- Description: On a recent trip to St. Louis, we had the opportunity to visit the Gateway Arch. Designed by Eero Saarinen in 1947, the Arch is situated in downtown St. Louis at the edge of the Mississippi River in Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park.
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- Description: We will soon see Broadway completely assimilated into the fabric of Times Square, creating new plazas and endless potential for new and exciting experiential moments. The conversion of Broadway begins a new interpretation of the very nature of Times Square, its identity as a public place, and its function as an iconic and phenomenal destination.
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- Description: Times Square is going through physical and psychological changes. These changes are positive and quite significant to the redefinition of Times Square that began several decades ago. The recent conversion of Broadway for permanent pedestrian use signifies the beginning of a paradigmatic shift in the experience and identity of Times Square.
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- Description: Remnants of past lives are clearly evident in the forms around the Square. Older delineations of property, changes in scale and use are commonplace to the lives of our fathers. Buildings from the past often express to the present viewer a form of naiveté in their manner. They can be bold and seemingly uninhibited in a way that today seems innocent.
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- Description: Amid all the clamor of big banks failing, we see an alternate approach applied to our schools. Throughout the country, school systems are abandoning large schools in favor of smaller ones: sometimes in the name of “charter schools” and sometimes - as we have seen here in New York City – breaking up the once praised larger schools into multiple smaller entities.
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- Description: There are many experiences like these that I have had as architect and parent in the school. By and large, they bring to the forefront the consciousness of the school community and both belonging to and participating with the greater whole. Our design is an essential part of making this happen - by making a strong bond between the firm, the school and the process that is my son’s development a complete experience.
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- Description: On a recent holiday trip to the Yucatan, our twelve-year-old son Ethan learned to ride a bicycle in the ruins of Coba. To some it may seem late in one’s youth to be getting to this point, but due to a set of unrelated circumstances (not the least of which is living in New York City) Ethan's bicycle rite of passage was delayed. However, once he got the hang of it—in less than a half an hour—it was wonderful to see what the empowerment of riding a bike did for him.
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- Description: Madison Square Park looms large in the history of New York City. Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz immortalized the Park and environs at the turn of the century in their work. Steichen’s photographic views of the Flatiron Building and the Park are Iconic of the city. This time in the city’s history was a moment personified by the lives of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, a mythic American Romance that is synonymous with a transformative point in American Art.
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- Description: The Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, CT, became a National Trust for Historic Preservation site three years ago. Since then the Trust’s careful stewardship of the site limits the number of visitors each day to maintain the quiet reserve of this important estate and its rich collection of structures that served as Johnson’s Modernism laboratory for nearly six decades.
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- Description: If God did come to earth last week, he would have found a packed house at the AIA Center for Architecture where the question of the evening was: “are current attitudes towards the environment affecting man’s attitude toward God… or conversely, are man’s changing attitudes toward God affecting our thoughts about nature?” Most importantly for this group, the discussion begged the question: how does all of this affect the architecture of religious spaces?
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- Description: The Yankee Stadium and its new park are just down the street from another public building complex: the Bronx County Hall of Justice. The Hall (or courthouse) opened for business in January 2008, and it was designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects. The building’s exterior is luminous and translucent, made up of glass panels, and the block-long façade is broken up into several parts, moving in and out along 161st Street, with stretches of a zig-zag glass wall that provides a lovely texture along the street.
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- Description: Arriving in Barcelona, we were swept up in the layers and density of its urban form, architectural monuments, artistic genius of art and we should not forget the genius of the food. For in the presentation and quality of their food can be found the essential nature of their culture, a sensibility that permeates to the common place, the ordinary encoded with the depth of history and nuance.
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- Description: As I cross 59th St. on my way to Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center, I am shocked by the ease of walking effortlessly through the middle of Columbus Circle, never once having to break my stride or have to sprint or halt for an interminable amount of time as a result of car congestion. I can remember some twenty-five years ago what it was like to try and traverse the intersection - a torturous experience through a lifeless landscape.
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- Description: It has been almost a year since Duffy Square was transformed from a virtual traffic island into a pulsating public space. During this time it has become apparent how successful the design solution has been in enlivening and revitalizing Times Square. This significant shift can be tracked by the seeds planted in a movement towards a more civic-minded environment amidst the visual spectacle of private enterprise.
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- Description: “Give us light... as much natural light as possible,” has been a common request from my congregational clients ever since I started designing sacred spaces. But today that plea has somewhat changed. Now my clients say, “Give us views of nature; we want to see to see out the landscape.”
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- Description: Recently I was part of a group of city officials who attended a meeting at Yankee Stadium to brainstorm the future plans for the ballpark. Much discussion was given to the current design of the new stadium and the subsequent plans in place to honor its history.
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- Description: By its very nature, as a meandering path growing out of the base of Manhattan, Broadway has been an authentic chronicle of the city’s history from its very beginning. It is a remarkable part of New York’s urban form - that a walking path evolved and integrated itself into the city as a major thoroughfare and morphed into a playful and organic counterpoint to the formalized artificial order of the city grid. As Broadway moves through the city, major open spaces – unique to the density of streets – have developed.
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