and drivers from one another. For pARTners, the DOT commissions artists to produce site-responsive art in collaboration with community-based organizations for high priority sites owned by the agency. Check out the full call for proposals.

LEAD PENCIL STUDIO HITS BOSTON
Back in April we spoke to Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio about their firm’s work with LIDAR. For our Boston area readers, Lead Pencil Studio will be in Edifice Amiss: Constructing New Perspectives, an exhibition about the constructed world opening January 30th at the Stephen D. Paine Gallery of MassArt. The works in the exhibition reveal the secret lives of the architectural spaces in which we live and work. More information available here.

Lead Pencil Studio in Edifice Amiss

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

MORE STATE OF THE CITY – Wi-Fi and WASTE-TO-ENERGY
In addition to the familiar Mayoral priorities reported in last week’s Omnibus Roundup (the economic potential of building projects, more jabs at the teachers union, etc.), Bloomberg’s speech last week also mentioned some tech initiatives, including partnering “with AT&T to bring Wi-Fi service to a dozen city parks – so even if you’re enjoying a beautiful day, you can still work or study or play ‘Words with Friends.’” And, as Next American City highlights, he also spoke about new sources of renewable energy, claiming New York City will “become one of the first cities in the country to turn wastewater into renewable energy and we’ll explore the possibility of cleanly converting trash into renewable energy.” Read the full text of the address at NYC.gov.

Undercity on MyBlockNYC

MYBLOCKNYC GOES UNDERGROUND
Before the holidays, we spoke with Alex Kalman and Alex Rickard about their video hosting site MyBlockNYC. Now they’re teaming up with Gothamist to bring viewers an exclusive glimpse at the world below ground with the series “Undercity.” The makers of the Undercity films, Steve Duncan and filmmaker Andrew Wonder, have been taking viewers on adventures into the unknown underground world of New York City, and now those adventures will be geographically located, visually correlating the world beneath our streets with the city above. Check out the series at MyBlockNYC and the coverage at Gothamist.

PARKING APP
This week the DOT started testing sensors in 177 parking spaces on both sides of 187th Street in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx. The sensors send information to a smart phone app that tells the user when fewer than two or more than four spaces are available on a given block. So instead of circling the block, searching for the right spot, a driver will know their chances of getting a spot and head towards a block with available space. The app will purportedly save drivers from endless frustration, alleviate traffic in shopping areas and help relieve “pollution associated with those people who are cruising around looking for parking,” according to Janette Sadik-Khan of the DOT. The sensors, bright yellow and about the same diameter as a hockey puck, are being tested over the next three months for how they withstand the weather and street sweepers of New York City streets. If they last the testing period, the city will launch a free app for drivers to try. Read the coverage at the Daily News.

CONGRESS INCENTIVIZES DRIVING TO WORK
For the past two years, commuters taking public transportation and those driving private vehicles have been granted the same pre-tax benefit of up to $230 per month. But starting this year, thanks to Congress, all pre-tax benefits are no longer equal: drivers can now set aside as much as $240 pre-tax per month for commuting costs, while the benefit for commuters taking public transportation has dropped to $125. The change means non-drivers will pay up to $550 more in taxes each year. Read more of the coverage at GOOD or in an editorial from The New York Times.

Manhattan Skyline | Photo by flickr user Marcin Wichary

SKYLINE PEAKS AND TROUGHS
The heights of New York City skyscrapers have long been thought to correspond to the depth of the bedrock beneath them. Conventional wisdom has held that the peaks of the Manhattan skyline, Downtown and Midtown, were situated atop the island’s most solid foundation, and that building high on the spaces in between was too difficult, and thus costly, to be worth the effort. Not so, according to “skyscraper economist” Jason Barr. Taking 173 core samples from the Battery to Central Park South, the study shows no correlation between the likelihood of skyscraper construction and bedrock depth. Read more from Matt Chaban at the Observer.

EVENTS AND TO DOs

Stargazing in Times Square | Courtesy of Ian Cheney

THE CITY DARK AT THE IFC CENTER
Last year we spoke to Ian Cheney about The City Dark, his documentary about the loss of the stars in the night sky to light pollution. The documentary takes a winding journey through the unforeseen repercussions of losing the stars, from Maine and back again. Now, The City Dark is showing at the IFC Center for one week only. More information and show times here.

007 URBAN SONGLINE
How can a space become a musical instrument? And how would one play such an instrument? Answer these questions and many more by visiting 007 Urban Songline at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, a project by Allard van Hoorn that turns Storefront’s iconic façade into an interactive and responsive acoustic device through a network of strings activated by vistors’ bodily movements. Through February 18th, you can play the building yourself, listen to performances the artist has recorded in and with the space, or take part in a series of discussions and events on the relationship between space, sound, tension and materiality. Once you’ve added to the cacophony (or symphony) of New York City, or partaken in the playing of a space, you can revisit Storefront at 5pm to hear the daily concert of the song of the day. You can find more information about the installation here, and prepare for your visit with the “Instructions for 007 Urban Songline” here.

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

Urban Omnibus BlockParty 2012
Tuesday, February 28
A cocktail reception, art auction and benefactors’ dinner to support Urban Omnibus, the Architectural League’s online publication dedicated to defining the culture of citymaking.
Buy tickets here.

Party and Auction
St. Patrick’s Youth Center
268 Mulberry Street
6:30-8:30pm
Tickets start at $40

Benefactors’ Dinner
City Grit
38 Prince Street
8:30-10:30pm
Tickets start at $250
Dinner ticket availability is very limited.

Benefit Committee
Maya Hernandez, co-chair
Peter Mullan, co-chair
Alanna Bailey
Jake Barton
Vishaan Chakrabarti
Alyson Dick
Kim Dowdell
Dana Esposito
Carolyn Gallagher
Robert Hammond
Penny Hardy & Granger Moorhead
Paul Haydon
Andrew Hollweck
Susan Lowance
Elizabeth Lusskin
Deborah Marton
Nadia Meratla
Scott Metzner
Diana Murphy
Patricia Ornst
Neysa Pranger
Paul Proulx
Dana Sandberg
Joe Smith
Margaret Sullivan
Paul Wolf
Karen Wong
Douglas Woodward

Sponsors (list in formation)
Bernsohn & Fetner, LLC
Buro Happold
Denham Wolf
Hunter Roberts Construction Group
James Lima Planning + Development
Robert Kliment and Frances Halsband
Levien & Company
The New York Building Congress
Newmark Knight Frank
Sciame Construction  

Stay tuned for a preview of the items up for auction, coming soon…

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HOLIDAY HIATUS
The holidays are upon us. And while we busy ourselves this week with buying urban-themed gifts for loved ones, we are also planning to take a little extra time in the first days of the new year to do some Omnibus brainstorming, housecleaning, and party-planning. So we will be back in full force on January 9th, just in time to celebrate our third birthday, preview an exciting new line-up of features, forum posts and special projects for 2012, and invite you officially to our second annual benefit party, which will take place on February 28th. Mark your calendars! And don’t forget your pens, pencils or laptops while you’re enjoying some holiday downtime — the deadline for our Unfinished Grid essay competition is just a little over a month away!

Meanwhile, yuletide cheer is once again broadcasting itself on the built environment of New York. Beyond the many iconic Manhattan landmarks and events to choose from — the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, Big Apple Chorus performances by the South Street Seaport tree tonight and tomorrow, ice skating in Bryant Park, the New York Stock Exchange’s own tree — make some time to treat yourself to some of the most festive urban explorations the outer boroughs have to offer, starting with the famous lights of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.

YEAR IN REVIEW
Another staple of the holiday season is the reflection on the year coming to an end through best-of lists and year-in-review recaps, and the architectural and urban affairs press is no exception to this tradition. Over on The Atlantic Cities, Nate Berg lists his top ten examples of long-form urban journalism from the past year. On Grist, Greg Hanscom profiles the year’s major urban trends, from what the census tells us about younger Americans’ preference of cities over suburbs to how Occupy Wall Street might inform politicians in 2012. TIME magazine’s list of the top 10 green buildings of 2011 includes some uplifting examples such as the school in Greensburg, Kansas that was completely destroyed by a tornado in 2007 and rebuilt this year according to the highest sustainability standards. But when 2011 is remembered by future historians, it will be for the range of protest movements which ignited in cities across the world. The New Yorker‘s Elissa Curtis rounds up the year with commentary on twelve poignant images capturing “Twelve Months of Protest.”

A NEW TECH CAMPUS FOR ROOSEVELT ISLAND
On Monday, Mayor Bloomberg announced the winner of the city’s $100 million competition to build an applied sciences and technology campus on Roosevelt Island. After weeks of deliberation and negotiation, Cornell University and Technion Israel Institute of Technology were chosen to build an innovative network of research and lab facilities. The Bloomberg administration labeled this project as a “new land grant,” affirming their belief that this partnership will foster economic growth, develop the city’s research and development sector and attract high-technology entrepreneurship to the metropolitan area. Early projections argue that the Cornell campus will generate over $23 billion in economic activity in the next thirty years and will create over 20,000 jobs. The first phase of the new campus is expected to be constructed by 2017. Read more of the coverage at DNAinfo and Curbed.

STUDENTS TAKE ON PERFORMING ARTS AT GROUND ZERO
While the performing arts center at Ground Zero is seemingly indefinitely paused, students at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning took on the program as a studio problem this past semester. The challenges of the site, even if we ignore the budgetary and political constraints for a moment, are daunting. The students had to take into account the site’s emotional, as well as infrastructural, demands. And their scheme had to accommodate 100,000 square feet of program on 30,000 square feet of land. Check out The New York Times article and accompanying slideshow.

NEWSFLASH: NEW YORKERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THEIR TRANSIT
Google has released its annual year-end Zeitgeist report for 2011. While some of the results are less than surprising (Apple made it to the U.S. top ten twice with the iPhone 5 placing 6th and the iPad2 placing 10th) and some are a little unnerving (how did Ryan Dunn make it to 3rd?), they get more interesting when filtered by region. The top three searches for the New York region are (in descending rank order) MTA, NJ Transit and Hopstop. New Yorkers are seemingly obsessed with transit (as are we). Rounding out the top ten for NYC are the DMV, Con Edison, Hurricane Irene’s Path, the NYCDOE, EZ-Pass, the Brooklyn Public Library and, oddly, the Williamsburg bowling alley Brooklyn Bowl. Read more at Gothamist or explore this year’s Zeitgeist for yourself.

ElectriCity exhibition at the New York Transit Museum

ELECTRICITY: EMPOWERING NEW YORK’S RAILS
The New York Transit Museum has organized a fascinating exhibit that dives into an aspect of the city’s rail system that many of us take for granted: its energy supply. The third rail isn’t just a metaphor for sudden death, it’s part of a complex infrastructure that powers the subway and commuter trains. Designed by Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, the exhibition uses the powering of trains to explain the science of electricity more generally, from generation to distribution. The show is a great destination for kids, and just might inspire a new generation of young people to ask questions about where our energy comes from and to demand alternatives. ElectriCity: Powering New York’s Rails is on view at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn through December 2016. Read more of the coverage at The New York Times.

Macy's department store employee cleaning up piles of debris after the Christmas shopping rush. | via Gothamist

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING, CIRCA 1948
On a lighter note, if you think that the Christmas shopping rush is bad now, take comfort in the knowledge that it has never been good. This week, Gothamist has unearthed some 1948 photos documenting the shopping and its aftermath of the holiday rush at Macy’s.

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

DEADLINE: Wednesday, February 1st, 2012, 5pm. The deadline for this competition has passed.
Click here to download a PDF of this Call for Essays.

DESCRIPTION
How does the Manhattan street grid determine your experience of the city?

How does it affect your understanding of what a city is, what a city does, how you move through a city?

How does it embed itself in defining aspects of daily life in New York City: destinations, neighborhoods, intersections, commutes; where and how we live, work, explore or enjoy the city?

This year, the Commissionersʼ Plan, the framework that established Manhattanʼs famous street grid, celebrates its 200th anniversary. In honor of that event, and in connection with two exhibitions on the history and future of the grid, Urban Omnibus is soliciting essays that reflect on the Manhattan street grid as paradigm, rubric or muse for urban life. A jury of prominent designers, urbanists, writers and thinkers will review submissions. Up to three winning entries will be published on UrbanOmnibus.net and will receive a monetary award ($500 for first place; $250 for up to two second place winners). The essays submitted to this competition may reference either New York Cityʼs speculative futures or its storied past, but in either case, essays should reflect on its contemporary reality. A strong personal voice is encouraged. Essays can range from stories that take Manhattanʼs numbered streets and avenues as points of departure to journalistic descriptions of place-based urban subcultures to theoretical treatises on infrastructure, property or density.

The prize-winning essays selected for publication will complement a pair of exhibitions presented by the Museum of the City of New York and the Architectural League of New York that commemorate the Manhattan grid and explore its evolving legacy. The exhibitsʼ premise is that the grid has been subject to countless adaptations and transformations over the past 200 years and will be subject to more urban innovation in the years to come. The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011, curated by Hilary Ballon, explores the 200 years since the creation of that foundational plan through the lens of the gridʼs enduring impact on land use, real estate and the public realm. The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan, curated by Gregory Wessner, displays eight design proposals – selected from a pool of over 120 submissions from around the world – that project ways “to act on and within the grid to respond to the challenges and opportunities… that New York faces now and into the future.” The essays will contribute personal, reflective and contemporary voices into this conversation about the past, present and future of New York City. Writers interested in submitting work are encouraged to view the exhibitions as they shape their essays.

With this competition, Urban Omnibus seeks to advance its dedication to redefining the culture of citymaking by inviting writers to interpret a system that influences so many aspects of urban life, and yet is rarely considered in evocative or creative non-fiction writing.

AWARD
The jury will select one first-prize essay, whose author will receive an award of $500. Up to two second place winners will receive prizes of $250 each.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Essays should be between 800 and 2000 words. Suggestions of imagery that supports or illustrates each essay are strongly encouraged.

Email submissions as attachments to info@urbanomnibus.net with GRID: ESSAY SUBMISSION as the subject line. Please include your name at the top of the document.

Submissions must be received by 5:00pm on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012.

Questions about this call for essays can be sent to info@urbanomnibus.net.

ELIGIBILITY
Staff and board members of the Architectural League and the Museum of the City of New York are not eligible for this competition.

JURY 
Ken Chen, Executive Director, Asian American Writersʼ Workshop
Sina Najafi, Editor, Cabinet
Michael Sorkin, architect, urban designer, writer
Nicola Twilley, author, Edible Geography and Co-Director, Studio-X New York

Rosalie Genevro, Executive Director, Architectural League
Cassim Shepard, Editor, Urban Omnibus
Varick Shute, Managing Editor, Urban Omnibus
Gregory Wessner, Special Projects Director, Architectural League and curator of The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan

ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS
The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Commissionersʼ Plan of 1811, the foundational document that established Manhattanʼs famous street grid. Featuring an original hand-drawn map of New Yorkʼs planned streets and avenues prepared by the Commission in 1811, as well as other rare historic maps, photographs and prints of the evolution of the cityʼs streets, and original manuscripts and publications that document the cityʼs physical growth, the exhibition examines the gridʼs initial design, implementation, and evolution. The Greatest Grid traces the enduring influence of the 1811 plan as the grid has become a defining feature of the city, shaping its institutions and public life.

The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan: On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Commissionersʼ Plan, the Architectural League, in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York and Architizer, issued an international Call for Ideas, inviting architects and designers from around the world to speculate about how Manhattanʼs grid might be adapted, extended or transformed in the future. How might the grid accommodate growth or make possible new types of buildings; how could it be modified to respond to climate change or new transportation technologies? The Unfinished Grid presents eight proposals, selected by a jury of architects and historians, which offer provocative speculations for the future city. Proposals range from inserting a new north-south avenue, in order to introduce new street-level public spaces, to appropriating intersections as sites for new kinds of development, to envisioning fantastical vertical cities that claim the sky above Manhattan as a new realm for inhabitation. Together the proposals do not describe a literal vision of the future, but suggest the immense possibilities and catalytic power the grid still holds, after two hundred years, for organizing urban life and stimulating the imaginations of architects and urbanists.

Both exhibitions are on view through April 15, 2012 at the Museum of the City of New York.

Left: constructing a public interest design project in Brooklyn | Right: Bryan Bell leading a workshop and presentation

Before Urban Omnibus went live, we co-hosted a weekend-long event that invited teams to design a project in the public interest and build it from found materials in two days. The event was led by Bryan Bell, on the occasion of the launch of his 2008 book Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, which surveys the field of “creative design carried out in the service of the greater public and the greater good.” Bell, founder of Design Corps and co-founder of SEED, has been working towards a better understanding of how design can affect communities and serve the under-served for over twenty years.

His most recent initiative, The Public Interest Design Institute is devoted to educating architects about how to fold public interest design into their practices. Starting next month, the Institute will be hosting two-day training events at universities throughout the country. According to Bell, despite increasing interest from designers, professional schools of architecture have not focussed on equipping students with the unique skills and knowledge relevant to public interest design. Therefore, specific training is urgently needed. With the support of the Surdna Foundation and the Architectural League, the Public Interest Design Institute will hold one of these training sessions at Yale University in January. For more information about the event or to register, click here.

Bell will lead the event with the support of instructors dedicated to public service from around the world, utilizing case studies that adhere to the standards and evaluation metrics set forth by SEED. Participants will earn certification in the SEED process, which means they will learn how public interest design is re-shaping the design profession, how to find new clients embedded within communities, how to identify new fee sources and structures, and how to measure and maximize its positive social, economic and environmental impact on communities.

Public Interest Design Institute at Yale University
January 13, 9am – January 14, 5pm, 2012
New Haven, CT
For more information, click here.

Bryan Bell is the founder of Design Corps, founder of the Public Interest Design Institute, and a co-founder of SEED. Bell has supervised the Structures for Inclusion lecture series for ten years which presents best practices in community-based design. He has published two collections of essays on the topic, Bell has lectured and taught at numerous schools including the Rural Studio with Samuel Mockbee. He has received an AIA National Honor Award in Collaborative Practice. His work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale and the Cooper Hewitt Museum Triennial. He was a Harvard Loeb Fellow in 2010-11 and a co-recipient of the 2011 AIA Latrobe Prize which is focused on public interest design.

screenshot from The City Dark

DARKER CITIES, BRIGHTER STARS
The drive to limit light pollution has taken on increased prominence lately, with specialists across fields stressing its importance. The Atlantic Cities’ Nate Berg last week highlighted this growing movement and how one small town, Homer Glenn, barely 30 miles outside of Chicago, through a simple initiative has become a poster-child for the ease with which the problem can be addressed. The simple use of lower-watt light bulbs with light shields directing the light downward instead of upward can significantly make it easier to observe night skies in an urban setting. Light pollution prevents astronomers from doing their work, disrupts animal migratory patterns and simply disconnects us from our night skies. For more on the effects of light pollution on our environment, society, bodies and psyches, look back at our interview with filmmaker Ian Cheney about his documentary The City Dark.

New REI store in SOHO | via businessinsider.com

REI’S ADAPTIVE REUSE
What happens when you mix green architecture with historic preservation to house a outdoorsy retail chain that just happens to be the nation’s largest consumer cooperative? GreenBuildingsNYC took a tour of REI’s new store in Soho and describes in detail the ways the popular outfitter adaptively reused original features of the historic Puck Building, including the steam-engine flywheels that once powered the printing presses of Puck Magazine, the country’s first successful humor magazine (in publication from 1871 – 1918) and the original tenant of the iconic address at Lafayette between Houston and Mulberry Streets.

TURNING CITIES INTO LIVING ORGANISMS
A while back we looked at the DEP’s comprehensive effort to mitigate the damaging effects of stormwater run-off in Staten Island by adapting the area’s natural wetlands. This week, Fast Company profiles new approaches to stormwater control that combine the kind of low-tech, high-impact methods of the Staten Island Bluebelt with the lastest technological solutions made possible by cloud computing and the “Internet of Things” to create “high performance” infrastructure that can anticipate demand and prepare accordingly — infrastructure that can respond to its surroundings like a living thing.

Architects’ sketch of the Donnell Library | The Library of Congress

DONNELL DEMOLISHED
The Donnell Library has been demolished. It happened with little public fanfare, similarly understated to the building itself. Designed by Edgar I. Williams and Aymar Embury II (the architect of last week’s featured Orchard Beach Pavilion), the Modernist, cusping-on-Brutalist building had lived across the street from MoMA since 1955, overshadowed by its neighbors. The closing of the library space, famous for housing the original Winnie the Pooh dolls, has infuriated neighborhood residents for years, a sentiment that the new plan for the site — a 46-story hotel and condominium building — is unlikely to assuage. Read more about the demolition at Docomomo and find more information about the history of the Donnell Library in this 2009 piece from The New York Times‘ City Room.

2012 TED PRIZE WINNER: THE CITY 2.0
Since its founding in 2005, the TED Prize has traditionally gone to a visionary individual who is granted “one wish to change the world.” This year, the prize is going to an idea: The City 2.0. The $100,000 cash prize will go towards one wish, collaboratively identified by the “many individuals, organizations and companies doing spectacular work” around advocacy for a smarter, fairer, more sustainable city. It’s a decision that some find puzzling, and potentially counterproductive. On Co.Exist, Greg Lindsay points to “a murderer’s row of qualified” individuals who could have received the prize, but, putting that aside, considers some possible directions the collectively-crafted wish could take. Though this reminds us a bit of the year TIME magazine’s person of the year was “you,” we’ll have to wait until February 29, 2012, when the wish is unveiled at the TED Conference, to see the results of this experiment. For now, those who wish to contribute their ideas on behalf of The City 2.0 can write to tedprize@ted.com.

Drawing Hands, 1948 | MC Escher | via arch.columbia.edu

EVENTS and TO DOs

AN EVENING OF PSYCHOMETRIC DRAWING EXPERIMENTS, ARCHITECTURAL NON SEQUITURS, AND FREE ASSOCIATION: Studio-X NYC’s Night School series continues this weekend with a free drawing workshop with Sam Jacob of FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste) and Strange Harvest. An Evening of Psychometric Drawing Experiments, Architectural Non Sequiturs, and Free Association “will explore the potential of drawing to generate and represent the spatially impossible, using techniques derived from police artists, psychiatrists, and parlor games.” Bring your own drawing utensils and sketchbooks, and don’t be shy about your drawing skills, none are required. Saturday, December 10, 6:30-8:30pm at Studio-X NYC, 180 Varick Street, Ste. 1610. RSVP on the Studio-X Facebook page. For more info, visit BLDGBLOG.

THE UNFINISHED GRID: Reminder: Tomorrow, Saturday, December 10th, at 4pm at the Museum of the City of New York, Architectural League Special Projects Director and curator of the current exhibition The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan Gregory Wessner will be moderating a panel discussion about the themes and ideas that emerged from the Call for Ideas that led up to the show. Joining Wessner on the panel will be Amale Andraos, Mark Robbins and Ken Smith. More info here.

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