31 in 31

Here's a wrap-up of my 31 buildings/places in 31 days:

#1 - Phyto Universe

#2 - One Bryant Park

#3 - Pier 62 Carousel

#4 - Bronx River Art Center

#5 - The Pencil Factory

#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing

#7 - 23 Beekman Place

#8 - Metal Shutter Houses

#9 - Bronx Box

#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters

#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park

#12 - One Madison Park

#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant

#14 - Queens West (Stage II)

#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue

#16 - Big Bamb�

#17 - Event Horizon

#18 - Murano

#19 - William Lescaze House

#20 - Morgan Library and Museum

#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation

#22 - Wilf Hall

#23 - Yohji Yamamoto

#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life

#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek

#26 - Longchamps

#27 - 9th Street Residence

#28 - Crocs

#29 - Art et Industrie

#30 - Tartinery Nolita

#31 - Sperone Westwater Gallery

Also see my 31in31 Flickr set.

31 in 31: #31

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.



The Sperone Westwater Gallery, designed Foster + Partners, is nearing completion about a block north of the New Museum. This piece continues the transformation of the Bowery, from Cooper Union down to Chinatown. In the ten or eleven years since I stayed at a hostel on the Bowery the street has seen numerous new buildings as well as restaurants and shops, displacing the old flophouses and mainstays like CBGB's.




I always liked to think of the Bowery as un-gentrifiable, a zone immune to the changes in neighborhing SoHo, NoHo, the Lower East Side, and the East Village. Of course I was wrong, but a nine-story building with a bright red elevator on its facade is probably the last thing I would have expected from the alternative scenario.



Norman Foster's design is the antithesis of the New Museum, which made the Bowery cool for institutions with money to spend on buildings by name-brand architects. SANAA's stacked and shifted white boxes respond to the zoning envelope without making that legal device explicit; Foster's design rises to the maximum street wall and then sets back once. Done.



Granted, the 20-foot-wide lot doesn't give much room for play, so Foster focuses on the skins. Facing the Bowery on the first five floors is an all-glass wall with laminations that allow light and views, but the latter are indistinct, yet not so much that the elevator's workings aren't apparent. One effect of the glass, which lies somewhere between transparent and translucent, is the band of light visible in these photos. It must be an unwritten code that new buildings must have a surface that blinds passersby!





The side walls, facing north and south, are blanketed with black corrugated metal, the panels mimicking -- but oddly not following exactly, in size or spacing -- the glass on the front. The rear facade is similar to the top of the front, with a zipper of clear glass running vertically between what looked to be solid panels (not translucent like the front). Foster's design certainly has a strong presence on the Bowery, but its industrial elegance will pack more of a wallop at night when the glass box is illuminated and the red box glows.

Previously:

#1 - Phyto Universe
#2 - One Bryant Park
#3 - Pier 62 Carousel
#4 - Bronx River Art Center
#5 - The Pencil Factory
#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing
#7 - 23 Beekman Place
#8 - Metal Shutter Houses
#9 - Bronx Box
#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters
#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park
#12 - One Madison Park
#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant
#14 - Queens West (Stage II)
#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue
#16 - Big Bamb�
#17 - Event Horizon
#18 - Murano
#19 - William Lescaze House
#20 - Morgan Library and Museum
#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation
#22 - Wilf Hall
#23 - Yohji Yamamoto
#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life
#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek
#26 - Longchamps
#27 - 9th Street Residence
#28 - Crocs
#29 - Art et Industrie
#30 - Tartinery Nolita

31 in 31: #30

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.



Spotted at The Architect's Newspaper, Tartinery Nolita is a new restaurant located on Mulberry next to Spring Lounge. Designed by SOMA Architects, the facade is marked by deep-set, black-steel fins projecting from the storefront glazing.



These fins -- spaced randomly across the elevation --work to hide and reveal the spaces behind. The shallow bar occupies the northern end (right in photos), and the double-height dining area sits to the south.



The bar-code design is more interesting from across the street than from the adjacent sidewalk (the top image of the archpaper piece testifies to this).



But from directly in front of the restaurant, the double-height dining area attracts the most attention. From the sidewalk the space extends to the cellar; an exposed brick wall behind mesh stands out at the southern end of the restaurant. A small tree also occupies this lower space, rising from the middle of a table.



Previously:

#1 - Phyto Universe
#2 - One Bryant Park
#3 - Pier 62 Carousel
#4 - Bronx River Art Center
#5 - The Pencil Factory
#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing
#7 - 23 Beekman Place
#8 - Metal Shutter Houses
#9 - Bronx Box
#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters
#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park
#12 - One Madison Park
#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant
#14 - Queens West (Stage II)
#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue
#16 - Big Bamb�
#17 - Event Horizon
#18 - Murano
#19 - William Lescaze House
#20 - Morgan Library and Museum
#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation
#22 - Wilf Hall
#23 - Yohji Yamamoto
#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life
#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek
#26 - Longchamps
#27 - 9th Street Residence
#28 - Crocs
#29 - Art et Industrie

31 in 31: #29

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.



Although completed a couple years before 2000, the former Art et Industrie sculpture garden is something I was intrigued about, so I searched it out over the weekend and took a close look at it. Designed by Architecture Research Office (ARO) and located at the corner of Thompson and Broome Streets, the meat of the project is basically two solid-steel fences that follow the corner.



I'm not sure what Art et Industrie displayed in its indoor and outdoor galleries, but the fence is like a piece of Modernist sculpture: well-crafted, simple, and easy to miss.



Painted a dark gray, thin sheets of steel (I'm guessing about 8' by 8') are welded to matching steel H-shape supports which double as deep reveals.



The posts stop a little bit short of the panels, allowing the thinness of the latter to be legible. Visible below, the corner overlap puts the simple construction of the two elements on display.



The adjacent storefront space is empty, and a peek through the space reveals a pleasing garden. But in an area surrounded by mid- and high-rise construction, what is the future of this outdoor space? If I'm reading it right, a recent DOB filing points to an "eating and drinking establishment," something easy to imagine working well here, indoors and out.



Previously:

#1 - Phyto Universe
#2 - One Bryant Park
#3 - Pier 62 Carousel
#4 - Bronx River Art Center
#5 - The Pencil Factory
#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing
#7 - 23 Beekman Place
#8 - Metal Shutter Houses
#9 - Bronx Box
#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters
#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park
#12 - One Madison Park
#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant
#14 - Queens West (Stage II)
#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue
#16 - Big Bamb�
#17 - Event Horizon
#18 - Murano
#19 - William Lescaze House
#20 - Morgan Library and Museum
#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation
#22 - Wilf Hall
#23 - Yohji Yamamoto
#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life
#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek
#26 - Longchamps
#27 - 9th Street Residence
#28 - Crocs

31 in 31: #28

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label.


View Larger Map

For now the above street view shows what architect William J. Rockwell faced in turning a Tennessee Mountain restaurant into a Crocs flagship store, located at Spring and Wooster Streets in SoHo. Alterations to the early 19th-century, many-times-renovated corner house required Landmarks (LPC) approval. When compared with the photo below, taken earlier today, the changes were fairly minimal, occurring on the ground floor.



The three-story garage behind the house was demolished, but then LPC turned down Mitchell's first design which resembled the old garage. Instead they recommended "a modern transitional glass piece," according to The Architect's Newspaper. The new piece has some of the clearest clear glass I've seen lately, making the colorful Crocs shoes/sandals pop, but also the ducts, sprinkler pipes, and other fittings.



This project is a small but nevertheless notable example of LPC's assertion that new buildings should look new, so they are not confused with their historical neighbors. It is a view contested by Steven W. Semes in The Future of the Past; he argues that buildings should find continuity with their historical neighbors in an effort to extend some bits of culture from the past to the present and into the future. He would have fought for Mitchell's initial design, but I find the new glass box pleasing, if conventional. It is certainly a foil to the corner house, but it still could have found some inspiration in this historic building; as is it's like a Crate & Barrel squeezed into the small rear lot, well done but looking like it could exist somewhere else as easily as on this lot in SoHo.



Previously:

#1 - Phyto Universe
#2 - One Bryant Park
#3 - Pier 62 Carousel
#4 - Bronx River Art Center
#5 - The Pencil Factory
#6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing
#7 - 23 Beekman Place
#8 - Metal Shutter Houses
#9 - Bronx Box
#10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters
#11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park
#12 - One Madison Park
#13 - Pio Pio Restaurant
#14 - Queens West (Stage II)
#15 - 785 Eighth Avenue
#16 - Big Bamb�
#17 - Event Horizon
#18 - Murano
#19 - William Lescaze House
#20 - Morgan Library and Museum
#21 - MTA Flood Mitigation
#22 - Wilf Hall
#23 - Yohji Yamamoto
#24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life
#25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek
#26 - Longchamps
#27 - 9th Street Residence