Results tagged “Renzo Piano”

Pritzker Award-winning architect Renzo Piano told the NY Times he was "totally in agreement" about the New York Times' decision to remove ceramic rods from the building's exteriors. The rods acted as rungs for three climbers to scale the building's exterior; Piano said, "I’m frankly quite worried about this new fashion of going up on buildings. This is what I call an inappropriate use of the building.” He added that the building was "built to be responsive to design after 9/11. The big challenge was to make a building that is not like a fortress, but that is transparent, and open to the city."

After a third person managed to scale up its ladder-like exterior, workers went to work removing a number of the horizontal "rungs" gracing the New York Times Building. The NY Times dutifully reports this decision "represented a reversal for The Times, which had insisted that it would not remove the rods after two men scaled the building on June 5, using the veil of rods as a ladder."

In March it was announced that The Whitney received a generous donation from Leonard A. Lauder (to the tune of $131 million). The donation came with a caveat -- they wouldn't be able to sell their Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue; however, it looks like they received the funding they needed to move forward with a satellite museum in the Meatpacking District.

It's been a busy month for NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. After tackling Jean Nouvel's skyscraper, Renzo Piano's Times building and the West Side Rail Yards designs, today he turns to the feverishly celebrated New Museum, previewed yesterday by Gothamist. Designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Japan-based SANAA, the highly refined seven-story, 174-foot building succeeds, says Ouroussoff, on a "spectacular range of levels: as a hypnotic urban object, as a subtle...

A rendering of Brooklyn's proposed City Tech Tower, designed by Renzo Piano, at Tillary and and Jay Street sent some into speculation mode, especially since its height seemed to be up to 1,000 feet tall. Which would make just about twice the height of the 512-foot tall Williamsburgh Savings Bank, currently the tallest building the Brooklyn. However, the rendering of the building is apparently old. A representative at Forest City Ratner, the development company which...

Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for the NY Times, enjoys working in his employer's new headquarters, he writes today, but the building designed by Renzo Piano falls short of the best skyscrapers in the city. For one, it allegedly harbors a streak of nostalgia, which in the world of architectural discourse amounts to an aesthetic identity crisis. The nostalgia in question is a longing not for neo-Gothic frills and cornices, but for the 1950s era...

Designer Michael Bierut has details over at the Pentagram blog on how he and his team created the recently installed sign at The New York Times Building, the 52-story tower designed by Renzo Piano and FXFowle.

He made his name in London, Paris, Madrid, and Tokyo, and now he's making his mark on New York, too, with four major projects in development. Richard Rogers, one of Britain's handful of architect-knights, has just been awarded the 2007 Pritzker Prize, architecture's top honor.

"Across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal" is becoming the new benchmark in swank office location. Crain's reports that the New York Times Building (pictured right) designed by Renzo Piano and FxFowle has "breathed new life into the formerly moribund area" across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Last night, Streetsblog noticed that the City University of New York had just announced that Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall was appointed Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning, Construction and Management. A few hours later, there were press releases about Weinshall's resignation from the DOT and the Mayor. The Mayor said:

When I became Mayor, the people of New York were already very fortunate to have an innovative thinker like Iris Weinshall leading the Department of Transportation, and I was fortunate that she agreed to stay on and serve for what has now been an extraordinary seven year tenure. Iris tried new ways to solve problems that had plagued New York City for decades, and she worked with local communities to mitigate dangerous conditions, resulting in the lowest pedestrian fatality rate in recorded history and infrastructure changes and improvements in all five boroughs.

Continue reading "DOT Commisioner Heads Out"

The conflicting interests of Columbia University and the West Harlem community continue to spawn new polemics from both sides, as the university inches ahead with its proposed 17-acre, $7 billion expansion. As the land-use contest heats up, so has the quest to find the perfect metaphor. The high-stakes name game begins with the conflicting designations of the territory in question. While Columbia has used the term "Manhattanville" to describe the area, which lies between 125th and 133rd Streets, many community advocates resolutely refer to it as "West Harlem," emphasizing its connection to nearby residential and commercial districts. The Times recently called on Columbia to drop the archaic name and face up to the neighborhood's true character.

Newsweek is reporting that architect Renzo Piano is drawing up plans for a downtown addition abutting the High Line even though the Whitney’s board of trustees hasn’t made a final decision.

The Whitney's third expansion plan in 20 years may be abandoned if it moves its addition to a site at the southern tip of the High Line. The space opened up after the Dia Art Foundation announced last week that it was not building a museum there.

Here is architect Renzo Piano's building website and here's the comphrehensive site for the building; the new building is supposed to be completed next year.

We stopped by the reopening of the Morgan Library yesterday to check out the blockbuster Renzo Piano renovation. The new space looks great-- particularly the entrance on Madison Avenue (between 36th and 37th), and the towering central court, with its glass windows. The old buildings along 36th Street look pretty much the same, but a second story with galleries has been added above the west-facing one. If you go, be sure to go down to the basement level under the central room-- they've added an astoundingly large auditorium that has to be seen to be believed. One of the guards told us they had to blast solid bedrock out for weeks to create the space.

The Javits Center is like the stepchild of the city's development projects: No one really cares - they want flashy architects or scary renderings of what a Jets stadium might look like. But now the Javits Development Corporation has selected an architect to design a new expansion, British architect Richard Rogers. Not only is he knighted, he designed the Centre Pompidou in Paris (with Renzo Piano) and the Millennium Dome in London, making Gothamist wonder if the next James Bond film will film at the Javits expansion! The NY Times reports that Rogers was selected over Rafael Vinoly and Thom Mayne, and the rest of the team will include FX Fowle and A. Epstein: "The current plans for the $1.4 billion project would extend the convention hall to 40th Street from 39th Street, expanding the exhibition space to 1.1 million from 760,000 square feet" - plus develop a hotel nearby, because apparently the car and boat shows aren't doing it for them - they want the trade show business. If the Javits expands, you can bet that more high end strip clubs will open up in the area to cater to the trade show types. And the community was worried about businesses!

Develop Don't Destory Brooklyn will be protesting outside of the New York Times' offices at 1PM today to protest coverage of developer Bruce Ratner. DDDB's claim is that because the Times' coverage of Ratner's plans for downtown Brooklyn has been "misleading" and "inaccurate" because Ratner's company is building the Times' new skyscraper. DDDB wants consistent coverage about the Atlantic Yards project from the Times, and you can read the report here. Hmm, wonder if the Public Editor, Byron Calame, has filed his column for this week. Gothamist wonders if this will inspire a new wave of protests in front of the NY Times Building... perhaps residents of Hoboken or Jersey City will rise to protest Philadelphia being the "sixth borough" or restaurateurs to protest a review.

Developer Bruce Ratner has tapped celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz to photograph the development of the new New York Times building on Eighth Avenue. Why? To attract other tenants for the building. The Post calls the 700,000 square feet available in the building "an entire speculative building," and says the photographs, which will be taken periodically, will be plastered in the area. Could photographs by Annie Leibovitz really attract new tenants? Maybe photographs of cash, but if this becomes a trend, is Larry Silverstein going to hire, oh, Bruce Weber to photograph the the World Trade Center's Freedom Tower?

Upper East Side residents near the Whitney Museum are opposed to the proposed demoliton of townhouses on East 74th Street. The NY Post says that city officials are looking at a petition that suggests that razing the buildings "is irresponsible and unnecessary." The problem: The Whitney does own the buildings, but they are in a landmark district. You'd think that someone on Renzo Piano's team would have checked that out! Anyway, the main complaint from residents is that the nine-story addition is "out of proportion." Read: "We want our views back." After so many years of failed expansion projects, thanks to holdout tenants and funding issues, Gothamist imagines that the Whitney will prevail. At some point.

The NY Times on the announcement and Curbed with the LMDC press release. Learn more about Gehry from this Guggenheim show. And Chicago has lots of Gehry in the heart of the city, with Millennium Park; Chicaogist on Frank Gehry

, a showcase of 25 high-rise buildings designed in the last 10 years. The exhibit takes a look at the evolution of the architectural genre for the 21st century, exploring innovations in structure and program as well as social and urban implications.