New England Moves to Preserve a More Recent Heritage – NYTimes.com

• While their creations might seem out of place here, they match the ideals of Thoreau, said Alexander Gorlin, an architect whose book with the photographer Geoffrey Gross, “Tomorrow’s Houses: New England Modernism,” came out this year.

  Mr. Gorlin said the plain, functional style of modernism, meant to blend into the landscape, echoed Thoreau’s desire to live simply and in harmony with nature. Gropius, he added, was inspired by another early New England thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Roy Diblik: Champion of natives and influential plantsman

chicagotribune.com – (via Garden Writers Today)

• …project by project, plant by plant, Diblik, 57, has become one of the most original, sophisticated and influential plantsmen in the Midwest.

   

• If you have visited the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park (luriegarden.org), you’ve seen plants he grew from seed. If you have been to the Art Institute of Chicago this summer and strolled by the Louis Sullivan Stock Exchange Arch, you’ve seen how he puts plants together. If you’ve gambled at the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, you’ve seen a site where he combines native plants in a stylized way.

   

• If you have visited his Northwind Perennial Farm (northwindperennialfarm.com) in Burlington, Wis., near Lake Geneva, you have seen a display garden where perennials artfully intermingle, playing against rich stonework, sparked by lively sculpture.

   

America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools 2009

• The 2009 edition of America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools contains 110 pages of charts, graphs, data, and analysis of design programs across the nation that no student, prospective student, school counselor, or hiring manager should be without. Inside you will find:

Treetop walkway at Kew Gardens | Travel | guardian.co.uk

• 

• Treetop walkway at Kew Gardens (9 pictures)

• 

• 

• 

• Thumbnail view

• Read more

  Stairway to heaven for tree lovers at Kew gardens

  One hundred and eight steps up, tree top walk way provides new striking view of Londo

• 1 / 9

  The 200m-long walkway was designed by the architects of the London Eye

• Photograph: Linda Nylind

Whitney Museum Unveils Its Downtown Sanctuary – New York Times

• Mr. Piano’s project for a site on Gansevoort Street, west of Washington Street, is a striking departure from the ethereal glass creations that have made him a favorite of the art-world cognoscenti.

• Mr. Piano has created a contemplative sanctuary where art reasserts its primary place in the cultural hierarchy.

• In a recent interview Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, said the curators had yet to define the relationship between the two buildings. (One possibility is that the Breuer building will be used for exhibitions that focus on one aspect of the collection or a single artist, with the core of the collection relocated downtown.)

• Mr. Piano’s design is certainly distinct from Breuer’s, presenting a strange, even forbidding aura. The building’s faceted surface seems hewed from a massive block of stone. Its main facade is slightly angled to make room for a small public plaza. The roof steps down in a series of big terraces on one side; on the other, it forms an impenetrable block facing the West Side Highway.

  But as you study the form more intently, more layered meanings emerge. The stepped roof, for example, both supports a series of outdoor sculpture gardens and allows sunlight to spill down onto the High Line, the elevated rail bed that is being converted into a public garden. The angle of the facade allows people walking along the High Line to catch glimpses of the Hudson River down Gansevoort Street.

• The feeling of a structure being carved apart to facilitate the flow of light and movement is magnified at ground level. Part of the structure rests on a glass base that houses a bookstore and cafe, so that you feel the full weight of the building bearing down. The underbelly of the building tilts up at one end, providing shade for the plaza and adding a sense of compression as you approach the entry.

• This experience abruptly changes as you cross the threshold, for a window at the back of the lobby opens onto a view of the water and the height of the lobby space suddenly lets you breathe again. From there elevators whisk you up to the auditorium, library and galleries.

  The new museum will have 50,000 square feet of gallery space, compared with 32,000 uptown. The third-floor gallery, at 17,500 square feet, will be the largest column-free space for viewing art in Manhattan, Mr. Weinberg said.

Table of Contents: April 28, 2008: Table of Contents: The New Yorker – Annotated

Magazine only, not online

• 

  Restoration Drama

  Rebecca Mead

  Trouble at Edith Wharton’s house

Schumer proclaims his support for walkway project | PoughkeepsieJournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal – Annotated

• By Jenny Lee • Poughkeepsie Journal • April 19, 2008

• HIGHLAND – Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saw the breathtaking view from the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge Friday and announced he’s pushing for $1.5 million in federal money to help transform the bridge into Walkway Over the Hudson and pay for Quadricentennial activities.

• Walkway Over the Hudson will be 1.25 miles long, becoming the longest walkway bridge in the world. It is scheduled to open in time for the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the river in 2009.

• Walkway Over the Hudson Board of Directors Chairman Fred Schaeffer was grateful for the senator’s efforts.

  “We’ve had tremendous support from the community,” Schaeffer said. “It’s icing on the cake.”

  The construction of the bridge would cost about $25 million, plus an additional $5 million to pay for an elevator from the waterfront and an endowment for the maintenance of the bridge, Schaeffer said.

  Hinchey, who was at the bridge Friday, said he hopes to get about $2 million for the project in the transportation funding bill. When the project first began, he secured about $875,000.

Natural Phenomenon: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com – Annotated

Via Archinect.com.

• This fall, after eight years and almost half a billion dollars, world-famous architect Renzo Piano will complete the greenest museum ever built—the new California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—housing its aquarium, planetarium, and natural-history museum under a two-and-a-half-acre “living roof.”

• by Matt Tyrnauer May 2008

• 

• The Kimball Natural History Museum’s “living roof” with Jules Verne porthole skylights. Photographs by Todd Eberle.

• “Talk about Moses coming down from the mountain,” says Greg Farrington, the academy’s director. “He just nailed it. It was inspiration. His vision was to lift up a piece of the park and slide the museum underneath.”

• 

• The rain forest inside the new academy building is enclosed in a glass dome.

• Few, if any, buildings of this stature come close to making their sustainability programs comprehensible as well as visually inspiring components of their design.

• “The building,” says Piano, “had to be green and sustainable to go with its purpose—study of the earth and science. It is also in a very unusual place, the middle of one of the most beautiful parks in the world. You almost never get a chance to build something in the middle of a great park, so it needed to be transparent. You needed to see where you are.