Innovative Architecture, Infrastructure & Design

[Addie]

Will the Electoral College have to conform to this new reality, I wonder?

[RTH10260]

Will the Electoral College have to conform to this new reality, I wonder?

It will be transformed into a Food Mall with McDonalds, KFC etc and designated the prime WH catering service

[Addie]

UpZoning and air rights.

NYRB

How New York Is Zoning Out the Human-Scale City

In 2018, Chase Bank announced that it would tear down the fifty-two-story, black-and-silver-ribbed, early Modernist tower at 270 Park Avenue in order to build a new tower at least seventy stories high. This will be the tallest-ever demolition of a perfectly viable building in New York City. In 2002, Chase began a total renovation of the building to LEED standard, a green building certification that gave it “platinum” status, a rating that acknowledges the value of preserving the embodied energy of an existing building and avoids energy use for demolition, landfill, and new construction. Landmark skyscrapers across the country—from the Empire State Building, Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly Sears), and San Francisco’s Transamerica—have taken this environmentally responsible approach and upgraded their buildings to LEED platinum standard. And in doing so, Chase also benefitted from the five years of federal environmental tax credits that go with that designation. Then threw it all away.

To achieve the extra height and bulk of the new 270 Park, Chase is taking advantage of the “upzoning” of nearby mid-Manhattan that was applied in 2017 to a seventy-three-block area around Grand Central between 39th and 57th Streets. Upzoning’s relaxation of city planning regulations expands the development potential of new buildings by allowing increased height and density (the number of units or amount of floor area on a given lot), and simplifying the transfer of “air rights” from landmarked buildings to new sites within the district. (Air rights are the so-called unused development rights that would allow a hypothetical taller building on a particular lot, but they can be transferred by sale from one lot to another, depending on the district’s zoning designation.) A portion of any air rights sale does go into a city fund specifically for area subway and pedestrian improvements—but, in this case, that would be for an area already jammed with pedestrians.

Chase was thus able to buy air rights from the landmarked St. Patrick’s Cathedral, some six blocks away, and construct a taller, bulkier building. Preservationists have identified at least thirty-three buildings worthy of landmark protection from such redevelopment in this Midtown district, but after fierce resistance from real estate interests, only twelve have been so designated. By no logic—design, environmental, planning, zoning, landfill capacity—does demolition of 270 Park make sense, especially when at least some in the architectural community are trying to advance sustainable design. The planned destruction of 270 Park exemplifies how a vital aspect of the urbanism on which this city has evolved and excelled over decades is now being dangerously eroded.

Adding:

CurbedNY: A decade of destruction in New York City

New York City has lost countless cultural and historic institutions in the past decade

[Addie]

Nice one here. Building as therapy.

[Addie]

A beauty.

[Whatever4]

I love the roof skylights and the huge windows. So much light! Not gonna fly in Maine, but it’s nice to dream.

[Bill_G]

Nice one here. Building as therapy.

Great story. Thanks!

[Addie]

Interesting stuff here.

New York Times: How the Virus May Change Your Next Home

Designers and architects expect the pandemic to affect apartment design long after the lockdowns are over. Here are a few trends you’re likely to see


The coronavirus pandemic has placed any number of demands on our homes, which now serve as makeshift offices, art studios, gyms, workshops, classrooms and storage lockers. And urban apartments — where all of those functions are often squeezed into a space-constrained envelope — face the biggest challenges of all.

Those of us quarantined in a city have devised ad hoc solutions to cope in the short term. But if history is any guide, the experience should have lasting implications for the future of apartment design long after the lockdowns end.

More than a century ago, diseases like tuberculosis and the 1918 influenza “had an enormous impact on architecture, with the creation of sanitariums that were very open and were all about the balcony, light and air,” said Paul Whalen, a partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. “Whether it was subconscious or not, that kind of architecture had a big influence on residential architecture throughout the whole 20th century.”

[RTH10260]

Your next appartment entrance will be built around a security gate with hazmat shower facilities and change of clothing bewteen inside and outside

[HeatherGray]

We sold our rural house in 2018 and moved to a smaller, newly built suburban house much closer to health facilities (our closest hospital is now one mile) and shopping.

I desperately miss one feature of our old house. Not long after we moved there, we converted part of the garage into a mudroom. Not long after that, we had a plumber run water to it for our laundry machines and a utility sink. If necessary, I could strip off in the mudroom, wash what was necessary, and do my laundry there. I didn't do it very often: usually when I was cleaning outbuildings. We have a nasty little thing call hantavirus in the area which is spread by rodents. (We also have bubonic plague, but there is a cure for that.) However, I really used the mudroom when we had something called pigeon fever in the area. I had horses at home and was also boarding a horse and the vets thought it was mainly being transmitted on the clothes of vets and other people traveling between farms and ranches. So whenever I came home from where I boarded my horse, I would strip off in the garage, throw my clothes in the washer, wash up in the mudroom, and hope for the best.

As it happened, I managed to protect the horses at home, and the wave apparently diminished in the fall. One night, I went out to feed horses and Rags, our old Appaloosa, limped slowly into the barn. I thought he had foundered until I saw the characteristic swelling on his chest that I had seen on so many horses at where I boarded. I was actually relieved: very few horses died of pigeon fever and bad founder is pretty much a death sentence. I think Rags may have been the last horse in our county to get it. I didn't actually have the vet come out until a week or so later when the abscesses needed lancing. Although I did a lot of home care for vet stuff, I drew the line at poking holes in my horses.

[Addie]

Politico Mag: How to Redesign the World for Coronavirus and Beyond

[Whatever4]

Politico Mag: How to Redesign the World for Coronavirus and Beyond

Interesting. Many of these would work great for upper middle and upper classes. (The retail and dining in particular.) Or for drastically fewer people. And planting more trees in inner cities?