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In Olympian Dreams, Designs For the City - from The New York Times
2004-01-16 04:11:14
By JULIE V. IOVINE
"NYC2012: Olympic Opportunities," now at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village, is a small show, but it presages huge architectural ambitions for New York City. The bid to make the city the home of the Olympics in 2012 may seem like a pipe dream, but detailed plans are well under way for some 25 sites spanning all five buroughs, New Jersey and Nassau County.
The projected new construction budget, the bulk of which will be privately financed, is in excess of $3 billion, said Daniel L. Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding and the founder of NYC2012, the group leading New York's bid to be host. "We hope to use the process of bidding for, and hopefully hosting, the Olympics as a way to showcase New York as a center of excellence and path-breaking developments in design," Mr. Doctoroff said.
New York is contending against eight other cities, including Paris, London, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and Havana, making this one of the hottest — one could say, truly Olympic-class — races in the modern history of the games. The International Olympic Committee will announce its decision on July 6, 2005.
More than a dozen initial proposals for athletic fields, a stadium and other sites for supporting events have already been designed and are on display through Feb. 7 at the Center for Architecture, at 536 La Guardia Place (north of Bleecker Street). Printed on wide strips of floppy Mylar, clipped to fluorescent tube lights and suspended by wire from the water pipes in a radical-tech installation by J. Meejin Yoon, the exhibition makes it appear that it would be easy enough to slip the mega-structures needed for the games into the already stretched urban fabric of New York.
Half a dozen events would take place in Manhattan alone, including gymnastics (at Madison Square Garden), wrestling (at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center) and boxing (at the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem). The Manhattan architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates has designed an Olympic stadium that would be constructed on decking over the rail yards on the West Side from 30th to 33rd Streets. (The $800 million stadium is to be paid for by the New York Jets as its new home. But the decking and roof would be built with about $600 million from city and state funds, Mr. Doctoroff said, so that the stadium could be used for conventions and other events.) The stadium has been designed to harvest energy from wind, water and the sun, and, along with its retractable roof, would have walls made of solar thermal tubes and the capacity to collect and recycle rain water.
Alongside the stadium, there would be a lawn designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, 40 percent larger than Bryant Park but in the same urbane spirit as the midtown park. It would be bisected by a long glass pavilion loaded with restaurants, cafes and shops. With its afterlife as a park in mind, the lawn would include a majestic fountain and a flourishing bosque of trees. Although both the stadium and the lawn would be built over the Long Island Rail Road storage yard, a spokesman for NYC2012 said that thanks to new technology no one would ever feel the trains rumbling below.
Weiss/Manfredi, a relatively young Manhattan firm, was charged with designing locations for rowing and white-water events at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, a leftover landscape haunted by glaring remnants of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs. The firm's plan — created to focus, as with all the designs, on post-Olympic uses — includes a mile-long boardwalk wending through a newly recovered wetland beneath the Piranesian sweep of on- and off-ramps to the Long Island Expressway.
In its proposal, on view at the exhibition, the former reflecting pool of the 1964 Unisphere has been reconfigured into a 20-foot vertical drop for the white-water course.
Margaret Helfand, a Manhattan architect and former president of the American Institute of Archictects, is the curator of the exhibition. Though the show is small, it is packed with a polemic. Beneath the strip of preliminary renderings for New York, she arranged images of some of the greatest hits from past Olympics.
2004-01-16 04:11:14
By JULIE V. IOVINE
"NYC2012: Olympic Opportunities," now at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village, is a small show, but it presages huge architectural ambitions for New York City. The bid to make the city the home of the Olympics in 2012 may seem like a pipe dream, but detailed plans are well under way for some 25 sites spanning all five buroughs, New Jersey and Nassau County.
The projected new construction budget, the bulk of which will be privately financed, is in excess of $3 billion, said Daniel L. Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding and the founder of NYC2012, the group leading New York's bid to be host. "We hope to use the process of bidding for, and hopefully hosting, the Olympics as a way to showcase New York as a center of excellence and path-breaking developments in design," Mr. Doctoroff said.
New York is contending against eight other cities, including Paris, London, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and Havana, making this one of the hottest — one could say, truly Olympic-class — races in the modern history of the games. The International Olympic Committee will announce its decision on July 6, 2005.
More than a dozen initial proposals for athletic fields, a stadium and other sites for supporting events have already been designed and are on display through Feb. 7 at the Center for Architecture, at 536 La Guardia Place (north of Bleecker Street). Printed on wide strips of floppy Mylar, clipped to fluorescent tube lights and suspended by wire from the water pipes in a radical-tech installation by J. Meejin Yoon, the exhibition makes it appear that it would be easy enough to slip the mega-structures needed for the games into the already stretched urban fabric of New York.
Half a dozen events would take place in Manhattan alone, including gymnastics (at Madison Square Garden), wrestling (at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center) and boxing (at the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem). The Manhattan architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates has designed an Olympic stadium that would be constructed on decking over the rail yards on the West Side from 30th to 33rd Streets. (The $800 million stadium is to be paid for by the New York Jets as its new home. But the decking and roof would be built with about $600 million from city and state funds, Mr. Doctoroff said, so that the stadium could be used for conventions and other events.) The stadium has been designed to harvest energy from wind, water and the sun, and, along with its retractable roof, would have walls made of solar thermal tubes and the capacity to collect and recycle rain water.
Alongside the stadium, there would be a lawn designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, 40 percent larger than Bryant Park but in the same urbane spirit as the midtown park. It would be bisected by a long glass pavilion loaded with restaurants, cafes and shops. With its afterlife as a park in mind, the lawn would include a majestic fountain and a flourishing bosque of trees. Although both the stadium and the lawn would be built over the Long Island Rail Road storage yard, a spokesman for NYC2012 said that thanks to new technology no one would ever feel the trains rumbling below.
Weiss/Manfredi, a relatively young Manhattan firm, was charged with designing locations for rowing and white-water events at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, a leftover landscape haunted by glaring remnants of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs. The firm's plan — created to focus, as with all the designs, on post-Olympic uses — includes a mile-long boardwalk wending through a newly recovered wetland beneath the Piranesian sweep of on- and off-ramps to the Long Island Expressway.
In its proposal, on view at the exhibition, the former reflecting pool of the 1964 Unisphere has been reconfigured into a 20-foot vertical drop for the white-water course.
Margaret Helfand, a Manhattan architect and former president of the American Institute of Archictects, is the curator of the exhibition. Though the show is small, it is packed with a polemic. Beneath the strip of preliminary renderings for New York, she arranged images of some of the greatest hits from past Olympics.
Stadium Profile from www.NYC2012.com (group organizing bid for 2012 Summer Olympics)
Olympic Stadium
Sports: Athletics (Track and Field)
Opening and Closing Ceremonies
Located atop the Long Island Rail Road's open Hudson Yards, the Olympic Stadium will host athletics, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and, of course, the Olympic Flame. The stadium will be housed in a southward expansion of the Javits Center, whose retractable-roofed exhibition hall will be converted to meet all requirements of Olympic athletics. Immediately adjacent to the venue, a new twelve-acre public park, Olympic Square, also built on top of the rail yards, will be the focal point of Olympic festivities. A temporary track, located on a floating platform in the Hudson River, will enable athletes to warm up immediately prior to competing.
Legacy
Blighted by the Long Island Rail Road's open Hudson Yards, the area surrounding the Javits Center today is dominated by warehouses, open parking lots, and auto body shops. Building on plans to expand the Javits Center atop the rail yards, the 2012 Olympic Games will catalyze the area's transformation into a thriving 24-hour neighborhood. The presence of an exciting center for conventions, entertainment, recreation, and sports, coupled with multiple mass transit connections, will provide the critical mass necessary to spark the neighborhood's revitalization. Hudson Yards will become a major center of commercial and residential development, helping to meet the city's pressing needs for affordable housing and office space. Olympic Square will take its place alongside Times Square, Lincoln Center, and Rockefeller Center as one of the city's great public gathering places, thronged with tourists, office workers, residents, and sports enthusiasts. And the southern expansion of the Javits Center could house athletics competitions long after the Games conclude.
Sports: Athletics (Track and Field)
Opening and Closing Ceremonies
Located atop the Long Island Rail Road's open Hudson Yards, the Olympic Stadium will host athletics, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and, of course, the Olympic Flame. The stadium will be housed in a southward expansion of the Javits Center, whose retractable-roofed exhibition hall will be converted to meet all requirements of Olympic athletics. Immediately adjacent to the venue, a new twelve-acre public park, Olympic Square, also built on top of the rail yards, will be the focal point of Olympic festivities. A temporary track, located on a floating platform in the Hudson River, will enable athletes to warm up immediately prior to competing.
Legacy
Blighted by the Long Island Rail Road's open Hudson Yards, the area surrounding the Javits Center today is dominated by warehouses, open parking lots, and auto body shops. Building on plans to expand the Javits Center atop the rail yards, the 2012 Olympic Games will catalyze the area's transformation into a thriving 24-hour neighborhood. The presence of an exciting center for conventions, entertainment, recreation, and sports, coupled with multiple mass transit connections, will provide the critical mass necessary to spark the neighborhood's revitalization. Hudson Yards will become a major center of commercial and residential development, helping to meet the city's pressing needs for affordable housing and office space. Olympic Square will take its place alongside Times Square, Lincoln Center, and Rockefeller Center as one of the city's great public gathering places, thronged with tourists, office workers, residents, and sports enthusiasts. And the southern expansion of the Javits Center could house athletics competitions long after the Games conclude.
I havn't seen the inside of it yet, but the outside and the money their putting into this, is amazing. Looks like the Jets will have the nicest stadium come 2012.
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