Institute for Urban Design - Urban Design Update May/June 2004

URBAN DESIGN

UPDATE

Newsletter of the Institute for Urban Design May/June 2004 Vol. 20 No. 3 GOVERNORS ISLAND: SEDUCTIVE VISION COULD SEEK INNOVATIVE FINANCE Waterborne Transit San Francisco Seattle New York

Governors Island, that gem in New York Harbor, is starting to sparkle. In May City University of New York confirmed a decision to plan for classes there. This summer, as Saturday ferries carry visitors to the island, boat ticket sales may zoom from the 4,000 of last year up to 40,000. And in the fall a plan will be unveiled to reveal a new vision for the island. Among Fellows working on the plan are Joe Berridge, Urban Strategies, Toronto; Stan Eckstut, Ehrenkrantz Eckstut, New York and Martha Schwartz, Cambridge.

On May 27th some fifty participants, including journalists from cities around the country, ferried to Governors Island to attend the Institute’s program: Urban Design: Journalism and Education.

John King, urban design writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, presented the renovated San Francisco Ferry Terminal together with upcoming plans for water transportation, while John Pastier presented Seattle’s waterborne system. Wilbur Woods, New York City Planning, described the promise of expanded ferry service in New York’s harbor and rivers, while Tom Fox, President, New York Watertaxi, talked about an expanded range for his service.

In an afternoon session chaired by Michael Sorkin, Director Urban Design Program, CUNY, Nan Ellen, Arizona State University, described a new urban design center being established in Tempe to replan Phoenix for a 15,000-student campus. Arizona's initiative resembles that established by Robert Shibley at SUNY Buffalo and precedes a new program (see page 3) announced by University of Pennsylvania to be headed by Fellow Eugenie Birch.

Liberty Bond Financing Queens Bronx Manhattan

Program attendees, who were led on an island tour by expert Bob Pirani, Regional Plan Association, ended the afternoon at The Downtown Association, where nearly 100 Fellows and guests heard Joe Berridge describe parameters for the Governors Island plan. Hopes for the viability of the plan may be predicated on the island’s eligibility for Liberty Bond financing.

For all the promise held out by Governors Island, prospects would be dim for actual development were it not for the possibility of financing via Liberty Bonds. The impact already made by the 9/11-generated program was described in a May 30th cover story in the Real Estate Section of The New York Times. Reporter David Dunlap, in a masterpiece of clear writing, explains how $478 million in Liberty Bond financing to four projects has created 1,943 high-end new rental units in Lower Manhattan. Among private developers receiving Liberty Bond financing is Frank Sciame, together with the Durst Organization. They will receive $46 million from the Bank of New York, about half of what it will take to build townhouses in the sky in a design by Santiago Calatrava to go up near the South Street Seaport. Other buildings Liberty Bond-financed are Russell Albanese with Rafael Pelli as architect and Glenwood Management with Costas Kondylas.

Emily A. Youssouf, President of New York's Housing Development Corporation, which finances the program, together with the state Housing Finance Agency, calls the financing creative and credits Mayor Bloomberg for leadership in spreading the benefits to create affordable housing in Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan neighborhoods in Harlem. A three percent charge for handling to private developers is providing funds for 390 units at several sites in these areas.

Vancouver

Neighborhoods: New Urban Design Strategies Are neighborhoods the next source for new ideas in urban design? It would appear so if Vancouver, Seattle and New York provide the examples. The development plan for a downtown district in Vancouver allows for increases in density above the base density for non-profit social and cultural facilities, heritage restoration and provision of affordable housing. New Yaletown, in downtown south, recently was provided a new contemporary art gallery at 955 Richards Street as a bonus from the developer, Boss Ventures Inc. Seattle, long studied for having provided a density boundary around the city, continues to experiment with devices to encourage density for center city neighborhoods. Current innovations stem from a 1994 comprehensive plan called "Sustainable Seattle," it targeted 38 urban villages to accept growth. Those willing to accept growth were funded to establish a neighborhood plan.

They next receive priority for selected infrastructure projects. John Rahaim, Seattle's Director of Planning/Urban Design is currently updating the plan.

Chelsea

Chelsea in Manhattan promises to rival the West Village as a destination neighborhood with the appointment of Pritzker-winner Zaha Hadid to head one of four design team finalists to compete for the master plan assignment for the High Line, an unused elevated rail structure extending from 20th street at 10th Avenue down to 13th Street in the Village's haute couture Meatpacking District.

Among Fellows on the Hadid team are Institute Board of Directors member Marilyn Jordan Taylor, SOM, and Diana Balmori. Fellow Mary Margaret Jones, Hargreaves Associates, is on team led by Fellow Steven Holl. Fellow Neil Kittredge, Byer, Blinder, Bell is on the Terragram team, led by Van Valkenburgh Associates. James Corner, Field Operations, leads a fourth team, that includes Diller Scofidio Architects. A $19 million dollar urban streetscape for Chelsea's Fashion Institute of Technology could provide a symbolic gateway to the highline reports Kevin Hom, whose firm, Kevin Hom & Andrew Goldman, is designing the two-block pedestrian mall, creating a campus from 27th to 28th Street at Eighth Avenue.

Morton Square, a $200 million, two-block high-rise housing program, will bookend Chelsea and the development of the Meatpacking District projects to the north, reports Fellow Costas Kondylis, whose firm is designing the project for J. D. Carlisle Development. The 283 units being provided at Morton Square add to far West Village housing stock being created in three tower luxury housing being designed by Fellow Richard Meier five blocks north.

Waterborne Transit/Waterfront Neighborhoods

Weehawken

Hoboken

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Port Imperial Ferry Terminal, being designed by Gruzen Sampton LLP for Weehawken is one of seven demonstration projects authorized by the Federal Tea 21 (Transportation Equity Act for the 21st century). The terminal, reports Fellow Jordan Gruzen, will serve as the New Jersey Gateway for some 24,000 passengers per day. Just north of Post Imperial in Weehawken the Port Authority continues work on the south waterfront in Hoboken, reports Dwight Woodson, Manager of Waterfront Development for the Port Authority. The next phase of development will be an additional pier at the north end.

David Dixon has just returned from Chicago’s AIA Convention to Boston, where he is working on an urban design plan for South Bay that will create a higher density downtown neighborhood . . . Richard Tomasetti has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for such projects as the Thorton-Tomasetti design and construction of Manhattan West Midtown Ferry Terminal at Pier 79 with Bill Bodouva Architects . . . Roxanne Warren goes frequently to 42nd Street to promote Vision42, whose goal is to convert 42nd Street into an auto-free light-rail boulevard . . .

Barbara Wilks and Alex Washburn continue to travel back and forth between offices of their firm, W, in New York and Baltimore, where their Doma Barn Restoration won a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. The Barn has been transformed into an art gallery and connects through a landscape courtyard to the main farmhouse . . . Andras Szanto has been appointed Director of Columbia’s National Arts Journalism Program whose Fellows attended a May 27th program. . . Meta Brunzema, Meta Brunzema Architects, has just been appointed coordinator of the Urban Design Program at Pratt Institute.

EDUCATION CUNY

Newman Institute

ASU Urban Design Institute

Kent State

University of Pennsylvania Urban Research Institute

The Pergolis Urban Gallery devoted to how public and private real estate development shapes urban form, has opened at CUNY’s Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute. The brainchild of Director Henry Wollman, it is perhaps the first gallery in North America to combine real estate with urban design in its gallery offerings. While Columbia's Buhel Center's Gallery concentrates on architecture and NYU's Grey Gallery shows art and photography, the Pergolis Gallery, concentrating in its opening show on Mid-town West, designated by NYCP Department as the last large scale area in Manhattan available for redevelopment. The show is enlivened with televised comments by Max Bond, among some eight other urban designers and developers, whose ideas are conveyed to mini-screens. Should Hudson yards be built? The question that the opening show provokes is being addressed in lectures by Gene Kohn/Jill Lerner, Steve Malagnia and Robert Geddes being held in June. The show may be seen by interested viewers on weekdays through the summer.

Arizona State University may become a second new forum for real estate/urban design debate with the planned opening of an Urban Design Institute whose prime goal is the design and development of a new ASU campus in downtown Phoenix. Some of the ideas that may filter into the new institution were presented on May 27 at the Institute’s Governors Island program by Nan Ellin in a talk called Translucent Urbanism. "The challenge, says Ellin, is to make connections without loosing the integrity of individual parts. The ideas will be more fully developed in Slash City, to be published in 2005.

Kent State University, where Ruth Durak heads up the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, also promises to be a center for new thinking on landscape urbanism. In one of the clearest statements yet, Durak has said: “Landscape urbanism, is a call to turn urban design inside out, starting with open spaces and natural systems to structure urban form instead of buildings and infrastructure. Examples of this approach are Downsview Park (a vacated air base in Toronto) and Fresh Kills (a 2,200 acre landfill in Staten Island). Nevertheless, the idea of landscape urbanism reorders the values and priorities of urban design, emphasizing the primacy of the void over built form, and celebrating indeterminacy and change over the static certainty of architecture. It recalls nature’s restorative cycles and tries to put them back to work in the city. This will be essential to containing the impact of urban growth in much of the world, but it also points to a new direction for shrinking cities like Cleveland. Cleveland is pursuing an aggressive policy of replacing dilapidated housing – at the rate of 1,500 units a year. Rather than scattering these new units around, whenever there are vacant sites or abandoned buildings, they should be clustered by design around a new pattern of connected open spaces that reconstitute the natural systems of our damaged geography. With a deliberate program of strategic land swapping, we could, for example, uncover the many miles of culverted streams that flow into the Cuyahoga River.”

The Penn Urban Research Institute, specializing in all aspects of urban environment, will integrate and coordinate the research and practice of leaders from Penn’s 12 schools. The Institute will develop and disseminate knowledge to those charged with managing the growth, problems and design of urban environments at the local, national and international level. By serving as a fulcrum for research findings, academic pursuits and projects related to urban issues, the Penn Urban Research Institute is poised to become an authoritative source, locally, nationally and internationally. In creating the Penn Urban Research Institute, the University is building on its success in transforming the West Philadelphia neighborhood as well as providing new retail amenities and home ownership, education. In a recent speech, Penn President Dr. Judith Rodin spoke of the Penn-assisted urban revitalization efforts to a university-wide audience. She also introduced the Penn Urban Research Institute to directors, Dr. Eugenie Birch, chair and professor of city and regional planning at the School of Design, and Dr. Susan Wachter, professor of financial management and professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School. Penn is also utilizing a three-year HUD Grant to explore affordable housing at a center by that name within the school of design. Three new courses and two studies will support affordable housing programs, under the direction of Harris Steinberg and Eugenie Birch.

BOOKS

The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Bernard Tschumi and Irene Cheng, Editors. 144 pages. The Monacelli Press. 2003. $35.00.

This book is based on a conference held at Columbia University in 2003, Bernard Tschumi’s last year as Dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia. The book includes two-page comments from some 60 attendees. Among Fellows: Robert A.M. Stern, Jesse Reiser, Kenneth Frampton. Among Institute friends: Michael Sorkin, James Corner and Stan Allen. The book makes clear that Tschumi’s primary contribution was a computer laboratory for architecture students created in 1994, the first one now sees impact of computer generated design in his own work for a factory in Beijing and for Vacheron headquarters in Geneva.

Next Generation Architecture: Folds, Blobs and Boxes. By Joseph Rosa. Illus. 240 pages.

Rizzoli International Publishers. 2003. $45.00 This useful history of digital computing includes the work of students from the digital design laboratory at Columbia. Among them Gregg Pasquarelli, ShoP, New York, has just completed Porter House, a high-end apartment building atop a former warehouse in the Meatpacking District.

At an FIT building some 4,000 pieces of zinc are being computer fitted into the façade.

NEW FELLOWS

Lara Belkind, Urban Revitalization Planner, D.C. Office of Planning, Washington, DC; Joseph Berridge, Partner, Urban Strategies Inc., Toronto, Ontario; Uwe Brandes, Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, DC Office of Planning, Washington, DC; Seth A. Brown, Publisher, The Next American City, New Haven, CT; Mark Burstein, VP, Facilities Management, Columbia University, New York, NY; John Di Domenico, President, Di Domenico + Partners, LLP, New York, NY; Nan Ellin, Assoc. Professor of Urban Design, ASU, Tempe, AZ; Tom Fox, President, N.Y. Watertaxi, New York, NY; Roland Gebhardt, Roland Gebhardt Design, New York, NY; Adam A. Gross, Ayers/Saint/Gross, Inc., Baltimore, MD; Ron Harwick, Vice President, James, Harwick & Partners, Inc., Dallas, TX; Kevin Hom, Principal, Kevin Hom + Andrew Goldman Architects, PC, New York, NY; Sudhir Jambhekar, Principal, Fox & Fowle Architects, New York, NY; Costas Kondylis, President, Costas Kondylis and Partners, New York, NY; Bob Kost, Director of Urban Design, Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc., Minneapolis, MN; Arnold C. Lee, Partner, HLW, New York, NY; Jill Lerner, Principal, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, P.C., New York, NY; Robert Levit, Director Urban Design Program, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Howard Milstein, Managing Partner, Milstein Properties Corp., New York, NY; Walt Niehoff, Partner, LMN Architects, Seattle, WA; Nancy Owens, Nancy Owens Studio, New York, NY; Georgia E. Sarkin, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP, New York, NY; Ekkehart Schwarz, Architect PC, New York, NY; Leni Schwendinger, Leni Schwendinger Light Projects Ltd., New York, NY; Frank Sciame, President, FJ Sciame Construction, New York, NY; Carl Seaholm, Sr. VP, International, The Gail Company, New York, NY; Sam Spata, Senior Principal, HOK, New York, NY; Evan Supcoff, Principal Architect, HNTB Architecture, New York, NY; Beverly A. Willis, President, Architecture Research Institute, New York, NY. UPDATE, published six times a year, welcomes contributions from members.