New York 14_

New York 14_

_NYU Department of Philosophy

5 Washington Pl. entre Kimball St. 246 y Greene St. 300 Nueva York, NY 10003

Architect: Steven Holl  2004-September 2007

The renovation of the original 1890 building of the New York University Department of Philosophy by Steven Holl is "organized around a backbone of light."

"Here it isn't only a metaphor of light to learning, but practical space of interaction between students and professors who can meet casually on the large landings. A new stair shaft below a new skylight joins the 6-level building vertically with a shifting porosity of light and shadow that change seasonally."

"The inspirations of words form Wittgenstein's text in Remarks on Colour is elaborated in the "shadow of white light" phenomena. We installed prismatic film on the south-facing stairwell windows which occasionally breaks the sunlight into a prismatic rainbow. "

               

Addressing the institution's academic vision and its programmatic needs, this original and inventive design does more than simply reflect educational excellence; it facilitates and activates it.

The new staircase, below a new skylight, connects the six-level building vertically with a shifting porosity of light and shadow, which changes seasonally and throughout the day.

The staircase design encourages interaction and active participation in the building, both by converting it into a porous spiral wrapped around itself (increasing views and trajectories), and connecting it to large landing areas.

Colour inspiration

Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's book Remarks on Colour the design is in black and white, with the implication of colour through reflection and refraction. To achieve this, prismatic film was applied to the south-facing stairwell windows, which periodically breaks the sunlight into a prismatic rainbow of colours when the sunlight hits it.

The ground floor holds the 120-seat curvilinear auditorium, shared by the entire university, and also serves as the lobby envisioned as a public space where faculty and students can socialise. Visible through large windows overlooking the street, it is designed to create maximum continuity between the inside and outside street level. The upper levels contain faculty offices and seminar rooms which are realised in different shades and textures of black and white. Custom-designed elements, including millwork, furniture pieces, coat hooks, door handles and light fixtures, evoke spatial moments and allow for a certain degree of tactility, providing the philosophers with a space of unique character.

Performance-related design

The design aims to upgrade the building's performance to make it more energy efficient.

"The staircase encourages interaction."

For the project's renovation work, the majority of the existing windows were replaced with insulated glass to help control interior environmental conditions by minimising heat gain in summer and harnessing solar gain and reducing heat loss in winter.

The design team worked to capitalise on the renovation aspect of the project by recycling and reusing portions of existing material and equipment, resulting in limited construction and demolition waste. Carefully selected sustainable materials and products were implemented in the design: wood cores are certified for recycled content and recovered wood product; hardwood was obtained from sustainably managed forests and certified for compliance with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative; and cork, a highly renewable material, was used throughout the project as the primary flooring material. The building exists within the jurisdiction of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Texto de stevenholl.com y designbuild-network.com, imágenes destevenholl.com.com y flicker

New York 13_

New York 13_

_American Folk Art Museum

45 West 53rd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, New York, 10019-5401

www.folkartmuseum.org

Hours: Tue-Sun: 10:30am-5:30pm/ Fri: 11:am-7:30pm/ Mon: closed / Fri after 5.30pm free

Architect: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects LLP  2001

The American Folk Art Museum is an idiosyncratic home for idiosyncratic art. 

A 40 foot wide, 100 foot long site on 53rd street is home for the American Folk Art Museum. Completed in 2001, the eight level museums is the first new museum built in New York in over three decades. 

Four upper floors are devoted to gallery space for permanent and temporary exhibitions. A small café overlooks 53rd street from the mezzanine and provides a view of the two-story atrium. To accommodate the program the building extends two levels below ground; one floor holds the auditorium and the classrooms while the lowest level houses the museum offices, library and archive.  At the street level is a museum store, accessible during non-museum hours via a separate entrance. 

A skylight above a grand stair between the second and third floors fills the adjacent galleries with natural light. Openings at each level allows light to filter down to the lowest level. Interior spaces are animated by changing light. 

Art is built into the structure and circulation paths of the building. In addition to the gallery space, a series of niches display a more permanent selection of art objects. Visitors choose from different routes to move through the building and to walk from floor to floor. 

The Folk Art Museum is surrounded on three sides by the Museum of Modern Art. The façade of the Folk Art Museum makes a quiet statement of independence. Metal panels of white bronze, cast at an art foundry, clad the façade. Variation within the surface was achieved by casting the panels from sand molds taken from the texture of concrete.

Sculptural in form, the façade recalls an abstracted open hand. The panels fold inward to create a faceted plane. The façade catches the glow of the rising and setting sun, subtly shifting with the weather and the seasons. 

The architects Discuss the Building materials.

_Facade Panels
When first asked what the facade of the museum might be, our rather facetious response was that it might be made of old bubble gum. The second impulse was to consider tilt-up concrete panels cast on the vacant lot next door to the site. One could imagine the layers of urban archaeology that could be uncovered and incorporated into the facade of the building. Obviously, both these ideas were not realistic, but they revealed our desire to clad the building in a material that was both common and amazing, and that would show a connection with the handmade quality of folk art. We wanted the building to reflect the direct connection between heart and hand.

_Tombasil
We decided to look for a material that had a warmer colour. Tombasil is a commercially produced white bronze alloy used for boat propellers, fire hose nozzles, and grave markers (hence its name). It has a warm yet silvery quality that we liked. We were interested in the direct fabrication technique; one that revealed how the panels were made. Samples were made at first by pouring the material directly onto the concrete floor of the foundry. We also tried pouring tombasil onto steel plates for a smoother finish. Although the results were interesting, they were also uncontrollable. The intense heat of the molten metal caused water entrapped in the concrete to explode; the results were interesting pockmarks but dangerous working conditions. The heat also caused the steel plates to warp and buckle. Working with the Tallix foundry in Beacon, New York, we eventually developed a more controlled situation using sand molds taken from concrete and steel.

_Resin Fibreglass
We previously used fibreglass in an installation of screens that we had designed. We very much liked the translucency and its “low tech” quality. Originally, we wanted to use a screen wall of fibreglass to shield the primary staircase. The screen would create silhouettes of people walking up and down the stairs. We wanted the screen to be blue. However, since it was a permanent part of the building, the fibreglass needed to be fireproofed, a process that would have produced a murky brown tone. The samples show how the colour changed as we worked with the fabricator to produce what eventually became the blue-green panels.

_Pietra Piesentina
This stone comes from a small quarry north of Venice. The stone occurs as large boulders that are dug out of the earth and cut into more standard rectangular blocks. In northern Italy, pietra piesentina is used for paving as well as for exteriors and interiors. In the museum, it is used on the floors and walls of the lower, ground, and mezzanine levels in a flamed or roughened finish. The stone's warm gray tone complements the concrete used throughout the building and creates a contrast to the cool blue-green tone of the fibreglass.

_Douglas Fir
The materials of the museum are a balance of warm and cool. To counter the coolness of the concrete and glass, many elements throughout the museum are made of Douglas fir, which has a warm reddish hue. Solid, full-length fir planks are set into terrazzo ground concrete in the gallery spaces. Solid wood rails run along the glass handrails. This same wood is also used in a woven manner as a balustrade wall separating the café (on the mezzanine level) from the ground level of the museum. It also appears as a series of fins along the wall of the auditorium.

_Laminated Insulated Glass
An extremely clear glass, Starfire, manufactured by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, was chosen for the windows. Glass usually has a green tint to it, which causes both light entering the building and views out of the building to have a greenish quality. To keep views of the city true to their colour, this special transparent glass was used.

_Concrete
The concrete throughout the museum has been finished using different techniques; although the material stays the same, it varies in colour and finish. The slabs throughout the building are terrazzo ground to produce a smooth finish that reveals the stone aggregate. The poured-in-place concrete walls are bush hammered: this technique involves using a jackhammer over the surface, which creates a rough but controlled texture.

_Cold-Rolled Steel
The handrails along the main stair, which runs from the top to the bottom of the gallery spaces, are fabricated from blued cold-rolled steel. We chose the steel because it is both humble and elegant.

_Terne-Coated Stainless Steel
The exterior of the north facade of the building is finished with thin sheets of steel. They are used in an overlapping manner, rather like enlarged shingles, to create both depth and texture.

_Heath Company Terra Cotta Hand-Glazed Tile
The Heath Company started as an art ceramics studio in Sausalito, California, in 1948. The entry and the interior walls of the bathrooms are finished using their white tile. Each tile is hand glazed, which causes variations in the final color.

_Cherry
Benches in the galleries and tables in the library are custom made by cabinetmaker Steven Lino from cherry wood. Cherry is similar in color to Douglas fir, but it is a deeper red and a harder wood.

Texto de folkartmuseum.org y twbta.com, imágenes de twbta.com, mimoa.com y otros.

New York 12_

New York 12_

_NY Burguers

Recopilación de unas cuantas hamburgueserías famosas de la gran manzana, reuniendo información de aquí y de allá. No sólo de arquitectura vive el hombre. El orden no es indicativo de la calidad, ni de la cantidad.

Burger Joint 

Posiblemente uno de los mejores sitios para disfrutar de una buena hamburguesa en un local curioso y divertido, y donde habitualmente habrá cola para entrar. Situado en el elegante vestíbulo del hotel Le Parker Meridien, no tan oculto se cuenta, se asemeja más a un bar ruidoso del Medio Oeste que al tipo de establecimiento de comida de alto nivel que cabría esperar en el interior de un elegante hotel de Nueva York. Las hamburguesas ,a $7,00,  no son tan gruesas y ni  jugosas como los de otros lugares, por lo que está bien  tomarlas  acompañadas de patatas fritas ($ 3.00) y un batido (5,00 dólares).

A la hora de comer de las oficinas es misión imposible pasar por és ta hamburguesería ya que una larga fila de ejecutivos se extiende a lo largo del vestíbulo del hotel esperando su ración de carne en uno de los sitios mas auténticos de Nueva  York.

Está muy bien el articulo escrito por Paul Croughton en el Times acerca de este lugar_ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/holiday_type/food_and_travel/article2320255.ece

118 West 57th St, entre la 6 ª Avenida. Y 7 ª Avenida.

Hours: 11am-11.30pm/Fri-Sat till12:00

    Corner Bistro

Esta hambuerguesería tambien suele estar a rebosar al ser posiblemente la mas famosa del West  Village. Es conocida por su Bistro Burguer ($6.75) con lechuga, tomate, queso y bacon. A pesar de que el servicio puede ser regular, que la música esté un poco alta o de que sea un local muy ruidoso, posiblemente sea de las mejores y mas jugosas hamburguesas de la ciudad y de las preferidas por los neoyorquinos.

331 West 4th Street, entre 12th St. & Jane St.

http://cornerbistrony.com/

Hours: Mon-Sat 11:30am-4:00am, Sun 12:00-4:00am

   Zaitzeff

Se encuentra en el East Village en pleno distrito financiero (existiendo otra en el Lower East Side) y es un claro ejemplo de la nueva hamburguesa que cada vez se ve mas por todo Nueva York. Se sirve en un tierno panecillo Portugués (debe ser algo de súperlux  para estos yankis),  y dentro podremos encontrar deliciosas carnes como la media libra de lomo por  unos 13,50$ o media libra de carne de buey Kobe por 15,25$,  y también se puede pedir en cuarto de libra ahorrando unos cinco pavos (me encanta esto de los pavos).

Se trata de un lugar mas tranquilo que otras hamburgueserías de la ciudad, pero también mas caro, eso si con las unas hamburguesas hechas con carnes que pocas veces podremos encontrar en otras hamburgueserías.

18 Avenue B, entre 2nd St. & 3rd St.

www.zaitzeffnyc.com

  PJ Clarke 

Podría decirse que es la hamburguesería mas famosa de Nueva York. Tiene locales por media ciudad pero ninguno mejor que el original, el que está en un pequeño local haciendo esquina en el Upper East Side desde finales de 1800. El local tiene dos partes, la de la entrada, llena de gente que pasa por allí de camino y a casa y para a comerse una hamburguesa y al fondo otra parte de mesas con capacidad para unas 60 personas donde es mas agradable estar. El servicio es bueno y muy, pero que muy rápido, casi no te da tiempo a pedir y ya tienes la hamburguesa en la mesa.

Puedes probar una buena hamburguesa con champi por 10.00$ o pedir una especie de degustación de minihamburguesas llamada Baker`s dozen mini burgers por 30,25$

915 3rd Ave, New York, NY, 10022. en 55th St

www.pjclarkes.com

Hours: Todos los dias 11:30am-3:00am

Shake Shack
No es ningún secreto que el Madison Square Hot Spot Parque sirve buenas hamburguesas sencillas (4,75 dólares) y dobles ($ 7.25) Shackburger con el queso, lechuga, tomate y salsa de barraca. También e pude acompañar con un heladito de postre. Desafortunadamente, cuando hace buen tiempo las colas se pueden de más de dos horas, que merece la pena para aquel que quiera disfrutar de su comida en medio del parque y siempre conviene evitar las horas típicas de comidas, cenas. Siempre se puede ver si hay mucha gente, en la webcam que aparece en su página http://shakeshack.com/ y también ver donde tiene otros locales en Nueva York.
Esquina sur de Madison Square Park, cerca de Madison Ave y East 23rd St.
Hours: 11:00am-11:00pm

  

 The Coffee Shop Bar

 Este es un lugar que no aparece como lo mejor hamburguesa, pero que a mi me gusta, además aun no conozco  ninguno de los anteriores personalmente y este si. Es un lugar curioso, situado en Union Sq., con buena música, los camareros son majetes aunque un poco lentos, la comida está bien, batidos, hamburguesas y todo tipo de

 guarradas yankis, vamos el típico sitio americano. Segun los locales no está mal, aunque se quejan de que mucho turista se deja caer por alli, y apesar de ello siguen visitandolo, también es frecuentado por famosetes ( modelos, actores de medio pelo...)

29 Union Sq., New York, NY 10003 at 16th St.

Foto ash

Algunos textos e imagenes de aquí y allá.