New York: The Latest Architecture and News

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) have designed One Vanderbilt the soon to be tallest contemporary office facility in Midtown Manhattan, at 427 meters in height. The tower’s spire was recently raised and upon its completion, the building will offer a new type of experience in the Grand Central District.

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Robert De Niro’s Wildflower Development Group, with the architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), have revealed first images of their proposal for a 650,000 square foot film, television, and creative studio, in in the Astoria neighborhood of northwest Queens, New York.

Between New York's towering buildings and cramped streets, Atelier Ace developed a project unique to its surroundings. Located in Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood, the Sister City Hotel project included a four-floor extension to an existing 10-storey structure, as well as a complete renovation of the interior space. The interior design draws inspiration from Scandinavian and Japanese architecture, providing visitors with complete tranquility within New York's bustling neighborhood.

In an exclusive interview with ArchDaily, Kelly Sawdon, Chief Brand Officer and Partner at Atelier Ace/Ace Hotel Group describes her take on minimal design and explains the approach and inspiration behind the Sister City Hotel project. 

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New York City now has three buildings by Steven Holl – Higgins Hall Insertion at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (2005), Campbell Sports Center for Columbia University in Upper Manhattan (2013), and Hunters Point Community Library in Long Island City, Queens that will open its doors to the public on September 24th. The event coincides with publishing Holl’s new book Compression with the Library’s abstracted image on its cover; it is the fifth volume of the architect’s written manifesto, 30-years-in-the-making series by Princeton Architectural Press. The new building, the size of the nearby landmarked Pepsi-Cola red neon sign, is a robust concrete parallelogram distinguished by softly outlined multi-story glazed cut-outs. It sits prominently on a new public promenade just feet away from the East River, directly across the United Nations complex in Midtown Manhattan and the southern tip of the Roosevelt Island with its Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park memorial by Louis Kahn. The new building is at once an iconic reference point, visible from Manhattan’s East Side and the ferries, and although it took nine years to finish, its completion is a positive sign of New York’s commitment to public projects being designed by our best architects.

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In Brooklynn New York, ODA created new stacked functions for a school for girls in Crown Heights, in a highly dense urban fabric. Starting with a compact shaped cube, the design of the Beth Rivka School merges the benefits and the creative constraints of a vertical building.

FXCollaborative has designed a church community space and 33 story tower overlooking Central Park in New York City. The project was made for Harlem’s La Hermosa Christian Church, though no developer has signed on for the project yet. The new project would serve the surrounding community and aims to embody and celebrate the neighborhood’s legacy of music and art.

Ste Murray has recently visited Chicago and photographed the famous John Hancock Center on its 50th Anniversary. Completed in 1969, and conceived by architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Khan of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, the building was once the tallest structure in the world outside of New York.

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Located in the meatpacking district, adjacent to the High Line, in New York City, 40 Tenth Avenue, a 10-story office tower designed by Studio Gang is now ready to welcome its first tenants. With a distinctive structural system, the building twists in order not to cast his shadow on the surrounding, responding to the solar angles.

Videos

A new film by Oscilloscope Laboratories and Stephen Wilkes explores photographer Jay Maisel’s move from his iconic six-story bank building he called home for 49 years. The landmark structure at 190 Bowery in the East Village of New York was locally known as The Bank, and considered by many New Yorkers to be abandoned. Wilkes tells the story of Maisel's move and documents the incredible structure that has housed a collection of countless objects for half a century.

Videos

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In New York, activists and professionals have been working for many years to try to save 10 decommissioned tanks, from demolition by putting forward alternative usage of these structures. Partnering with STUDIO V, an architectural firm and landscape architects Ken Smith Workshop, they came up with an inventive proposal that reimagines these industrial relics as a 21st-century park, a novelty in the traditional definition and configuration of public spaces.

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MANIFESTO
Books undisputedly play an unparalleled role in shaping the destinies of both individuals and societies alike and nothing guides man more effectively than books. However, it is a sad reflection that amongst other positive social values the culture of reading has also persistently been declining across the world. Libraries were the ‘cool’ places of our cultural fabric until the modern age. But with the invention of internet and an onslaught of digital revolution, libraries and reading spaces lost their essence and aura. To revive the diminishing reading culture what we immediately need is to re-interpret the image of a reading space and make it look more appealing to the masses.

The inaugural SAH Change Agent Award will be presented to the partners of the New York architecture firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro: Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro and Benjamin Gilmartin, at a reception at the Century Club in midtown Manhattan.