Articles by Alec Appelbaum

Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch master of urban innovation and principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), has unveiled plans to cap the reinvention of a German waterfront with an aquarium and science center. The project in Hamburg’s new HafenCity district aims to elevate street life while addressing the prospect of rising sea levels. Images courtesy OMA OMA’s design for the Hamburg Science Center calls for a structure composed of 10 modular concrete blocks arranged on a slip to resemble a colossal but motionless wheel—or a life preserver (top). The 253,000-square-foot building will contain 91,500 square feet of aquarium and

Berlin, the capital of Germany, acknowledges the darkest chapters in its history by dispersing Holocaust artifacts amid vestigial Communist buildings and parks. New York City is struggling to remember its own trauma—September 11, 2001—amid new towers and fast-changing neighborhoods downtown. What might these cities say to one another? Photos: Courtesy the Center for Architecture The show 'Berlin-New York Dialogues,' at New York City's Center for Architecture, features images of this bridge in Berlin. Wilk-Salinas Architekten with Thomas Freiwald designed this bridge across the Spree River with a swimming pool in a boat whose planes of sight suggest a river dip;

  Herbert Muschamp   Photo: © Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times/Redux When Herbert Muschamp died on October 2, at the age of 59, it was as though a planet dropped out of our architectural constellation. From his first book in 1974, File Under Architecture, he was a fixture in our sky of thought—and then, suddenly, after a surprisingly short bout with lung cancer, he was no longer there. Whether you loved or hated his musings, you never put his articles in a pile for tomorrow. The pieces were like Herbert himself: penetrating, maddening, insightful, delightful, capricious—sometimes in the same

In counterpoint to last February’s three-venue series of Robert Moses retrospectives, New York City’s design mavens are now revisiting Jane Jacobs, whose writings about urban life came to symbolize the opposite of Moses’ own approach to planning cities. Manhattan’s Municipal Art Society (MAS) is using the late community organizer and theorist as the touchstone for an inquiry into New York City’s current character. Jacobs made her name in the early 1960s by helping organize a grassroots campaign to protect historic buildings and neighborhoods from destruction—most notably Greenwich Village, which lay in the path of an expressway Moses sought to build.

Larry Silverstein announced at a press conference yesterday that his development firm will put out to bid 70 construction packages for three office skyscrapers at the World Trade Center site by November, with foundation and steel work set to begin in January. Representatives from Foster & Partners, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and Maki and Associates were also on hand to present the latest schematic designs for these buildings—the most detailed views yet of what people visiting the site might see when construction finishes in 2012. Image: Courtesy RSHP, Team Macarie, SPI Detailed designs were released yesterday for three office

Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) chairman Gene Kohn has confirmed that his team is designing a new headquarters for JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank at the World Trade Center site—a project that attracted considerable attention in June when the bank announced its intention to build in lower Manhattan—and stresses that despite an early PR setback, his design will satisfy project stakeholders as well as the public. Renderings by Kohn Pedersen Fox, Courtesy Port Authority of New York & New Jersey KPF prepared massing studies for WTC5, an office tower that will house JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank. It proposes to locate the bank’s

Can fixing energy-wasting buildings stave off global instability? Former president Bill Clinton thinks so. In the biggest project his foundation has taken on since securing a supply of cheap generic AIDS drugs for third world countries, Clinton has brokered a $5 billion effort to finance the retrofit of old buildings in 16 cities around the world. The project, which Clinton announced at a climate conference in Manhattan yesterday, creates a financing and labor pool to replace energy-hogging light fixtures, as well as install better building insulation and more efficient HVAC systems. ABN Amro, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS

Freelancers and firm culture No architect would say that avoiding hassles from the IRS over who’s an employee and who’s not will make them sharper at their craft. But whether your firm decides its priority is to train and retain or to run lean and mean says a lot about a firm’s culture internally, as well as what strengths it may offer its clients. Many architects say that leaving employment terms loose can lead to excessively casual attitudes about the quality of the work, since freelancers may not have the same level of commitment that employees do. Tim Love, AIA,