This week, reports the Downtown Express, the Landmarks Preservation Commission recommended that architects incorporate elements of the Battery Maritime Building's original architecture into a proposed plan to renovate and expand the ferry terminal. The Dermot Company seeks to develop a glass boutique hotel (complete with roof lounge) and specialty foods marketplace above the Beaux Arts ferry terminal. The changes at the Battery Maritime Building gives us an inside look at the politics of historic preservation,......

Five days before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, developer Larry Silverstein released yet another round of renderings of the three Greenwich St. towers that will rise along the eastern edge of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. The final designs were unveiled yesterday at 7 World Trade Center. The buildings are scheduled to begin construction in January. The three towers’ new designs, described in a press release as “refined and more detailed......

Governor Spitzer who once called the Freedom Tower a “white elephant” and questioned its economic viability announced his support of the project today in lower Manhattan alongside the Mayor and NJ Governor John Corzine. Spitzer said that after looking into alternatives, he decided that it was best to proceed as planned, citing the strong real estate market. Plus, it's a good photo op. The site’s financials could change. The Associated Press is reporting that......

As the architect Rafael Viñoly sees it, the Freedom Tower is utterly superfluous. This was the concluding thought of his public presentation on January 18, this year's first Third Thursday lecture sponsored by the Downtown Alliance. Rounding out his half-stoic, half-bitter account of the past five years' WTC design proceedings, he plugged the new book, Think New York: A Ground Zero Diary, which chronicles these affairs from the point of view of the novel......

The Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday stalled Aby Rosen and Norman Foster’s proposed glass tower above the 1949 Parke-Bernet building at 980 Madison Avenue. While the commission didn’t formally reject the plan, it did not approve the addition or support a zoning waiver, two requirements for the project to proceed. All but one commissioner said during the public meeting at the Surrogate’s Court building that they could not support the building because of its scale, massing,......

This morning, construction workers will be laying down the first part of a steel retaining wall for three towers at the World Trade Center site. The towers are the ones designed by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki on the east side of the site. The Port Authority is in charge of laying the foundation for the three towers by the end of 2008, and then WTC developer Larry Silverstein will complete the......

Yesterday, there was a sprawling editorial (literally sprawling too - it covered two pages) in the NY Times Week in Review by Tom Wolfe. And in it, he ripped the Landmarks Preservation Commission, most of its commissioners, and Mayors Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg a couple new ones. The essay, The (Naked) City and the Undead, begins with the debate over 980 Madison Avenue and developer Aby Rosen's proposed Norman Foster addition to it. (Which......

Yesterday's Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing over 980 Madison Ave. was a relatively staid affair. On the second floor of the Surrogate's Court building on Chambers Street, Lord Norman Foster told the 150-plus audience that 980 Madison Ave. was about one thing: regeneration. But Foster, wearing a bubblegum pink tie, took it one step further, characterizing the Upper East Side as a neighborhood with "a tradition of radicalism." He compared 980 Madison Ave.'s role, architecturally,......

Well, this wasn't a surprise: An Upper East Side community board committee moved to reject plans for a 30 floor apartment tower at 980 Madison Avenue. The design by Lord Norman Foster, ballyhooed for his addition to the Hearst Building and a design for the World Trade Center, is shorter than the Carlyle Hotel nearby, but the Carlyle's height is less obtrusive due to set backs. Just last week, the NY Times' architecture critic Nicolai......

+ The New York Sun calls the Queens Museum of Art building "fascist" and its redesign renderings "weak." Rare feat. + Norman Foster sets his sights on a neighborhood known for its aversion to "bold contemporary architecture" (rendering, right). No, we don't mean Greenwich Village and we do wonder if this is NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff's way to sway opinion to keep the design in tact. + Speaking of downtown, more than a......

The unveiling of the new buildings - Towers 2, 3, 4 - that will accompany the Freedom Tower at the redeveloped World Trade Center was met with excitement yesterday, proving there's nothing that beautiful computer renderings, a who's who of architects, and a healthy dose of optimism can't do. The NY Times updated its article about the announcement yesterday and also has an article about the pink elephant in the room: How slow progress......

The new designs for the other buildings at the World Trade Center have been released, and forgetting all the other arguments, the computer renderings show a glittering, rather dazzling skyline. And the buildings will be TALL. The NY Times' David Dunlap reports on the new designs and give some analysis of how the buildings would work within the city:The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs this morning for three skyscrapers......

The New York Times compared its occupant to the Sheraton hotel chain and The New Yorker called it a "gorgeous gemlike tower." And, ahem, plenty of others have weighed in. That's right. We're talking about Norman Foster's Hearst Tower at 57th Street and 8th Ave., also New York's first completely green high-rise. As of this week, it's also the new home of O, The Oprah Magazine staffers. Including Editor-in-Chief Amy Gross, whom we saw......

At noon today, Suzanne Vega and Lou Reed will play a free concert at the opening of 7 World Trade Center. As we all know, 7 WTC is the only tower to be rebuilt since 9/11; the plaza already opened this week. The first tenants (the developers of the building - Silverstein Properties) will move in Friday, followed by the architects (Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Richard Rogers) working on the three buildings being......

The National Trust for Historical Preservation released its annual list of America's 11 Most Endangered Places, and one of them is the World Trade Center's Vesey Street Staircase. Before the September 11 attacks, the Vesey Street Staircase was seen and used by the public on a daily basis. Located near the intersection of Vesey and Church streets, it consisted of two granite-clad outdoor flights of stairs and an escalator that led from the World......

It'll be an alley of cray architectural all-stars downtown! After turning over Freedom Tower reins to the Port Authority and getting a pretty sweet deal, given everything, developer Larry Silverstein has annointed British architect (and Sir) Richard Rogers to design Tower 3 and Japanese Pritzker-winner Fumihiko Maki to design Tower 4 at the World Trade Center. Rogers is making a splash in New York lately - he'll be designing the Javits Center expansion, the......

If you ever want to figure out how to get the construction noise in your neighborhood reduced, look around to see if there's a school in the vicinity with a motived PTA. Parents at P.S. 234 in Tribeca are the subject of a NY Times article that highlights how parents were able to convince developers to meet their demands to make sure their kids' reading, writing and 'rithmetic wouldn't be unduly disturbed. They got the......

Opening today at MoMA QNS: Tall Buildings, 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. Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers are some of the architects represented in this exhibit. Many of the buildings featured......

The MTA has revealed a design for the new Fulton Street Transit Center, and it looks incredible. The NY Times has a description of what the new transit center will offer, design wise, with special attention to the centerpiece of the station, a "tapering, conical, 110-foot-tall steel-and-glass dome that would emerge from within a 50-foot-high glass-box pavilion at Broadway and Fulton Street," which will bring light to the subway platforms and walkways. Reporter David Dunlap......

Three Designs for Ground Zero Emerge as Favorites From Edward Wyatt's article: The three plans were created, respectively, by Norman Foster, Daniel Libeskind and Peterson Littenberg Architects. They have garnered the greatest number of favorable comments in an Internet forum sponsored by officials involved in the rebuilding plans, in independent discussions and reviews by civic groups that are closely following the rebuilding, and in responses to a citywide poll conducted by The New York......

Dateline, Hong Kong The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building in Hong Kong looks like it has scaffolding all around it, because of the catwalks that are visible. It was designed by Sir Norman Foster and Partners, who recently submitted a design proposal for the World Trade Center re-design. Featured in the 2001 film Spy Game, it also reminds me of a ship. Photograph by Nicolas Janberg, courtesy Structurae, an international database and gallery of buildings.......