Urban Planning + Design + Architecture + Historic Preservation
The month of June saw the opening of a major exhibition on the works of Le Corbusier at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the signing of a contract for a $2.2 million apartment in Lincoln Towers, about 20 blocks north of the museum. What, you may ask, do these events have to do with each other? [Read more…] about Towers in the Park—Unsafe at Any Income?
Sometimes overnight sensations take a long time. As with chanteuses, so it is with city neighborhoods. Belleville, Paris, is the perfect example. Located in the 20th arrondissement, Belleville was once a sleepy working-class backwater dotted with Chinese, North African and Jewish enclaves. Artists have been gradually moving into the cheap housing and former factories on its steep-sloped streets that provide extraordinary Parisian panoramas. Sharing the fate of other artist frontiers, this neighborhood has now been “discovered” and integrated into mainstream Paris. [Read more…] about The Portes Ouvertes of Belleville
The recently-released documentary, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, although specifically about a singular St. Louis, Missouri, project, spurs discussion about housing, public policy and modernism. Completed in 1954, this massive 33-building project designed by Minoru Yamasaki is perhaps most famous for its demise— [Read more…] about Movie Review–The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
Over 150 years ago, Napoleon built canals and railroads to bring goods and fresh water from the French countryside into the heart of Paris. Today’s wholesale markets ring the city’s outskirts and the industries that lined these waterways are gone, but the routes that once carried flowers, water and produce to please and feed Parisians have been transformed into landscaped public walks—perfect for an afternoon of leisurely exploration and enjoyment, with time out for shopping and a rest at a local cafe, of course. Let us—walkers and bikers—now explore miles of traffic-free Paris [Read more…] about Paris Promenades
The July 27th post by Jerri Holan was an impassioned plea for preservation advocates to become even more resolved in the face of adversity, an appeal which clearly struck a chord with the author panel. Tucked in her piece was mention of Rem Koolhaas’s allegation of “historical amnesia” for what historic preservationists have wrought. [Read more…] about The Cronocaos Exhibit at the New Museum: Rem Koolhaas Says Make No Little Plans.
I am walking 30 feet above the ground, through buildings, eye-level with billboards, rubbing shoulders, it seems, with all the tourists in New York City. I am surrounded by plants that poke out from the railroad tracks that are remnants of New York’s industrial past. [Read more…] about The High Line