New York: The Latest Architecture and News

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Neighboring Grand Central Station, Company’s office building at 335 Madison Avenue has one of the most coveted locations in midtown Manhattan. Charged with completely renovating the building’s atrium and office floors, the local New York firm SHoP Architects has unveiled a set of interior renders that show their plans for the commuter-friendly office space.

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Artfully dancing together to the beat of their own drum, the familiar look of the New York skyline has now been broken up by an eye-catching pair of skyscrapers on the banks of the East River. The dual copper-clad residential towers are reminiscent of a couple dancing, leaning back slightly and linked together by a bridge with a metallic reflecting finish half-way up the tower. The glass for the 100-meter-high skybridge for this extraordinary project was created by the Swiss specialists Glas Trösch which developed a complex, double-insulating glass with an internally laminated, metallic web to give a glossy finish.

The design of the American Copper Buildings overcame the challenges posed by development and zoning plans, which helped to determine the layout and architectural volumes. This makes the end result all the more impressive: New York firm SHoP Architects has created a distinctive building complex for developer JDS that stands out both in its material choice and shape—even in a city as architecturally distinctive as New York. The central design element is the Skybridge, which goes beyond a purely aesthetic function as it links the utilities of both towers and is integrated into the structure’s static design.

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Getting around a city of millions is a miracle of design, engineering and cooperation. In conversation, on foot, by bus, train, bike and ferry, Van Alen’s weeklong Spring Festival this June invites participants to experience and consider the present and future of urban mobility.

When we think of public housing architecture in the United States, we often think of boxes: big, brick buildings without much aesthetic character. But the implications of standardized, florescent-lit high-rises can be far more than aesthetic for the people who live there. Geographer Rashad Shabazz, for one, recalls in his book Spatializing Blackness how the housing project in Chicago where he grew up—replete with chain link fencing, video surveillance, and metal detectors—felt more like a prison than a home. Accounts of isolation, confinement, and poor maintenance are echoed by public housing residents nationwide.

But American public housing doesn’t have to be desolate. A new set of design standards from the New York City Public Design Commission (PDC)—in collaboration with The Fine Arts Federation of New York and the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter—hopes to turn over a new leaf in affordable housing architecture.

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Have you ever dreamed of crossing from Midtown Manhattan to Brooklyn in just a few leisurely steps? These lofty ambitions are made possible on the New York City Carpet from South African studio Shift Perspective. Not literally though, unfortunately.

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