Coming soon(ish) to New York, the “East Side Access”! Set to open in 2019, the $7 billion project is one the greatest infrastructural works currently underway in urban America. Every day for nearly seven years now, giant machines and teams of workers buried deep in the ground excavate tunnels through Manhattan’s bedrock core. These tunnels will house the future trains that will traverse the length of the new Long Island Railroad (LIRR) line, connecting Sunnyside, Queens, to Grand Central Terminal. At peak times, the line will route 24 trains per hour and ferry 162,000 trips in both directions.

At present, 5.6 miles of tunnel have already been dug. The MTA recently posted images of the construction progress, which finds workers toiling away in a giant crater beneath Grand Central. This cavernous space will be home to a large platform that will terminate the line. Click through for all the photos!

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All photos: MTA Flickr

The acqua alta cometh! After several days of hype, Hurricane Sandy is finally expected to swing by New York this afternoon (yikes). How did New Yorkers spend their weekend? By ransacking every food grocery in town, leaving only forlorn loaves of wonderbread and jaundiced rotisserie chickens in their wake. They were in a rush, of course, because they had to make it back home before the MTA shut down all subways and buses yesterday evening at 7 PM. Not long after doing so, MTA employees, obviously proud of their work, snapped these photos of entirely empty transit terminals, in which it seems that even the rats–our greatest commuting companions–are missing. Click through for all the photos.

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As a Queens commuter, I am one of many New Yorkers who consider my weekend plans royally botched by the construction-related shutdowns on the 7 train. But sometimes all it takes to shrug it off (if just for a moment) are photos of what is actually going on beneath our feet as we mumble and grumble or, in my case, blog about New York’s public transportation woes. Spotted on Gothamist this morning were snapshots of Manhattan’s bedrock, bored through by the tunnel that will eventually extend the 7 line to the island’s oft-neglected West Side. Click to see more.

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Spotted today on BLDGBLOG‘s Instagram page is a faux-brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that houses a secret subway exit. The Potemkinesque structure blends in nearly seamlessly with its brick-clad Neo-Georgian neighbors on 58 Joralemon Street, save for its blacked-out windows that mask the emergency stairway and ventilation shafts within. Peering through the keyhole, however, reveals the house’s secret. The emergency exit is just one of many ascending from the train lines passing under the East River to Brooklyn and Brooklyn, says the Brooklyn Eagle. Here, many lines meet before spreading out over the burrough, a spatially confined condition which necessitates numerous points of egress in the event of an emergency. Although the house’s true function isn’t well known outside the neighborhood, the MTA has increased security of the decoy structure for fear that terrorists would force their way in and have access to subway tunnels and ventilation systems. File this under all of the city’s (and BLDGBLOG’s other well-documented) gutterspaces!

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MetroChange from Genevieve Hoffman on Vimeo.

Ever since New York’s MTA fares were hiked up from a tidy $2.00 to $2.25, New Yorkers lamented the escalating expenses of their daily commutes. But perhaps of greater irritation, these famously efficient city dwellers were now forced to salvage Metrocards worth nickels and dimes, cluttering their wallets as they reluctantly became less inclined to litter their used cards all over the city as they please. Of course, many do so anyway.

But soon, there could better way to discard your card, one that will leave you feeling cheerfully philanthropic. MetroChange is a proposal for a kiosk that will allow MTA riders to donate the pesky leftover funds on their Metrocards to charity. NYU students Stephan Boltalin, Genevieve Hoffman, and Paul May have imagined a friendly, easy-to-use machine that invites New Yorkers to swipe their Metrocards, press a button, donate their chump change MTA credits, and feel the love of their own big hearts. A thin metal slot will even take used Metrocards off your hands for recycling, so you won’t have to Frisbee them into the tracks later.

The students behind the project are currently searching for partners to help realize their proposal. One major hurdle is the fact that the credits on Metrocards are already part of the MTA economy, though their value belongs to MTA riders. The proposal hopes that the MTA can either match the value of rogue funds and donate the amount to charity, or that another institution can take on the same endeavor. While there are clearly some kinks that need to be ironed out, these young designers have good reason to hope that this simple device (and adorable logo) will one day channel millions of dollars into charitable causes.

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You may be familiar with the Essex Street Trolley Terminal if you’ve taken any interest in the so-called Low Line project, covered here. Now, perhaps reacting to public interest stirred by the Low Line’s seductive renderings and the sci-fi allure of an underground park, the MTA, which owns the property, has produced a video tour of the subterranean vacancy in an attempt to lure potential investors and design professionals. As tour guide and MTA employee Peter Hine suggests, the space is conducive to all manner of inventive reuse, not the least of which includes an elitist restaurant with views to the paupers riding on the adjacent subway line or, of course, a night club. Never does he mention the idea for a park, as his revenue-driven proposals implicitly deny the plausibility of realizing a public project such as the Low Line. Given that most public parks aren’t the High Line–meaning they generate little to zero profits for the parties involved–it seems sadly unlikely that anything remotely creative or funky as the Low Line will occupy the abandoned Trolley Terminal beneath Delancey Street any time soon.

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A segment of the London Underground map designed by Harry Beck

Earlier this week at the Talk to Me symposium, Sandra Bloodworth outlined how the MTA is finding its way to better urban design. A recent example we’ve seen is the MTA Weekender website, which features a streamlined interactive map designed under the direction of Massimo Vignelli. As we learned from Fast Co. Design, London too has released an online reinterpretation of the London Underground map. But how did our friends across the pond improve upon an already legendary work of graphic design, a map that already sits tight in the “cartographic pantheon?” Click to find out.

Learning a thing or two from the Brits, the MTA adopts a simplified map, shown in part above, for their Weekender website

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Architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG discussing “xtreme communication” with Paola Antonelli

MoMA curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli is listed as one of the most powerful people in the art and design world. And for good reason.

With exhibitions like Talk To Me, currently on show at the MoMA, and frequent appearances in TED talks and other online interviews and lectures, Antonelli has helped push the once insular fields of architecture and design to engage in broader cultural dialogues accessible to all museum-goers. Her current show invites visitors to put on headphones, gaze through 3D glasses, and hunt down QR codes (and tweet about it!) to explore a spectrum of real and imaginary visions for the future.

Talk To Me at the Museum of Modern Art, photo via Inhabitat

But Antonelli is recognized for much more than just her curatorial prowess. With a warm and forthcoming personality that is immediately felt (her charming Italian accent must have something to do with this), Antonelli shows an amazing gift for connecting scholars, professionals and audiences from disparate backgrounds to produce meaningful cross-disciplinary interactions.

Yesterday, Antonelli organized a day-long symposium for the Talk To Me exhibition, rounding up a diverse group of speakers ranging from architect Bjarke Ingels to J-pop sensation Sputniko! and acclaimed Ethiopian-born, Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson. On a rainy October day, everyone cozied up inside the subterranean Roy & Niuta Titus Theater at the MoMA to discuss all things man, machine and design, and Architizer was there to take it all in. Read on.

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If you live in New York, or even if you’re visiting the city, it’s likely that your experience with the subway includes unexpectedly rerouted trains, confusing, text-heavy signs, taped off stations, and other reasons to roll your eyes or let out an expletive. And with so much planned work on the weekends, you might as well stay at home to keep blood pressure low on your days off.

Well, it’s about time we all exclaimed “I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore!” The New York Times Magazine recently enlightened us about the new Weekender website, an elegantly designed digital solution to some of New York’s public transportation woes. Better yet, the story behind the Weekender is a wonderful segment of graphic design history. Click to learn more!

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Woody Allen once said, “You should be thankful that you are miserable because you are very lucky to be miserable.” Allen, or at least, Alvy Singer sees New York as the truest reflection of the human condition, the most fitting environment in which we may confront the sh*tstorm. So, it follows, through somewhat lax logic, that it is best (or, however delusional, heroic) to be miserably living in New York.

If you aren’t particularly cheered by that argument, then these subway pick-me-ups are for you! Street collective TrustoCorp pasted a series of messages over subway stops throughout the city. The sweet nothings (“You look lovely”) were written in Helvetica (the official font of the MTA) while color coded confidence boosters (“Keep it up”) and ironic scrawl (“Lol”) emulate the familiar train line circles. Click through for the funnies!

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