Edited by Robert Twombly, W.W. Norton, 2010, 344 pages, $25. Generally speaking, the writings of designers are not as important to understanding their intentions as their actual work. Frederick Law Olmsted’s copious writings are an exception, for two reasons. He was a man of letters before he was a landscape architect. He wrote The Cotton Kingdom, an influential chronicle of his travels as a newspaper correspondent in the ante-bellum South, edited Putnam’s Magazine, an important literary journal, and co-founded The Nation. Moreover, because he was not formally trained in an art or design school, Olmsterd approached park and landscape design
By Anthony Vidler. The Monacelli Press, 2011, 368 pages, $50 Some first impressions about this new collection of old essays by Anthony Vidler are misleading. The title, for instance, The Scenes of the Street, and the city plan on the cover indicate a broad coverage of topics regarding the city. In fact, two thirds of the book is dedicated to Paris and most of that to Paris before the turn of the 20th century. Those essays that do not deal with Paris directly are mostly concerned with theories created by 19th century French male architects, authors, and humanists. Vidler’s texts
October 2011 A critical comparison of up-and-coming online design and decorating magazines. At the time when home ownership seemed as if it could only be a blessing, interior design magazines also grew fat and happy. Then the housing crisis shrunk shelter magazines and, abruptly, big fancy houses seemed there just to taunt us. Long-established print titles disappeared, replaced sometimes in name, or in content, by a bewildering variety of blogs. Today you can have a blog without a print magazine, but not a magazine without a blog'people like both, and advertisers do, too. So a new hybrid has stepped into
Long Island City, Queens FXFOWLE, SHoP Architects, Ismael Leyva Architects Status: Under Construction Image courtesy NYC Economic Development Corporation Similar to many postindustrial districts, Hunters Point is undergoing a remarkable transformation. In the past decade, warehouses and factories in this Long Island City neighborhood have given way to glass towers and waterfront promenades. Now, construction has begun on a multiphase affordable housing complex that eventually will provide thousands of units for low- to middle-income tenants. The 30-acre development, Hunters Point South, is a key component of Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace Plan, an $8.4 billion initiative to build 165,000 affordable housing
Williamsburg, Brooklyn Rafael Vi'oly Architects, Beyer Blinder Belle Status: Searching for additional investors Image courtesy Rafael Vi'oly Architects With its large, bright yellow sign and front-row seat along the East River, the 155-year-old Domino Sugar plant has long served as a symbol of New York City's industrial heritage. But like so many manufacturing facilities here, the plant was shuttered, in 2004, presenting developers a sweet opportunity to acquire waterfront property in the desirable Williamsburg neighborhood. Real estate values here have skyrocketed in the past decade, and condo buildings, galleries, and restaurants are emerging at warp speed. Some luxury residential units
Melrose, South Bronx Grimshaw Architects, Dattner Architects Status: Under Construction Image courtesy Phipps House, Jonathan Rose Companies, Dattner Architects, Grimshaw Architects The notorious South Bronx has come a long way since the 1970s, when burnt-out buildings and drug dealers were common sights. While poverty is still prevalent, the area has seen a flurry of development in the past decade, with a number of residential, commercial, and public projects either finished or under construction. One such project is Via Verde, or the Green Way ' an affordable housing complex rising on a 1.5-acre remediated brownfield in the Melrose neighborhood. Conceived by
Plans for a pyramid-shaped building on Manhattan's West Side are as ambitious as its young architect, Bjarke Ingels, 36, who recently opened a New York City office, the first outside his native Copenhagen.
Meatpacking District, Manhattan Renzo Piano Building Workshop Status: Under Construction Image courtesy Whitney Museum/RPBW Like every Manhattan resident, the Whitney Museum has long griped about the need for more space. In the mid-1980s, the institution unveiled plans for a 10-story Michael Graves'designed addition to its famous Marcel Breuer home, which opened in 1966 on the Upper East Side. The project sparked considerable opposition and was abandoned. Other schemes followed, by Rem Koolhaas and then Renzo Piano, but none stuck. In May 2010, the museum's board voted to build an entirely new facility, by Piano, in Lower Manhattan's Meatpacking District. It
In the decade following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site took many turns while the rest of the city underwent a building boom. Timeline continues on the next page...
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