May 10, 2013
NYCxDESIGN’s 800+ events include a tour of New York’s Battery Park City. Photo: courtesy of NYCxDESIGN
NYCxDESIGN launches today, and if you’re in a tizzy over which of the 800+ events to attend, fear not! We’ve got the ultimate guide to the architecture installations, tours, parties, and talks that you can’t miss—or the ones we’ll be checking out anyway. Click through for our picks!
May 9, 2013
Ah, the Roaring Twenties, that decadent period when people tossed tradition out the window and really started living it up. Opulent parties, smokey jazz clubs, subterranean speakeasies—if only we could have been there! The auto, radio, and movie industries were flourishing; the literary world was on fire; and the fashion industry was going bonkers (what’s more fabulous than a slinky flapper dress?). Architecture was also having a glorious moment. Art Deco emerged as the era’s defining style, characterized by bold geometries and dramatic flourishes. It extended into the 1930s and ’40s and then faded after World War II.
Tomorrow, the latest film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, set in 1922, debuts in theaters. To celebrate, we’ve rounded up 15 magnificent examples of Art Deco design around the globe. Click through to see them all!
(Top): Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Joel Edgerton from the new film, “The Great Gatsby.” (Above) Grand ballroom from the film. Photos: Warner Bros. via Architectural Digest
May 6, 2013
Photo: Christopher Barley
Talk about breaking out of the echo chamber! Design enthusiasts lined up around the block Friday night to hear—and vote on—five amazing ideas to hack New York City as part of our first Pitch the City event, organized with MASNYC. Five architecture teams had 5 minutes to present their transformative visions (and their fancy multimedia slides) before facing our (very tough) jury of designers, city employees, and reporters for some rapid-fire questioning. At the end, the public—who packed the historic Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral—whipped out their phones to choose their favorite project, via text. It was, as one of our friends put it, “sort of like architecture was entering the 21st century.” (Wait till he sees what we have in store for our A+ gala!) And the winner is …
April 29, 2013
IDEAS CITY is almost here! The festival of ideas ideas fest that New York has been waiting for is set to kick off this Wednesday with a two-day conference that will explore this year’s theme: Untapped Capital. A couple of workshops are set to follow on Friday, May 3, before the STREETFEST launches on Saturday. There’s loads to see and attend, so make sure you check out the full list of events at the IDEAS CITY site.
But hold on! May 3 also marks the day of Architizer + MAS’s “Pitching the City” event. Located at the basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Nolita — just a skip and a beat from the New Museum — the event, sponsored by Two Trees, will fill the church’s nave space, where teams of architects will present five ambitious ideas that promise to transform New York City. A jury of esteemed panelists will engage the presenters at the end of the pitching session, commenting on each scheme and inquiring about the feasibility of, say, an underground park or the untapped capital-ness of reprogrammed phone booths.
Today, we get to reveal who exactly these “esteemed individuals” are!. Joining us will be: Nick Denton, Gawker.com; Pat Kiernan, NY1; Roy Kim, Extell; Nazli Parvizi, Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit; Christopher Sharples, SHoP Architects; Megan Sheekey, Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City; Yeohlee Teng, designer. These heavy hitters will greatly contribute to the overall experience, bringing with them their unique knowledge and diverse skill sets to weigh in on each of the pitches.
Hundreds have already RSVP’d, and if you haven’t yet, do so now. The talks begin at 7 PM, so don’t be late!
April 19, 2013
Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park lost the popular New York Aquarium to Coney Island decades ago, but now the Battery Park Conservancy is bringing a touch of the nautical—and the carnivalesque—to the southern tip of Manhattan. Yesterday WXY architecture + design put the finishing touches on the structure of SeaGlass, a new undersea-themed carousel, which will open this fall. “The park hadn’t had cutting-edge design in a long time,” says WXY principal Claire Weisz, so the architects decided to make-over the traditional ponies-on-sticks children’s ride for the 21st century. “We said, What if you could re-conceive a carousel so it was more like an aquarium, more of an underwater ride?” says Weisz. “Instead of trying to replicate it feeling like a horse, you could actually make it feel like you were diving underwater.” Read more!
April 2, 2013
Image: NASA
You probably already guessed it, but New York City really does look like a giant night-light from space. This 400-millimeter satellite photo was taken by the crew aboard the International Space Station on March 23, 2013. Basically, nearly every nook and cranny of the greater New York region is lit up to the nth degree, excepting the city’s various parks and green spaces. (Central Park is that dark thin rectangle near the center of the photo.) That razzmatazz in the middle there is Times Square, home to the biggest and brightest stars on Earth. Maybe.
[via Gizmodo]
March 28, 2013
Easter is just around the corner, and you don’t need to celebrate the holiday to enjoy all the Cadbury Creme Eggs, marshmallow Peeps, and chocolate bunnies currently in season. But there’s one guilt-free Easter tradition that we (gasp!) love even more than candy: That’s the good ole-fashioned Easter Egg Hunt. We’ve gone all over the world and back to find the best, most labyrinthian, and prettiest public parks to hide—or search for—those colorful little treasures. From ancient ruins to futuristic gardens, here are our nine favorite places for an Easter Egg Hunt. Click through to see them all!
March 8, 2013
As many of you know, Chinese artist, dissident, funny guy Ai Weiwei is also a skilled architect. Aside from his famous collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron for the design of the Bird’s Nest at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (and later, the 2012 Serpentine Pavilion), Ai has worked with Basel-based HHF Architects on a series of projects, including this country home in upstate New York. The Tsai Residence, and presumably its accompanying Y-shaped, corten-clad guesthouse, have been put up on the market. Interested? If you are, you have to be prepared to lay down some serious coinage. Continue.
March 7, 2013
Best Creativity: NYC Loop, by FXFOWLE.
When Mayor Bloomberg announced New York City’s Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge last winter, we were excited to see how designers would reimagine these idle relics of last century’s infrastructure into something other than a shading device for smartphone-browsing in sunny weather. From the looks of the finalists, which Bloomberg announced Tuesday, tomorrow’s payphone could have a lot of app-style features, from weather reports and wayfinding to voice and gesture control.
A handful of New York’s roughly 11,000 payphones already serve as wifi hotspots thanks to a pilot program (PDF) launched by the city last summer, so the leap to hyperconnectivity isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem. A few years down the line, we could all be using a shiny new network of payphones to call taxis by voice command, charge our devices, check the weather for our urban farms, and, inevitably, look at ads. The six finalists in five categories—creativity, connectivity, functionality, community impact, and visual design—are now competing for the popular choice prize. Vote for your favorite on Facebook before 5 p.m. EST on March 14, and you could help shape the payphone of the future. Read more!
March 5, 2013
Photo: Iwan Baan
Hey, NYC architects: Do you have an idea that will revolutionize city living? Well, you still have a few days left to submit your scheme for our Pitch the City competition, a collaboration between Architizer and the Municipal Art Society of New York as part of the New Museum’s Ideas City 2013 festival. The winners will get to present their initiatives to a room full of urban enthusiasts, receive critiques from a jury of experts, and be featured on Architizer!
Interested? Send a brief description (250 words max) and four to six low-res images to editorial@architizer.com with the subject line “Pitch the City.” Deadline is THIS FRIDAY, March 8. More info here. Bon chance!
