Today’s News - Wednesday, March 27, 2019

EDITOR'S NOTE: Apologies for such a tardy posting. As we explained yesterday, we're in road-warrior mode - and, as we feared, those pesky technology gods have followed us. But better late than never!.

●  Davidson parses Mayor de Blasio's climate plan for NYC: It's "big, ambitious, and pretty vague: But it does make clear what a huge job it will be to keep the ocean out of lower Manhattan. The problem with one big fix - if you don't get it exactly right - then you get it very, very wrong."

●  Neuman & Mays parse the de Blasio $10 billion, rather "Manhattan-centric" plan to protect the city from rising sea-levels by making it bigger. "I question the extent they're considering the impact on the rest of the city," sayeth Nilda Mesa.

●  Sengupta visits Copenhagen, which "wants to show how cities can fight climate change - the path to carbon neutrality is paved with imperfect solutions."

●  Lorinc takes a deep (very deep!) dive into Sidewalk Lab's Quayside plans with a detailed (and fab!) look "inside the great digital mis-engineering of the Toronto waterfront. Sidewalk's ambitious scheme has devolved into a tangled mess."

●  Liu of The Architectural Team explains why, "when it comes to resiliency, Boston can think bigger - the city must move beyond project-by-project responses to rising sea levels" that have "created unintended urban design challenges and problematic building forms."

●  On a brighter (and a bit dryer) note, Google's new home in Austin, Texas, by Pelli Clarke Pelli and STG Design, is "an elegant solution to a pair of challenging development constraints" (a creek included).

●  Miranda takes "a fresh look" at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art: "Isozaki's Pritzker win, along with Biesenbach's tweaks to the architecture, is certain to stir debate about the legacy" of the building, and "comes at a critical time for the museum" - and for Postmodernism.

●  Q&A with landscape architect Joe Karr re: working with Dan Kiley and Harry Weese 50 years ago on Milwaukee's now-under-threat Marcus Center for the Performing Arts: "Things can be saved if people want to."

●  After Furman brought to light that 2019 Serpentine Gallery designer Ishigami doesn't pay interns, the Serpentine insists he "pay all staff working on this year's pavilion" (he will).

●  Buday proposes a binding Architect's Oath that could "restore the public's trust in the profession" - especially after the last few years of "reports of ethical misconduct and moral failing. The perception of architects as virtuous professionals seems tenuous."

●  Just for fun: Diaz delves into Solomon Cordwell Buenz's "terrifying new architectural thrill ride" in Chicago that "will launch thrill seekers 82 stories into the air, at speeds of 16.6 feet per second" - making the 45-year-old Aon Center "an architectural destination in a city full of them."

●  ICYMI: ANN feature: Downtown is for People: We are pleased to present an excerpt from Deborah Talbot's newly released "Who the Hell is Jane Jacobs? And what are her theories all about?"

Hudson Yards, continued (click "Yesterday's News" to see first batch):

●  Lange found one spot on the High Line "where Hudson Yards looks almost all right - like a real city" - but up close, "the problem of the design is that there is no contrast. No weirdness, no wildness - this is what you get when you let a private developer make a neighborhood" (+ "The ultimate guide to Hudson Yards").

●  Hewitt considers "Hudson Yards' failed urban forms," and ponders why "global cities keep recycling the same stale formulas. Any socially progressive architect or urbanist will lament the loss of civic polity that has allowed developments like this to proliferate" (despite the starchitects on "the list of advertised geniuses participating").

●  Shaw can barely bring himself to even call it "Hudson Yards": "Welcome to Little Dubai. There are several similarities to Dubai - new spectacles will bring in tourists en masse, possibly so much that this area will be like a cleaner and even less exciting Times Square."

●  Schwartz calls Hudson Yards "the Hotel California of New York. At first, the unremitting artificiality of the place seems merely novel. The only thing it is missing is its own weather" (and the Vessel is "a triumph of vapidity, banal to its hollow core," but "maybe some public good will come of the Shed").

●  Kussin, on the other hand, has a fine time, and explains "why the Vessel is $200M worth of glistening glory," Snark Park is "an exercise in creativity," and high praise for eateries.

Winners all:

●  Great profiles of the "50 influential architects from the Middle East 2019" (9 women among them - it's a start).

●  Great profiles of the architecture firms among Fast Company 50 Most Innovative Companies 2019.

●  Great profiles of the design firms and companies among Fast Company 50 Most Innovative Companies 2019.

●  Brussat cheers "Daum's lovely domed chapel" winning a Bulfinch Award: "In spite of the Boch Chapel's private location, it is in its language public to the core. Honesty and directness shine forth."

●  Winners of the ASID's inaugural Outcome of Design Awards "set a new bar for design research, practice, and evaluation by the diverse typologies and the variety of research and evaluation methodologies."

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To subscribe to the free daily newsletter click here Justin Davidson: The De Blasio Climate Plan Is Big, Ambitious, and Pretty Vague: But it does make clear what a huge job it will be to keep the ocean out of lower Manhattan: It’s a combination of makeshift barriers and megaprojects...and even a new chunk of the city slung out into the East River...The prospect of creating new acreage...could quickly turn an environmental tool into a real estate boondoggle, raising the specter of an offshore Hudson Yards...New York has been adding to its real estate for hundreds of years, so another round of expansion seems an oddly archaic way of tackling a new problem...The problem with one big fix...If you don’t get it exactly right...then you get it very, very wrong. -- BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group; AECOM; Kate Orff/SCAPE- New York Magazine William Neuman & Jeffery C. Mays: Climate Change: How Can Manhattan be Protected? Make It Bigger: Mayor de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to build a huge berm at the bottom of Manhattan to protect the financial district from rising sea levels...The climate proposal, although couched in planet-saving terms, was largely a variation of earlier plans...he did not know what would go on the new land...He called his plan “audacious"..."I question the extent they’re considering the impact on the rest of the city,” said Nilda Mesa...too “Manhattan-centric.”- New York Times Somini Sengupta: Copenhagen Wants to Show How Cities Can Fight Climate Change: The Danish capital wants to be carbon neutral six years from now. Its plan involves wind, recycling and a very innovative ski hill: ...can show what’s possible, and what’s tough, for other urban governments on a warming planet...The city has already cut its emissions by 42% from 2005 levels...faces a hurdle...a divide between the interests of people who live in cities and those who live outside...the path to carbon neutrality is paved with imperfect solutions. -- BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group- New York Times John Lorinc: A Mess on the Sidewalk: Inside the great digital mis-engineering of the Toronto waterfront: When Sidewalk Labs...made its Toronto debut...a torrent of global adulation followed...Google’s heavily hyped expression of interest showcased the city’s aspirations and promise. What that promise is, exactly, remains difficult to discern...Quayside would...become a test bed for high-tech infrastructure...the seduction of a massive infusion of cash and digital technology to propel an industrial moonscape to the vanguard of digital urbanism has been intoxicating...though it may seem like an affront to basic urban virtues...Sidewalk’s ambitious scheme...has devolved into a tangled mess. -- Dan Doctoroff; Ken Greenberg; Waterfront Toronto- The Baffler Michael E. Liu: When it Comes to Resiliency, Boston Can Think Bigger: Liu [of] The Architectural Team, believes the city must move beyond project-by-project responses to rising sea levels: ...it is imperative to change business as usual...this building-by-building response has created unintended urban design challenges and problematic building forms...individual responses must be regarded as stopgap measures until universal solutions can be implemented to protect the neighborhoods and communities within which these newer, resilient projects have been constructed.- Metropolis Magazine Google’s New Home at Block 185 is Downtown Austin’s Next Signature Tower: Austin’s received more than its fair share of compelling towers in the last few years...but this might be the single most impressive skyscraper design we’ve seen in the city since the debut of the Frost Bank Tower [by Duda/Paine Architects, 2004]...pyramidal shape...an elegant solution to a pair of challenging development constraints...Along with accommodating Shoal Creek...the new building must play nice...with the district’s eye-catching Butterfly Bridge. -- Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects; STG Design; Campbell Landscape Architecture [images]- Austin Towers (Texas) Carolina A. Miranda: Now that Arata Isozaki won the Pritzker, let's take a fresh look at his MOCA building: Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art director Klaus Biesenbach...recently did away with a program...that wrapped the structure’s facade in images of art. (A practice that only served to obscure the building’s profile.)...Isozaki’s Pritzker win, along with Biesenbach’s tweaks to the architecture, is certain to stir debate about the legacy of a building...comes at a critical time for the museum...also for Postmodernism...MOCA Grand offers an interesting case study in Postmodernism...serves as a somewhat curious architectural anomaly...A little bit of wry Postmodernism in a buttoned-up late Modern complex.- Los Angeles Times The Thinking Behind the Marcus Center’s Famous Chestnut Grove: Q&A with landscape architect Joe Karr recalls working on the design with Dan Kiley and Harry Weese 50 years ago: ...the PAC is now the subject of debate regarding its historic value and proposed renovations, including demolition of the plaza and grove..."Dan and Harry were closely related in how they thought about design...There was a flow between them, so you could never really be sure who suggested specific aspects of a design...Things can be saved if people want to."- Milwaukee Magazine Serpentine Gallery tells Junya Ishigami to pay all staff working on this year's pavilion: ...has agreed to pay all staff working on his design for the Serpentine Pavilion, following a row over unpaid internships at his studio...Adam Nathaniel Furman first brought the issue to light as part of his Instagram #archislavery campaign against the culture of unpaid internships in architecture.- Dezeen Richard Buday: An Architect’s Oath: Why a Pledge May Restore the Public’s Trust in the Profession: What values should drive the commitments society expects practicing architects to make? The past few years have seen numerous media reports of ethical misconduct and moral failing...The perception of architects as virtuous professionals...seems tenuous...After graduation, an architect’s ethics knowledge is perfunctorily tested during a state licensing exam. And that’s it...pretty much black-and-white...Unaddressed is how to handle the mostly gray areas of ethical dilemmas architects confront in practice...Could architecture’s latest identity crisis be relieved by enacting a professional oath? Perhaps...Metrics matter. A public gauge can encourage public trust. -- Archimage- Common Edge Jesus Diaz: Chicago is getting a terrifying new architectural thrill ride: Architects at Solomon Cordwell Buenz will attach a glass elevator to the side of the 45-year-old Aon Center skyscraper: ...will launch thrill seekers 82 stories into the air, at speeds of 16.6 feet per second...new Aon Center Observatory, a public observation area that will offer a 360-degree panorama of the entire city...clearly seeks to transform the building into an architectural destination in a city full of them -- Edward Durell Stone; Perkins+Will (1970s)- Fast Company Alexandra Lange: At Hudson Yards, the future isn’t now: The $25 billion megaproject bills itself as a “future city” - but it’s more of the same: There is a spot, walking north on the High Line...where [it] looks almost all right...There’s a hint of variety...It looks like a real city...The problem of the design...is that there is no contrast. No weirdness, no wildness, nothing off book...built by an all-star team of designers, but in the end, it’s impossible to tell the difference between the corporate and the artistic...the art...is as hard and shiny as the architecture...this is what you get when you let a private developer make a neighborhood.... -- Nelson Byrd Woltz; Eugene Kohn/KPF; David Childs/SOM; Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Rockwell Group; Heatherwick Studio [+ "The ultimate guide to Hudson Yards"]- Curbed New York Mark Alan Hewitt: Malls, Talls, and Pseudo-Culture Halls: Hudson Yards’ Failed Urban Forms: Why do global cities keep recycling the same stale formulas? Any socially progressive architect or urbanist will lament the loss of civic polity that has allowed developments like [this] to proliferate in global cities...It is unlikely that partners in the...venture considered the potential uses of either the Shed or the Vessel before commissioning haute-couture designers to produce these baubles. The brand is what mattered to them - both their own and that of the “Starchitects” they added to the list of advertised geniuses participating... -- SOM; HOK; AEC; OMA; KPF; Diller, Scofidio & Renfro; Santiago Calatrava; Robert A.M. Stern; Frank Gehry- Common Edge Matt Shaw: Welcome to Little Dubai, New York City’s newest neighborhood: ...the food options are just part of the bigger picture, dovetailing with the urbanism to expose the ugliness of 21st-century development culture...As much as Little Dubai’s food selections should shock us, so should the art and architecture...There are several similarities to Dubai at Hudson Yards...new spectacles will bring in tourists en masse, possibly so much that this area will be like a cleaner and even less exciting Times Square. -- KPF; Thomas Heatherwick- The Architect's Newspaper Alexandra Schwartz: Hudson Yards Is the Hotel California of New York: The $25 billion development is designed so that its residents never have to leave. Yes, the rest of us can visit, but why would we? At first, the unremitting artificiality of the place seems merely novel...[It] is built to impress, and, by some criteria, it does...The only thing that [HY] is missing is its own weather...there’s not much that can’t be found elsewhere...feels like is a nice airport terminal, with the High Line as its moving walkway...[Vessel] a triumph of vapidity, banal to its hollow core. -- Thomas Heatherwick; Kohn Pedersen Fox; Elkus Manfredi- New Yorker Zachary Kussin: Why the Hudson Yards Vessel is $200M worth of glistening glory: ...a giant work of art unlike anything we’ve seen in the city...Welcome to Snark Park, an immersive exhibition that’s an exercise in creativity...Grab a bite...Too many calories? Just book a climb, or two, on Vessel to get the heart beating. -- Thomas Heatherwick/Heatherwick Studio; Snarkitecture- New York Post 50 influential architects from the Middle East 2019- Middle East Architect Fast Company 50 Most Innovative Companies 2019: Architecture: Snøhetta; Olson Kundig; HOK; Mikyoung Kim Design; Studio Gang; Gensler; Ross Barney Architects; WXY Architecture + Urban Design; CannonDesign; Skender- Fast Company Fast Company 50 Most Innovative Companies 2019: Design: Ammunition; WeTransfer; Space10; Studio O+A; Bolt Threads; Work & Co; InVision; Dyson; Capital One; Ressence- Fast Company David Brussat: Daum’s lovely domed chapel: The elegant classical chapel designed by...Eric Inman Daum, Architect, earned a Bulfinch Award in the ecclesiastic category, and deservedly so....Boch Chapel and Mausoleum, in Norwood, Mass...the firm of Foster Reeve won a Bulfinch in the artisanship/craftsmanship category...In spite of its private location, the chapel is in its language public to the core. It is in the Greek-Revival style...Honesty and directness shine forth.- Architecture Here and There Announcing the Winners of the ASID’s [First] Outcome of Design Awards! The winners...set a new bar for design research, practice, and evaluation: ...another platform to recognize designers’ strategic work, rigorous evaluation, and groundbreaking research...In reviewing the 27 entries, we were heartened by the diverse typologies [and] the variety of research and evaluation methodologies. -- Studio IDS/Perkins+Will; Cannon Design/EDA Architecture; Gensler; Joan Blumenfeld/Robert Krone; Ashley McGraw Architects- Metropolis Magazine ANN feature: Deborah Talbot: Downtown is for People: An excerpt from Talbot's "Who the Hell is Jane Jacobs? And what are her theories all about?"- ArchNewsNow.com

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