SHoP on the LES: Charles Bagli breaks the news that New York will get a new Lower East Side development designed by SHoP Architects. Along with Beyer Blinder Belle, SHoP is designing a six-acre complex called Essex Crossing near Delancey and Essex Streets, which will be home to a new Andy Warhol Museum plus some 1,000 apartments. Bagli describes the development that will take the place of nine city-owned lots as "glassy."
Matt Chaban's June primer on SHoP Architects helps to explain their success. "SHoP's business savvy and slick salesmanship have helped make it one of the city's most prolific firms, capable of building big, complex and often politically contentious projects whose designs are nonetheless fawned over at city planning meetings and in the pages of shelter magazines," he writes. "SHoP has become the darling not only of the high-minded design community but also of no-nonsense developers." [The New York Times, Crain's New York Business]
Don't forget to see SHoP Architects' Coren Sharples, AIA, explain her work in her own words. [ARCHITECT]
One-Hundred Fifty-Seven Zingers: Justin Davidson's writeup of Christian de Portzamparc's One57, the new 1,000-foot tower overlooking Central Park, features a Summer Slam's worth of clotheslines, head-stomps, and pile-drivers. He is unhappy with this building and the many other new towers headed for 57th Street. One57, in particular, "[is] a luxury object for people who see the city as their private snow globe." That's one of the nicer things he has to say about it. [New York]
More News:
The Lisbon Architecture Triennale features no buildings. Oliver Wainwright's review reminds me of former Museum of Modern Art chief architecture curator Barry Bergdoll's warning about the "tendency to embrace spontaneous processes, a notion that every intervention is an act of architecture"—a phenomenon he described as "biennial culture." Prophetic words? [The Guardian]
New education standards bring change to the the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. [Indianapolis Star]
Daniel Libeskind delivered the Stephen Lawrence Memorial Lecture this week to honor the memory of Lawrence, an 18-year-old architect-hopeful who was killed in a hate crime in 1993. [Daily Mail]
Designing prisons may be unpopular, but "Prison Architect" continues to gain steam. [New York Daily News]
New from the American Society of Landscape Architects: the Landscape Architects' Guide to Boston. [Fort Mill Times]
