What's better than hanging out with bums & hipsters in the LES

...Hanging out UNDER bums and hipsters in the LES!

Hipsters above the Low-Line are contemplating opening an American Apparel Underground

Few facts: 

• An architect, a money manager and an executive (not the beginning of white-collar joke) created the master plan calling it the "Delancey Underground"; however writers and bloggers are dubbing it the "Low-Line"
• Fiber Optic cables are being used to simulate natural sunlight. "Come on guys, It's just like being outside!"
• MTA will not contribute funds to the project, because DUH I mean, HELLO they are bankrupt, or so they say!
• Community Board 3 will give the trio of innovators a piece of their mind. Community board 3 is defined by 14th street, the Bowery, the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge! 

Crusty's are staying above; they rather pollute Tompkin's Square Park- where they rule over the real bums! 

Escola Primaria-Portuguese Architecture

When I was in Portugal on business last month, I was lucky enough to have a lunch in the countryside. Located approximately 140 Km away from Lisbon, an old school house is running successfully as a restaurant offering many traditional Portuguese meals and local wines. As I sat inside the restaurant, I noticed the interesting arches that span the length of the dining room. Later in NYC, I searched on google to find the meaning behind the asymmetric arches. I found images of the school house abandoned.

In the 1940s , the New State of the Centennial Plan launched a program of school construction in mass that was intended to allow all children to have a Portuguese school at your fingertips, enabling you to increase the level of public education. Schools Plan of centenarians were built according to models typified adapted to local conditions, which allied with the feature traditional Portuguese architecture. Until the 1960s , were built more than 7000 of these schools, going to be at least one in almost all parts of the country, what became a trademark of Portugal.

The photos above were taken while I was at the Escola Primaria restaurant somewhere between Grandola and Santiago do Cacem.

Lunch time stroll through Midtown

There's a giant head on exhibit in Madison Square Park. I  watched as a few artists painted their own interpretations of the extra large white head by Spanish Sculptor Jaume Plensa. 

The Van Alen Book Store on 22nd Street designed by LOT-EK. To be honest, I have never heard of this firm until now. Their website sort of looks like the bookstore with its NEON YELLOW font type. I do appreciate this innovative idea of making stadium style seating with multiple doors suspended by steel cables. I would probably linger in this store a lot longer than I would linger near the giant head in Madison Square Park. 

My final stop on my lunchtime stroll is Limelight market.  This old church was renovated into a mini-mall, Ya'll! A mini-mall! 

The reason for my lunchtime stroll: Grimaldi's Pizza (located in Limelight). 

Hate it or Love it?

New Dream Hotel, Chelsea, NYC

I was walking over to Prince Lumber this morning and passed the new Dream Downtown Hotel which abuts the Maritime Hotel. I spent a few minutes googling "new addition to Maritime", but couldn't find any info. After reading a curbed article, I realized it is not a new structure at all. The new skin was added by hotelier Vikram Chatwal and the structure is being converted into a hip hotel. It's kinda close to another hip hotel! So do you hate it or love it?

Dream Hotel and Maritime Hotel, by Albert Ledner

Friend's Projects: Historical Museum in Manhattan

On a friday evening in Lower Manhattan, my good friends, also architects, and I gather in a small, crowded wine bar and ask each other "How's work?" Sometimes the answers are the same "Ah, good, nothing new"; sometimes the answers are more colorful with stories about demanding clients or peculiar engineers or even overly ambitious interior designers. But it seems that like-minded architects love to share stories of our frustrations, but after the project is over, we can boast about our accomplishments "I helped to build that building. That building on this street, in one of America's most amazing cities, and there it will remain for eternity" (okay maybe not eternity but you get the point).


I guess its true that "Bird's of a feather flock together". Of all my friends, over half are architects & designers. That's why I decided to post some of their current projects and achievements. As architects, sometimes we are only exposed to the great new projects, the "bank of america LEED" buildings or the ultra modern homes build on stark naked landscapes by some swedish firm whose name I cannot pronounce. But what about projects happening all around us. The projects that help build the fabric of an urban landscape. These projects matter too. 


Project Description: NY Museum with Landmark Status recognized by City and State, (also built on landmark site on landmark block). 
Location: Manhattan

KP: What are some the challenges you have experienced working with a building built in 1850?  
BA: Actually it’s more like 1900, but who’s counting?  I think the biggest challenges with it by far are integrating state-of-the-art building systems with a building designed when these things hadn’t even been conceived of yet.  I mean, the only air-conditioning technology they had when it was built were windows and fireplace, which means there is absolutely NO place to hide anything.  It makes you appreciate just how much of a seemingly clean, simple interior relies on generous service space and hollow walls.  Another challenge is that what updating has gone on over the last 100 years has been piece-meal and pretty slap-dash, so you find things like a fire extinguisher cabinet put in in the 60s that is supporting a 20’ terra cotta wall – a structural fire extinguisher.

KP: Has the community been mostly "in favor" of the changes to the Landmarked building?
BA: I think so.  There are always going to be a lot of squeaky wheels in the city, but those familiar with the accurate details of the project and supportive.
KP: What has been the strangest things you have encountered working on site?
BA: Well, there was the structural fire extinguisher… I don’t know if it’s strange, but the coolest thing was the scraps of newspaper from 1900 I found while crawling around above a plaster ceiling.  Every time we open up a wall that has not been opened in a while, there’s weird things architecturally, details that haven’t been used in years.

KP: Many designers travel to quarries or manufacturing sites for tests, Have you traveled much working on this project?
BA: Just to the metal fabricator’s workshop, as there’s extensive metal work on the job, and lots of restoration pieces.  The contractor looked at farming out some of the metal work to China, which might have meant a trip to Beijing.  Oh, and I may get to go to Toronto to see this really cool sculptural ceiling we’re having cast out of plaster.

KP: How would you compare working on a museum with other projects? What amount of detail is given in preserving the originate materials?
BA: Well the museum aspect is one thing.  There’s a tremendous amount of environmental and lighting technology, and you have to be clever with everything so that it’s not noticeable – you want a clean white box and you want to control what people notice, which is not the thermostat.  Then there’s the preservation aspect with elements we are keeping or integrating into our intervention.  You learn little facts about old materials and how to treat them.  I’ve probably learned the most about metal and how it ages.

KP: What person or experience has given you the most insight or knowledge that you can away from this project?
BA: It’s a hodge-podge, every tradesman has taught me a little something about something.  The associate I’m working with has a lot of experience with dealing with a job – the construction and politics of it.  I guess the biggest insight is that no matter how bad the “Oh crap” moment you have, there’s a solution to be found.  Lots of design improv has to be done when you don’t know for certain what’s behind walls.

KP: What building in history best represents you as an architect?
BA: The Pantheon - well-rounded and always near good pizza.

Something Different: Roman Baths

I have been a bit distracted and unable to blog lately. I cannot talk much about my new project in detail, but I can say that it's one: Luxurious. Two: I'm using the metric system. Three: It involves Roman Baths.  (Above) I added some photos that I took while in Pompeii, Italy. I am hoping to draw some inspiration from the these historic Roman Baths.  I also watched this NOVA special on Roman Baths to prep me for the design challenges.  http://www.hulu.com/watch/23353/nova-secrets-of-lost-empires-ii-roman-bat

The above photos represent a hamam (or hamman) bath which is a middle eastern interpretation of a steam bath. Although in the modern world, we imagine a typical steam room or warm bath as a relaxing place to collect our thoughts (alone, most times), Many Roman and Middle Eastern cultures would use these baths as a social place, where many people would gather to eat, drink, and gossip (hmmm....kinda like a modern day bar).  

3D Entrance for new project

As I was working on a 3D image of an entrance for a new project, I realized that wire frame images can be just as interesting as rendered images. They may not translate the architecture as clear, but the wire frame images have a unique composition. Its flat but very graphic & I like it.

Lighting to Love

I love lighting, well who doesn't? Well, I guess those vampire tweens in the Twilight movie, but even they are exposed to overcast lighting. Lighting plays an important role in two of my favorite things: architecture and photography.  How much and at what angle light is emitted can largely effect how we perceive objects.  Additionally, the type of lighting, whether it's natural daylighting, incandescent or fluorescent bulbs, can effect what is perceived. When we look at a green frog, we are really seeing every light in the visible spectrum being absorbed into the frog except green. Green is reflected back and is what our eyes see. 

Below are some of the best examples of daylighting used to express architectural elements. In museums and churches, lighting is used to suggest a hierarchy or an order of importance within the space. The direction of lighting adds texture and cast shadows. Many sculptures are better viewed in this type of light rather than a diffuse uniform light source. 

Guggenheim, New York City

image from guggenheim website

Notre Dame Du Haut, Ron Champ, France by Le Corbusier

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Tx by Louis Kahn

image by Kimberly Payne

Church of the Light, Ibaraki, Japan - Tadao Ando

The Life of a Building's Development

Countless meetings, public hearings, approvals, objections,  inspections and revisions later, we have a building....And it's all worth it in the end. 

2 Cooper was announced NYC Best Luxury Rental Building by Real Deal Magazine. 

Code in Color

If anyone has ever done CODE calculations for the Building Department, you would know how boring and dull the charts can be. So I created my own charts, to indicate and identify the information as a colorful graphic as opposed to just black and white. If you'd like a copy of the charts in a DWG. file, send me an email!

The Winner: It had me at HELLO!

OK Keys are in my purse....that's enough reason to believe this apartment and I were meant to be! Last night, I picked up the spare set of keys to my soon-to-be 5th East Village apartment. It was just as I remembered it when I laid eyes on it for the first time. It's your typical walk-up pre-war building. Marble staircase, exposed brick, NO Amenities....but that doesn't matter, because this apartment is spacious, plenty windows, and most of all it reminds me of the shot gun houses in New Orleans. It's a "railroad apartment" which is a term used to describe the layout of the space; it mimics that of a railroad car and is similar to a shotgun layout. There are no halls; one room opens to another then to another, and so on, with all entries in line, so that if a gun were to be shot, it would hit every room in the house. OK this is what I was told back when I was a kid. I am sure there are many different explanations flying around. 


What sold me:
1. The walk-in-closet/office in the back over looking the rear yard with plenty of trees. 
2. The picture moulding on the walls of the living room and bedroom.
3. The street: near Thompson Square Park with plenty of restaurants, bars, & boutiques.
4. The rent....It's affordable! I know~still hard to believe I won't be breaking the bank!


SHOT GUN HOMES IN NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans was built as a city that was interdependent of its crop-growing communities. Narrow lots were cut to expose river front properties, forcing the idea of shot-gun homes, forcing intimacy of neighbors with porches nearly touching. Generation after generation, New Orleanians pride ourselves on being an intimate community sharing common values.


RAILROAD HOMES IN NEW YORK

New York's pre-war residential buildings are different from it's familiar friend, the brownstone. Brownstones were built for single families or two families, at most.  Park Slope, Brooklyn is a great place to see beautiful brownstone buildings. 


The villages of Manhattan: West Village, Greenwich Village, & East Village illustrate pre-war tenement buildings, where 12 families or 20 families or more live. These buildings stretch from property line to property line, utilizing the entire lot. The grid system was implemented in New York City cutting very narrow lots, typically 25' wide & 100' long.  Windows are usually on the front and rear facades however many of these buildings have light-wells as shown below.

The light-wells are an efficient way to get light and air to the center of the long buildings. If you are interested in learning more about the tenement buildings of the east village & lower east side, visit the Tenement Museum on Orchard.

New York Apartment Search

If you live in Manhattan, chances are that you have been on a dreadful apartment search whereby everything you hope to find leaves you disappointed...wishing you could just move somewhere easy. On my recent search for a one-bedroom in Manhattan, I viewed about 12 apartment in both villages, east & west, Soho and Chelsea. I figured I'd blog about it. Why?....because there are some people in this country that have no idea the compromises we, NYers make, to live in this city! They scratch their heads and think "my God...is this city worth living in a walk-in closet?" But it's a great city...so we make the compromises happily.


The following 5 apartments represent my top five choices. I drew these up quickly after viewing to see how much space I would have for my things. I also wanted to see what the dollar per square foot was for each space. (Equation: Monthly rent X 12mo./ sq.ft=dollar per sq.ft. used to find market rate)


4th Runner-up: East 12th street

This east village gem boasting 338 square foot layout featured two rooms approximately 7' x8'. Just big enough for me to fit one or two pieces of furniture per room. The viewing also came with an interior design consultation with the broker, who continued to give me her opinions of how to lay the space out, even after telling her that I am an architect. This apartment was way over market rate for the east village at $86/sq.ft. 

I know you are dying to see more....

3rd runner-up: Mott Street

This apartment was in a great location, Nolita. Nolita stands for "North of Little Italy".  It's $83/sq.ft.  As you can see, another compromising layout, but I love Nolita, so it was in the running. 

2nd Runner-up: Chelsea

This Chelsea space was not so bad. It could totally work. It was listed for $69/sq.ft. Much better than the two former spaces. It was an elevator building with laundry on site. These luxuries are hard to pass up sometimes. It also had an incredible view. The kitchen could use some updating. One of my biggest complaints working in this industry and seeing these places...is when you see an apartment around 400 sq ft or less and you see large 30" wide appliances and no counter space. Typically only one or two people live in these 400 sq ft apartments....WE DON'T NEED EXTRA LARGE APPLIANCES! Stop wasting space! OK there I got it out. I feel much better. 

First Runner-Up: Sullivan Street

I loved this apartment and may have applied for it IF I DIDN'T have to show one year's rent in liquid assets! yes! kinda ridiculous, if you ask me! Hey, have you heard of a thing called the "Recession"apparently the management company has NOT. The rent is $68/sq ft- for a SOHO apartment- its actually on target. 

Winner....I can't show you until I have the Keys in hand! I can't jinx it!