The Architectural League created the juried lecture series New York Designs to provide a forum for the presentation of innovative and accomplished built work in New York City. The 2009 New York Designs committee, comprised of Craig Konyk, Scott Marble, Linnaea Tillett, Sandra Wheeler, and Barbara Wilks, asked designers to think about and define “public” today; and how they would imagine buildings, landscapes, and urban places that aspire to be for the public.

Update: To view podcasts of the New York Designs 2009 presentations, click here.

THIS YEAR’S WINNERS AND LECTURE DATES ARE:
This program was part of the 2008-09 program calendar. Click here for information about our current season.

Thursday, June 4, 2009
7:00 p.m.

TKTS Booth, Times Square
Perkins Eastman and Choi Ropiha
Presented by Nick Leahy

Triple Bridge Gateway, 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal
PKSB Architects with Leni Schwendinger Light Projects
Presented by Henry Stolzman and Leni Schwendinger

NYC Information Center, Times Square
WXY Architecture and Local Projects
Presented by Claire Weisz and Jake Barton

Thursday, June 11, 2009
7:00 p.m.

Floating Pool, New York City, multiple sites
Jonathan Kirschenfeld Architect
Presented by Jonathan Kirschenfeld

GreenBranches Learning Gardens, Horticultural Society of New York, Queens Library, Whitestone Branch and Brooklyn Public Library, Stone Avenue Branch
Marpillero Pollak Architects
Presented by Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak

Betances Community Center and Boxing Gym, South Bronx
Stephen Yablon Architect
Presented by Stephen Yablon

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Nick Leahy, a principal at Perkins Eastman, and Michael Ludvik, associate at Dewhurst MacFarlane and Partners, the project’s structural engineer and façade design consultant, will discuss the new TKTS Booth, which serves not only the Broadway ticket outlet, but provides a “public amphitheatre” in the center of Times Square. The project is the sculptural centerpiece of a major urban renewal project transforming Father Duffy Square, which was funded through a combination of public and private funds for a client group including the Times Square Alliance, Theatre Development Fund, and the Coalition for Father Duffy. Resulting from a competition organized and managed by the Van Alen Institute in partnership with Theater Development Fund and NYC 2000 / New York City Millennium Committee, the design is based on the competition-winning concept drawing by Choi Ropiha. The complex, all-glass booth—including glass load-bearing walls and 28-feet long glass stringer beams—features a 27-step-high red glass sculptural roof, which encloses a fiberglass shell, housing the ticket office. The booth includes LEDs to illuminate the red glass steps, “creating a shimmering floating carpet of color and light” and a geothermal system with two parts: radiant panels to provide heating and cooling that regulates extremes under the steps; and an air handler for comfort in the booth. Other collaborators include: MEP engineers, Lewis Engineers, formerly Schaefer Lewis Engineers, PC; lighting consultant, Fischer Marantz Stone; glass fabrication design engineering, Haran Glass, with IG Innovation Glass LLP; plaza architect, William Fellows Architects, now part of PKSB Architects PC; landscape architect, Judith Heintz Landscape Architects; preservation architect, Bresnan Architects, PC; construction manager, D. Haller Inc.; civil engineer and geotechnical, DMJM Harris, formerly CTE; glass installation, David Shildiner, Inc., Innovation Glass; booth fabrication, Merrifield Roberts; mechanical subcontractor, Trystate Mechanical Inc.; electrical subcontractor, ASR Electrical Contractors; and pylon fabrication, Lettera Signs.

Henry Stolzman, principal of PKSB Architects and Leni Schwendinger, principal designer of Leni Schwendinger Light Projects will present Triple Bridge Gateway, 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal. The project, commissioned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, transformed a system of vehicular ramps over Ninth Avenue into a “vibrant, glowing infrastructural public art installation.” The project includes a new titanium façade, entry canopy, and commercial space for the Port Authority and a new fritted glass façade for Project Find. New metals, lighting, and color patterns were crafted to “emphasize the vehicular ramps’ I-beam engineered structure.” A chain-link containment system wraps the sides and undersides of each ramp to create a “theatrical scrim – reflecting and defusing light.” A computer-sequenced illumination scheme completes the project, enlivening and transforming the once decaying and grim infrastructure into a year-round public space. The project’s general contractor was Defoe Construction; MEP, Flack + Kurtz (now called WSP Flack+ Kurtz); structural engineer – architectural, Ysrael Seinuk, P.C.; and structural engineer – permanent platform, Hardesty & Hanover LLP.

WXY Architecture and the public space and museum media design firm Local Projects transformed a storefront off of Times Square into the NYC Information Center, a multimedia visitor information center commissioned by NYC and Company, which allows tourists and locals alike to digitally survey and plan customized explorations of New York City. The centerpiece of the “digital portal” in a “public room” is a bank of three large interactive map tables. Visitors create custom guidebooks, which can be emailed, sent via SMS, or printed. Visitors can also see their saved places on a large-scale, Google Earth flythrough. The center also features FAQ screens in ten languages. As Claire Weisz, founding partner of WXY Architecture and Jake Barton, principal of Local Projects will discuss, the NYC Information Center was “envisaged to support a networked but atomized public—from local to international—to connect sociably with what they want: the infinitely customizable local experience [and] the shared reality of walking around town.” The project’s technical collaborators included 3D Laboratory, Videosonic, Gesturetek, and Technical Artistry.
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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Inspired by early 20th century floating bathhouses, The Neptune Foundation commissioned the design and adaptive re-use of a former cargo barge into a floating pool complex. Floating Pool, “a mobile recreation pier” designed by Jonathan Kirschenfeld Architects and to be presented by principal Jonathan Kirschenfeld, provides both a public swimming pool within the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation public pool system and an instant waterfront, creating a public space along New York’s frequently unused waterfront. The facility contains changing rooms, a snack bar and dining area, and children’s spray fountain in addition to the 50-meter seven-lane pool. Shading pavilions flank a raised seating area and frame views to the harbor. The facility is fully lit for evening events. Inaugurally docked off of Brooklyn Heights and now located off Hunts Point in the Bronx, the pool has served over 50,000 visitors in past seasons. The project team included Johann Mordhorst, Nicola Bormann, Andrew Woodrum, Stefan Danicich, Adrian Vasile; the naval architect/MEP engineer, Charles R. Cushing & Co., Inc.; structural engineer, Robert Sillman Associates, P.C.; marine engineer, Mal McLaren Engineering Group; pool consultant, Joel Trace; fire and life safety, Paragon Building Consultants; lighting consultant, Tillett Lighting Design, Inc.; construction manager, Steve Siva; and site construction advisor, F.J. Sciame Construction Co.

The Horticultural Society of New York’s GreenBranches Program – in public-private partnership with the Queens and Brooklyn library systems – constructs and maintains “Learning Gardens” in underutilized outdoor spaces at branch libraries. Partners Linda Pollak and Sandro Marpillero of Marpillero Pollak Architects will discuss their two designs for the Queens Library, Whitestone Branch and Brooklyn Public Library, Stone Avenue Branch. The projects not only created public outdoor programming space for the libraries, but also provided communities with “an active cultural process related to the acquisition of knowledge, including how a space is designed, constructed, and maintained.” The new plantings and gardens facilitate educational workshops, as well as relaxation. In each garden, new fencing and trellises activate the garden borders from unwelcoming barriers to an “active zone of interaction between street and library.”

Commissioned by the New York City Housing Authority, the Betances Community Center and Boxing Gym by Stephen Yablon Architect connects two existing adjacent structures—the lower floor of a housing tower and a one-story basketball gymnasium—into a unified 27,000 square foot community center in a South Bronx NYCHA housing project. Transformed from a tired, brick bunker, the new center is organized around a light-filled interior courtyard, connected “visually and spatially to the street through a wide glass entry.” The design to be presented by Stephen Yablon not only opens itself to the community it serves, but through its illumination and outward orientation provides a welcoming public space along the streetscape. The new 3-story glass-enclosed boxing arena, home of a famed youth boxing program, additionally serves as a symbol of “community pride.” Facilities include adult and child classrooms, a dance studio, art room, computer lab, game room, and a warming kitchen and 200-seat cafeteria. The existing gym was stripped to its structure and re-clad with vandalism-resistant materials that simultaneously evoke a sense of “aggression” – appropriate for a dramatic boxing arena – and in the facility’s newly fresh interior, “welcome.”

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Architectural League programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

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