Search Results for: architecture firm

May 3, 2017

Sting’s futuristic-meets-classic 15 Central Park West penthouse hits the market for $56M

British rocker Sting and his wife Trudie Styler have listed their chic duplex at the Robert A.M. Stern-designed 15 Central Park West for $56 million (h/t WSJ). The couple purchased the 16th- and 17th-floor penthouse for about $27 million in 2008, and then enlisted architecture and interior design firm SheltonMindel to combine the units and transform them into a "unique home" that includes two custom sculptural spiral staircases and a double-sided spiral gas fireplace that was inspired by the Fibonacci Spiral. Last summer, the couple was in negotiations to buy another Stern condo at 220 Central Park South, one of NYC's most expensive apartment buildings, and now that they "need more space to accommodate their growing family" the time may be ripe to do so.
See it all
April 18, 2017

INTERVIEW: Co-founder of the Brooklyn Home Company, Bill Caleo

The Brooklyn Home Company (THBCo) is a family-run cooperative of artists and builders that develop unique residential spaces in booming Brooklyn. Best described as white and wood but never cookie cutter, their work is always light and airy, and blend modern style with historic elements. It's this signature style that's made THBCo a favorite amongst both renovators and Pinterest enthusiasts alike. But what inspires their designs and how do they decide where to develop projects? Ahead, 6sqft speaks to THBCo's co-founder and Head of Operations, Bill Caleo, about the business. Find out how this family-run establishment firmly roots itself in working with local makers, how they've grown their business model to include sustainability, and why they always add a custom piece of art to all their homes.
our interview with bill here
April 11, 2017

INTERVIEW: Paula Scher on designing the brands of New York’s most beloved institutions

Paula Scher is one of the most recognizable names in the design world, considered legendary in the industry for creating the identities of major New York institutions. Scher moved to New York in the 1970s to begin her design career and got her start in the music industry. As art director for CBS, she designed around 150 albums a year and produced numerous ads and posters. Her record covers include everything from the Rolling Stones' Still Life to Leonard Bernstein's Stravinky, four of which were recognized with Grammy nominations. As a record designer, Scher was credited with reviving historical typefaces and design styles—and typefaces still play heavily in her work today. Scher left Atlantic Records to begin her own design firm in 1982, and in 1991 she joined her current firm, Pentagram, as the company's first female principal. Although Pentagram is an international design company, its New York office is behind the identities of some of the city's most beloved establishments. It was at Pentagram Scher established her reputation as a New York designer who created unique, lasting identities.
more with Paula Scher here
April 10, 2017

Past Prisons: Inside the new lives of 7 former NYC jails

The past week has been full of news about Rikers Island and Mayor de Blasio's announcement that the notorious prison will be closed and replaced with smaller facilities throughout the boroughs. Ideas for re-use of its 413 acres have included commercial, residential and mixed-use properties; academic centers; sports and recreation facilities; a convention center; or an expansion of nearby LaGuardia airport. And while anything final is estimated to be a decade away, this isn't the first prison in NYC to be adaptively reused. From a health spa to a production studio to a housing development, 6sqft explores the new lives of seven past prisons.
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April 10, 2017

Gamma Real Estate closes on $86M purchase of 3 Sutton Place, taps Thomas Juul-Hansen for new design

Following a contentious legal battle, Gamma Real Estate has won the foreclosure auction and closed on the $86 million acquisition of 3 Sutton Place, a development site where the firm plans on building a 700-foot-tall condominium tower. As Commercial Observer learned, this includes three neighboring lots at 428-432 East 58th Street between First Avenue and Sutton Place. Earlier this year, 6sqft explained that a bankruptcy judge authorized the sale of the property after Joseph Beninati’s Bauhouse Group failed to pay back creditors. While Stephen B Jacobs remains the executive architect, Gamma has hired Thomas Juul-Hansen, a Danish-born architect, who will design the skyscraper.
Find out more
April 7, 2017

Kwong Von Glinow’s new prototype for affordable housing can be stacked to fit any lot size

The first place winners of the New York Affordable Housing Challenge, an architectural competition run by Bee Breeders, have been announced. Kwong Von Glinow Design Office received first prize for their entry “The Table Top,” a modular system that aggregates and stacks to provide density and diversity in a city as varied as New York. Designed as a prototype for affordable housing in New York City, the flexible system could accommodate the city's wide range of lot sizes and is adaptable to a variety of unit combinations for diverse types of residents. With an affordable housing crisis abetting an increasingly socially divided city with the majority of its residents spending over half of their annual income on rent, the project speaks to Mayor de Blasio’s emphasis on the dire need to create more affordable housing at both new and redeveloped existing sites.
Find out more about this flexible, scalable design for living
March 31, 2017

Zaha Hadid’s unknown, unbuilt and celebrated projects in New York City

A year ago today, Zaha Hadid's sudden passing at age 65 rocked the architecture world. Best known for her signature swooping and curving forms and for being the first female to win the Pritzker Prize, she surprisingly has only one project in NYC, the under-construction 520 West 28th Street. Likely due to an unwillingness to tame her energetic visions to suit a developer's bottom line, the majority of her work envisioned for the city remains unbuilt. To mark the one-year anniversary of her passing and to pay tribute to her "larger than life" creations and personality, 6sqft has rounded up Zaha Hadid's projects and proposals for NYC.
All the projects, this way
March 29, 2017

Supertall skyscraper dangles from an asteroid to become the world’s tallest building

New York City-based design firm Clouds Architecture Office has proposed a conceptual skyscraper that would hang down from the sky suspended by air cables attached to an asteroid, making it the world's tallest building. As dezeen learned, the supertall, dubbed Analemma Tower, would not be built on Earth but instead have a “space-based” foundation. Each day, the tower, which would be constructed over Dubai, would travel between the northern and southern hemispheres, with the slowest part of the tower’s trajectory occurring over New York City.
See the supertall renderings here
March 23, 2017

Former Citicorp Center might lose Sasaki fountain as part of plaza redesign

Earlier this month, 6sqft revealed renderings of 601 Lexington Avenue's (the Midtown East skyscraper formerly known as the Citicorp Center) new "Market Building," comprised of an interior atrium to hold dining/retail space and a new outdoor plaza and terraces. Though the LPC landmarked the building this past December, the Architect's Newspaper has learned of a loophole in the designation regarding the privately owned public space, which could mean that amid the renovation, the sunken plaza and cascading fountain designed by Hideo Sasaki's firm--one of the iconic landscape architect's few remaining works--may be demolished.
The full story ahead
March 15, 2017

Marvelously mod prefab guest house was built in just two days time

While many vacation homes are the result of an elaborate design process and lengthy construction, this house located in rural New York was designed and then built using prefabricated elements in just a couple of days. The U.S. firm Desai Chia Architecture is responsible for the single-story rectilinear space, also known as LM Guest House. The 2,000-square-foot prefab oasis is located in Dutchess County (about two hours north of Manhattan) and situated on a rocky outcrop of land that overlooks a trout pond and farm.
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March 13, 2017

A pavilion created from 300,000 recycled cans is coming to Governors Island this summer

"Cast & Place" is the winner of FIGMENT’s 2017 City of Dreams competition, an annual design contest that challenges architecture and design firms to build a pavilion out of recycled materials to be assembled on Governors Island and displayed during the summer. This year, it will be made out of more than 300,000 aluminum cans (the number of cans used in NYC in an hour), melted down and cast into cracked clay. According to the group’s Kickstarter page, the material will be soil excavated from the East River, recycled cans, and reclaimed wood, which will form lightweight, strong panels to provide structure and shade.
See their design here
March 9, 2017

The hidden ferry history of NYC; Bjarke Ingels launches in-house engineering department

Ten fun ferry-related historical facts about the New York City waterfront. [Untapped] Tomorrow is the last day to apply for Stuyvesant Town’s affordable housing lottery. [6sqft inbox] Mets right fielder Jay Bruce is renting a luxury pad in Midtown’s Aalto 57. [NYP] Bjarke Ingels‘ firm BIG launched an in-house engineering department, catering to their technically ambitious projects. [Dezeen] […]

March 3, 2017

Mysterious ‘Japan Land’ renderings reveal a lantern-inspired building near Penn Station

Currently, at the corner of 8th Avenue and 31st Street, diagonal from Penn Station, you'll find a parking lot, pizza joint, and a small coffee shop. However, Nobutaka Ashihara Architects (NAA) envisions something much more spectacular for this underused locale. According to CityRealty, NAA recently rolled out a brand new website, and prominently featured on their home page is a curious scheme for a lantern-like glass tower of about 12 stories called "Japan Land."
more views here
February 27, 2017

Greenpoint creative hub gets a funky clay factory from design collective Assemble

London-based collective Assemble works across art, architecture, and design "to address the typical disconnection between the public and the process by which places are made." They've employed this philosophy at their first U.S. project--a temporary clay-extruding factory in the courtyard of Greenpoint's A/D/O creative hub, known as "A Factory As It Might Be." As Dezeen explains, the firm first built only a steel roof on top of the brick walls, but after acquiring an industrial clay extruder and electric kiln and finding that of all the vessels and homewares being created the tiles were the most successful, they decided to use the ceramic tiles to create a colorful, geometric facade.
Find out more about the project here
February 21, 2017

Historic Clinton Hill carriage house gets light from a ‘sky volume’ and a courtyard carved into its core

A thoroughly transformative re-design by New York studio O'Neill McVoy Architects turns a historic red brick townhouse on a slender 24- by 76-foot lot in need of light and air into an ultra-bright and inspiring modern residence for a young family. The Clinton Hill Courtyard House, in a landmarked section of the neighborhood, was built in 1877 as a carriage house for the mansion next door. The historic integrity of the home's exterior was left intact, but inside, three strategic openings–including skylights, a central courtyard, and a perforated interior stair wall--were created to let in light and air everywhere for daily living.
So much sunlight, in so many creative ways
February 17, 2017

A photo-luminescent, solar canopy is coming to MoMA PS1 this summer

It never hurts to think of warmer months on days like today, and MoMA PS1's announcement of whose design will fill their courtyard this summer certainly does the trick. The winner of their 18th annual Young Architects Program is Jenny Sabin Studio. The Ithaca-based experimental architecture studio created "Lumen" in response to the competition's request for a temporary outdoor installation that provides shade, seating, and water, while addressing environmental issues such as sustainability and recycling. The result is a tubular canopy made of "recycled, photo-luminescent, and solar active textiles that absorb, collect, and deliver light."
More renderings and info on Lumen
February 15, 2017

WXY reveals renderings of the city’s just-announced $136M fashion and film complex in Sunset Park

Last week, 6sqft took an in-depth look at how Sunset Park has become the new frontier for the city's garment industry, thanks to "several industrial conversions [that] offer cheaper rents, better equipped real estate, and a creative, collaborative community." Part of the city's push to revitalize the fashion trade in the burgeoning Brooklyn nabe is a collaboration with its "Made in New York" marketing campaign, which has previously been geared towards promoting film and television productions and technology companies. They'll also be investing $136 million to create the "Made in NYC Campus," a renovation of two waterfront Bush Terminal structures that will provide affordable space for film, fashion, and virtual reality tech companies, as well as a new pedestrian-friendly plazas and streets. The city's Economic Development Corporation has tapped WXY architecture + urban design to design the complex, and the firm has revealed a batch of renderings that showcase the project.
All the renderings and more details ahead
February 13, 2017

ODA’s crystalline 10 Jay Street gets new renderings of retail and office space

It's been eight months since ODA Architecture received its final approvals from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to convert the former Arbuckle Brothers sugar refinery building in Dumbo into a modern retail and office site. We've previously seen renderings of 10 Jay Street's prismatic East River-facing elevation--which was inspired by sugar crystals, the nearby Manhattan Bridge, and the neighborhood's historic steel and brick facades--and now that the rehab is in full swing, CityRealty noticed that the leasing team has debuted a new website with never-before-seen renderings of the brick east wall, adjoining waterfront plaza, retail space, and offices.
See all the renderings ahead
February 2, 2017

Historic Calvert Vaux-designed co-op that was once a refuge for girls, now asks $1.35M as a cozy duplex

Time hasn’t erased the historic feel of this unusual one-bedroom-plus-sleeping loft co-op, diminutive as it is elegant. It has the look of a renovated townhouse in one of the city’s most creative neighborhoods. At $1.35 million this petite pad may be an expensive refuge, but in its earliest days it was a refuge of a different sort with a history as interesting as its architecture–especially at a time when the ability to offer shelter to those in need is firmly in the spotlight. Landmarked in 2008, the subtly ornate red-brick facade of 307 East 12th Street was designed in 1892 by the firm of Calvert Vaux, who co-designed Central and Prospect Park among other enduring landmarks. Built for the Children’s Aid Society, the building was known as the Elizabeth Home for Girls; the New York Times tells us that it housed "several dozen young women rescued from abusive homes, offering them safe lodging, job training and healthy communal activities.”
Find out more about the building's early residents
January 26, 2017

Rem Koolhaas’ Gramercy condo reveals interior renderings, launches sales

Right before the new year, the highly anticipated condo from Toll Brothers City Living at 121 East 22nd Street in Gramercy reached its full height, providing the first real views of its glassy facade and chiseled corner that resembles a giant crystal. And what makes the structure even more special is the fact that it's the first NYC project from Pritzker Prize-winning Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas's firm the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).CityRealty now tells us that sales have officially begun, currently ranging from $1.5 million, 761-square-foot one-bedrooms to $4.7 million,2,402-square-foot three-bedrooms, and along with the launch comes the first set of interior renderings and some fresh looks at the exterior and amenity spaces.
More details and all the renderings
January 17, 2017

A look back at the lost Grand Centrals of the late 19th century

Historic photos of the original Penn Station are almost as common as images of the current site, since its demolition in 1963 is often credited with spearheading the modern preservation movement (and because its grandeur is a startling reminder of how loathed the current station is). Conversely, Grand Central is typically celebrated as a preservation victory. In 1978, the courts ruled in favor of the Landmarks Preservation Commission when Penn Central Railroad sued them to build a huge tower atop the terminal and demolish one of its facades. But believe it or not, the 1913 Beaux-Arts building was not the first Grand Central, and photos of these grand earlier structures are rarely shared.
See them here and get the full history
December 14, 2016

New renderings from Albo Liberis offer up two visions for Brooklyn’s next skyscraping office tower

As the future Brooklyn skyline takes shape, one of the borough's largest office towers-to-be, a 36-story commercial skyscraper, is slated to rise at 625 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Brooklyn-based Rabsky Group purchased the lot for $158 million and, as The Real Deal reports, plans are in the works to create 700,000 square feet of leasable space, for which the developer is in talks with City Planning to take advantage of a plaza bonus. Albo Liberis (see Williamsburg's William Vale Hotel) has been commissioned as the architect, and while no design has been officially revealed or finalized by Rabsky, the firm's site does offer up some insight into what is being considered for the game-changing tower.
Check out the renderings
December 6, 2016

Iconic JFK Terminal begins its life as the ‘TWA Hotel’ with new signage

After sitting vacant at JFK Airport for 14 years as a vestige of jet-age architecture, Eero Saarinen's iconic 1962 TWA Flight Terminal received a new life in the summer of 2015 when it was announced that the neo-futurist structure would be reborn as a high-end hotel. MCR Development teamed up with JetBlue and the Port Authority to develop a "505-room LEED-certified hotel with restaurants, 40,000 square feet of meeting space and a 10,000-square-foot observation deck," as 6sqft previously described. Initial reports referred to the project as the "TWA Flight Center Hotel," but the Times now confirms that it'll simply be the "TWA Hotel." And with construction four months in, Curbed noticed that signage for the hotel has gone up, preserving the airline's logo and font.
See the sign ahead
December 5, 2016

As Red Hook’s Norman Foster office complex plans move forward, local residents want more input

In October 6sqft reported that work on Thor Equities' 7.7-acre waterfront office and retail complex, architect Norman Foster‘s first Brooklyn commission, had begun. A recent meeting between the developers' representatives and community members to discuss plans for the 818,000-square-foot two-building project on the former site of Red Hook’s Revere Sugar Refinery–known as Red Hoek Point–revealed concerns that the Red Hook community is being excluded from development plans.
Find out more
November 28, 2016

Fidel Castro Threatens to Sleep in Central Park in Outrage Over Hotel Prices During 1960 Visit

Just four months after Cuban President Fidel Castro led a successful revolution to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, he visited New York City for 11 days on an invitation from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. With his signature green army uniform and boots, bushy beard, and exuberant nature, Castro reportedly hired a PR firm (though it seems he hardly needed to), enjoyed the city’s famous hot dogs, and "kissed ladies like a rock star, and held babies like a politician," according to Mashable. During a tour of the Bronx Zoo, which he called “the best thing New York City has,” Mr. Castro is said to have jumped a railing and stuck his hand into a cage to pet a Bengal tiger.
More shenanigans to come