Xlab is the event where technology, place and design intersect, and brings together the designers, thinkers and makers who are transforming the landscape of experience design and influencing our future through the use of technology, from connected data and wearables, to enhancing interaction with the environments we live, work, travel and play in. Xlab has grown 300% in the last two years, and now is a part of the New York Digital Signage Week, and has expanded to a 2 day conference with tours!
MEASURE August 14th, 2015 – September 12th, 2015
Opening: August 13th at 7 pm
Members’ Preview: August 13th at 6 pm
To measure, to quantify the physical and intangible dimensions of a place, is to articulate facts in order to construct values. The process of creating standards and guidelines of representation allows innovation to enter the realm of the establishment. What can be measured can be capitalized, historicized, and sold.
While architectural representation conforms to a system of standards and guidelines that allows for the production of buildings, architecture is also the practice of giving form to thought. In the process of creating edifices that house social, political, and spatial relations, architects make visible the functions of society in operational and aspirational terms. In this sense, architecture is constantly innovating new forms of measurement and representation.
Many believe New York’s pioneering Landmarks Law, enacted in April 1965, was the key factor in the rebirth of New York in the final quarter of the 20th century. It fostered pride in neighborhoods and resulted in neighborhood preservation in every borough, connecting and motivating residents and bringing new economic life to older communities. It ensured that huge swaths of the city remain a rich complex of new and old. It also ensured the creative re-use of countless buildings. At the same time, a new body of important architecture has emerged as architects, clients, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission devised innovative solutions for the renovation of landmark buildings and for new buildings in historic districts. The law spawned creativity in architects’ responses to building preservation that has enhanced the cityscape in all five boroughs.
How are contemporary architectural narratives created? And what are the various tools / media used to ‘tell the story’?
How is the said story tailored to a varying audience?
What story do journalists/editors/filmmakers like to tell about the architect? And the architecture? How does that profile shape our work, reach and influence?
What is architectural journalism for architects? What is it for the general public?
Are we in a crisis of architectural representation? What is the future of the publication and representation of architecture across various platforms?
Side by Side is an exhibition by photographer Robin Hill that explores the similarities and differences between two of America's most iconic houses. The Glass House by Philip Johnson and The Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe. Through a series of dyptychs, Mr. Hill's lens explores both the geometry of the structures and their place in the environment. Tellingly the exhibition is housed in the Seagram Building designed by Mies van der Rohe and assisted by Philip Johnson. The lobby of The Four Seasons is an ideal venue for this exhibition as much of the design aesthetic of both architects is prevalent in the space as well as in the photographs.
COOKFOX Architects’ new project, 550 Vanderbilt Avenue has opened for sale. The 17-storey building will be the first of four condominiums in the 22-acre Pacific Park Brooklyn development in Prospect Heights. The project aims to create a new neighbourhood of 14 buildings, all connected to 8-acres of public green space designed by landscape architecture firm Thomas Balsley Associates. Read more about this project after the break.
Norman Foster attended the recent groundbreaking ceremony for 425 Park Avenue, which will be the first full-block high-rise office building to be built on New York City's Park Avenue in the past 50 years. Foster+Partners, in collaboration with Adamson Associates, designed 425 Park to be a new icon in the Manhattan skyline, featuring a tri-blade, sheer wall top. In addition to its LEED Gold certification, the 560,000m² tower will be the first in New York to be WELL certified.
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The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce TIMBER IN THE CITY: Urban Habitats Competition for the 2015-2016 academic year. The student competition is a partnership between the Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons The New School for Design (SCE).
The purpose of the Competition is to engage students to imagine the repurposing of our existing cities with sustainable buildings from renewable resources, offering expedient affordable construction, innovating with new and old wooden materials, and designing healthy living and working environments.
Storefront for Art and Architecture hosts Facing East: Chinese Urbanism in Africa, an exhibition by journalist Michiel Hulshof (Tertium, Amsterdam) and architect Daan Roggeveen (MORE Architecture, Shanghai). Facing East investigates the impact of Chinese development on fast-growing African cities, and is built around personal stories of individuals involved in the urbanization process.
BIG has revealed plans for the fourth and final skyscraper planned for the World Trade Center site - the 2 World Trade Center (2 WTC) - confirming rumors that the Danish architect has replaced Norman Foster as the project's architect.
As announced by WIRED, the controversial take over is the result of James Murdoch's distaste for Foster's decade-old scheme and preference for a more integrated workplace. Though the foundation of Foster's building has already been built, the BIG scheme will now be realized and become the new headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s media companies, 21st Century Fox and News Corp.
Designed as seven unique building stacked on top of each other, the stepped 2 WTC tower will rise 1,340 feet - a height that would make it Manhattan's third-tallest building if built today.
Watch Bjarke Ingels explain the concept in a video, after the break.
The author goes along with the observer in a photographic stroll through the colors, surfaces and lights of the Grand Tour City of the Leaning Tower, Pisa. "Emotions from Pisa" is more than a collection of fine photographs: it is an exploration of the dialogue between place and photographer. The “emotions” of the shots are recognized, captured and made available to us. Pasqualetti preserves moments which we often miss and teaches us to read and feel the messages sent out by places and buildings. He shows us the Pisa that we know and above all a Pisa that we never noticed. This collection of photographs does not only record the face of the city, here shown in ways which truly surprise and move. His photos also demonstrate how architecture, through its forms and its surfaces, can evoke emotions that are constantly changing, as sun and seasons take their daily and yearly paths.
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