Herzog & de Meuron – 56 Leonard Street, NY
In the design by Herzog & de Meuron for 560 Leonard Street the load-bearing structure is strategically absent in the façade. The round columns are placed where Le Corbusier put them: just off the wall. The effect is not so much that of weightlessness – the building still has a distinct, ‘heavy’ mass that firmly stands on the ground. No, combined with the hip displacement of the upper floors, the effect is that of the stack. A stack of 56 stories, to be precise.
Exploring defy defying acts of daring. This shot is apparently taken on the roof of the Pan AM building, which is now MetLife. Remarkable stunt. Invisible Frontier indeed.
Don’t know how exactly to describe this building, except that I love it, clean, not bottom heavy, perched above the city, complex. It’s the keystone of Park Avenue, as others have said before, but its also the Anchor of the East Side of Manhattan. A shame that the heliport was closed.
Buenos Aires – Beautiful French influenced architecture and glorious 70′s faded yellow tones. Original photographs from a visit in 2002.
Designed by Steven Holl Architects as part of the great effort behind onepercent.org.
The 1%, a program of Public Architecture, connects nonprofits with architecture and design firms willing to give of their time pro bono. Launched by Public Architecture in 2005 with the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, The 1% is a first-of-its-kind effort to encourage pro bono service within the architecture and design professions.
Potential impact
If every architecture/design professional in the U.S. committed 1% of their time to pro bono service, it would add up to 5,000,000 hours annually – the equivalent of a 2,500-person firm, working full-time for the public good.
Rooftop beauties from Manhattan, including Mariah’s penthouse.
Amazing private roof decks, speechless! This one BELOW includes Mariah’s penthouse. I can say with 90% certainty that it is indeed Mariah’s rooftop. The curve of the window matches what we saw in MTV cribs, and she always mentions a hot tub on the roof: is that dark red patch near the front corner of the roof a hot tub cover? And the brickwork looks to match.
All credit to jwilly for photographing a brilliant set of ostentatious roof gardens in New York City.
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Think of it as a smack down between King Kong and Godzilla. Hours before sunrise today, two lighting behemoths faced off at the Empire State Building, vying for a $5 million contract to bring 21st century illumination to New York’s tallest skyscraper.
NY Times article covers the story behind the fascinating job of lighting one of the greatest landmarks in the city.
The Apple iMac. The New Beetle. The Oh Chair. The Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. These are all classic examples of blobism, a futuristic retelling of the curve, resulting in protoplasmic forms designed by computers. A growing number of inventive architects are now embracing this concept, making blobitecture the hottest global trend in the industry.
This is the first book to focus exclusively on the blobitecture phenomenon in detail: how the process works, the geometric and environmental challenges it presents, the sophisticated software that allows artists to bend the lines of traditional architecture, and the stunning work produced by this art form. Featuring curved walls to blob-esque furniture to Greg Lynn’s Embryological House and Koloatan and McDonald’s Title House, this is both a showcase of the best in blobism and a guide to applying it in a designer’s own work.
