April 24, 2013
Tuesday morning in Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYC Parks Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Kevin Jeffrey, Marc Hacker of Rockwell Group, and City Council Member Darlene Mealy joined neighborhood children to unveil the design for the new Imagination Playground at Betsy Head Park. While this may sound like the standard procedure for a new neighborhood recreation area, the event was anything but typical. The Rockwell Group showcased its model for a revolutionary vision in playground design: one that encourages child-directed, unstructured free play. And from the sounds of loud, excited cheers in the front row, we think the kids loved it! Click through to read more.
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February 18, 2013
Left image via Vulture; right image via Curbed
Usually pop-ups are relegated to the tiny and the temporary, like Zaha’s pop-up hair salon or this hammam-turned-library in Bulgaria. But if the ambitious Hudson Yards development continues apace, come 2017 the city may bestow on itself one of its fanciest architectural toys yet: a 150-foot-tall giant glass box outfitted with a hideaway synthetic shell that can glide out and enclose a public plaza.
Like a modern-day Crystal Palace, the 170,000-square-foot Culture Shed—designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Rockwell—will be an insta-venue that can house programming from all over the city, from Fashion Week to large-scale art installations to heretofore-unthinkable collaborations between the city’s artists, musicians, and performers.
“The Culture Shed encourages the city to shed those old definitions of culture,” Justin Davidson writes at Vulture. “It will operate the way the Forum did in Ancient Rome, as a neutral meeting ground where ideas can be incubated and influences exchanged.” Read more!
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November 20, 2012
image © Visualhouse
Midtown Manhattan has long been the site in mind for New York City’s greatest makeover yet, in the form of the Hudson Yards. The project consists of 48 city blocks and 26 acres of greenery stretched between 30th and 43rd streets vertically and spanning across 8th avenue to the West Side Highway. This massive development will include 20,000 housing units, 2 million square feet of retail space, another 3 million square feet in hotel ares, 12 acres of public space, a new public school, a subway extension, and a laundry list of world famous designers behind it all. Some designers who have already signed on include Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, David Rockwell, Elkus Manfredi and Thomas Woltz. Now add a number of developers, city officials, community boards, and pesky zoning laws and Hudson Yards is poised to be either the perfect plan– or perfect storm. Read more.
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July 20, 2012
New York-based architect David Rockwell has been tapped to design an outdoor performance center for the Southampton Center to house cultural activities while the nearby Southampton Parish Art Museum undergoes a multi-year renovation. The pavilion, which can accommodate up to 300 people, will open with a series of theater, film, and live music events next summer, before being converted into an ice skating rink later in the winter.
The design consists of a large cylinder 80-feet in diameter and 35-feet high that’s described by the architects as a “portable and eco-friendly venue”. Composed of steel trusses wrapped in red fabric, the open air structure features an undulating curtain system which can be used to protect the interior space from the elements.
As pavilions go, this one is not the most adventurous, which is fine considering its location and intended use. This is, after all, a structure meant predominantly for a single community, whose members will already know about it and who will be happy to use it no matter what it looks like. In fact, it’s refreshing that the town opted out of any flash and instead, went for something that would simply work.
Images: Rockwell Group
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October 19, 2011
How Good Buildings Happen – David Rockwell from MAS on Vimeo.
Last week, on the Jazz at Lincoln Center stage overlooking Central Park, I moderated a discussion between Charles Renfro and David Rockwell for Municipal Arts Society’s Summit on New York City 2011.
The topic? “How Good Buildings Happen.” Luckily, our discussion wasn’t limited to the brief panel; I had a chance to speak with both architects beforehand and get a richer perspective on their design processes. We decided to document the result of those conversations through video, which I’m happy to showcase here on the blog. I posted Charles’ last week, so check out David’s, above, plus a great highlights reel if you missed the Summit.
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October 14, 2011
Always meet your heroes.
Architizer teamed up with the Municipal Arts Society’s MAS Summit on New York City 2011 to interview Charles Renfro and David Rockwell on “How Good Buildings Happen.” I have known Charles for a few years, but I had never met David. The two of them took time out of their busy schedules of, you know, designing the future of America’s cultural institutions, to speak about how they make good design happen.
Both of their studios are amazing hubs of energy – more like vibrant university studios than the typical staid offices such famous architects normally keep. I had an amazing time talking with Charles and David today at the Summit, at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Here’s a shot of the proceedings:
P.s. Look for David’s interview in a post on Architizer next week!
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October 8, 2010
More on the SOMA Architects renderings for the controversial Park51 cultural center downtown: Arch Record has an interview with firm principal Michel Abboud. Check out a newly published rendering above. [via Architectural Record]
The New Museum announced today its massively-scaled collaborative initiative for May 2011. Festival of Ideas for a New City rounds up New York’s architectural institutions (Storefront for Art & Architecture, C-Lab, The Architectural League, Center for Architecture) and will “will demonstrate the power of the creative community to imagine the city of the future.” [via New Museum]
Where computer geeks and urban studies nerds shall meet: Magnasanti. The Sim City created by Vincent Ocasla, a Filipino architecture student, took four years to complete and maxed out at six million inhabitants, which Ocasla theorizes is the “maximum possible stable population achievable within the game. [via Mammoth]
Italian door manufacturer Lualdi unveiled its first collection of doors designed by U.S.-based architects; Dror, Robert A.M. Stern, and David Rockwell all premiered their iterations at the brand’s New York showroom this week. [via A/N Blog]
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August 25, 2010
Based on an observation by Greene and Greene‘s David Mathias that the Beatles were the Frank Lloyd Wright of music, Architect magazine (@architectmag) roped Architizer (@architizer), Co.Design (@fastcodesign), and a bunch of other Twitter hounds into a game this morning that made us lose track of all other work for at least 45 minutes.
Here’s the deal: compare a musician or band with its architect equivalent. Tweet it, and make sure to tag the post with #architecture and #music if you’re into the whole hashtag thing.
Samples:
1. “Philip Glass : Peter Zumthor (minimalist, polarizing)” Via @Architizer
2. “Zaha Hadid : Diana Ross (Brash, groundbreaking, as famous for their crazy as they are for their work)” Via @thewhereblog
3. “Mozart : David Rockwell (crowd-pleasing spectacle)” Via @architectmag
4. “Hans Zimmer: Frank Gehry (predictable, well loved, unsubtle)” @fastcodesign
5. “Venturi & Scott Brown : Sonny and Cher (quirky couple working within the pop realm)” Via @volume_ctrl
Five more after the break…
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June 25, 2010
Dwell on Design begins today! Architizer will be there for the Design Clinic, where architects will answer questions and offer consultation regarding your plans and design schemes. Additionally, on Saturday at 11:30, our own Kelsey Keith will be featured in the “Design and the Web,” panel. [via dwellondesign.com]
It is official: Diller Scofidio + Renfro are “red-hot!” (or: so hot right now). Now, they have been chosen to design a visual arts center in downtown Berkeley. Toyo Ito was the original designer before the project went underground in 2008; even more interesting is that DS+R are also on the shortlist to design the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s expansion. [via sfgate.com]
If you are reading this, you may be the type that daydreamed of designing your own playground as a wee lad. Now a few lucky architects are actually doing it: Imagination Playground from David Rockwell is a transportable case of blue blocks that younglings can put together themselves on top of a dynamic multi-level space. The set will be sweeping the nation (and the world?) soon. See more photos below. [via New York Magazine]
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June 22, 2010
Haiti’s government has initiated a design/build architectural competition for a residential area outside Port-au-Prince whose land was unaffected by February’s earthquake. The first leg of the competition will feature built prototypes; the second will involve constructing homes in varying styles for 1,000 residents on a 12-acre sugar plantation. [via Architectural Record]
Issuing a “license to fail and fall,” New York has commissioned a bunch of starchitect-designed playgrounds that don’t skimp on the swoops, peaks, and towers of their signature looks: Frank Gehry is designing one for Battery Park and David Rockwell’s iteration — Imagination Playground at Burling Slip — will be inaugurated next month. [via NYMag]
London will look a bit different by the time the 2012 Olympics roll around. The mini construction boom is apparently due to a “shortage of grade-A office space in the city,” though the seven skyscrapers in question (courtesy of everyone from Jean Nouvel to Rafael Vinoly to KPF) will maintain their original plans, designed pre-recession. [via ArchDaily]
It’s sweet that Zaha Hadid was crowned a Unesco Artist for Peace but the organization’s justification is sort of amusing: “A ground-breaking thinker and creator, Ms Hadid’s innovative buildings in Europe, Asia and America have been the centre of passionate debate. She has also designed clothes, furniture and even a three-wheeled automobile called ZCar.” [via Building Design Online]
The legacy of the late Robert Damora, who architectural photos of concrete buildings ranks him with other Modernist influencers like Julius Shulman and Ezra Stoller. [via The Architect's Newspaper]
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