Residents in the heart of Crown Heights are watching Rafael Vinoly's Brooklyn Children's Museum renovation take shape one stud at a time. When we visited the construction site at the northwest corner of Brower Park yesterday, the L-shaped steel frame was up and the concrete floor was firmly set. more ›

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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! more ›

When it was announced that David Childs would be designing the Freedom Tower part of the WTC, with Daniel Libeskind remaining as visionary for the project as a whole, many wondered if this interesting but magnet for ego-colliding collaboration would work. Three months later, some tensions over the design have emerged. As Childs' and Liebeskind's visions differ, Times reporter David Dunlap writes, "Without an agreed-upon aesthetic approach, there can be no detailed drawings. Without drawings, there can be no construction." more ›

The "dream teams" of noted architects working together for prestigious projects is the subject of a Times architecture article. Though Daniel Libeskind, dream team of one, won the World Trade Center competition, apparently teamwork is the new black of the architecture world, as evinced by all the other teams who entered. The Times brings up a 2001 quote from design world "star," Rem Koolhaas: "If I pride myself on one thing, it is a talent to collaborate." But then Kevin Kernon, one of the architects in the United Architects team, says, "Rem talks a lot about collaboration, but at the end of the day he isn't that interested in actually doing it himself." Meow! more ›

We've written about Daniel Liebeskind before, so now it's time to get to know Rafael Vinoly, the architect of the other WTC redesign plan. The L.A. Times profiles him and his work. This photo is of the Tokyo International Forum which he designed in 1989 and finally opened in 1997. More on the WTC redesign process.
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