NBBJ and Chan Krieger Sieniewicz to merge

NBBJ, a global architecture and design firm, and Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, internationally-known for urban design and architecture excellence, announced today a merger of the two firms that will create an integrated team of over 700 architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners and interior designers.

The Chan Krieger Sieniewicz team, including its five principals, will continue in their current roles. As part of the transition to the NBBJ name, the Cambridge office will operate as Chan Krieger NBBJ.

The merger gives NBBJ, which already operates a project office in Boston, a larger presence in New England. The Seattle-based firm has offices in several U.S. cities, including Columbus, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Overseas offices include London, Beijing, Shanghai and Dubai.

SOURCE: NBBJ.com

NY State to close parks and raise fees

The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is closing 41 parks and 14 historic sites across the state and reducing services 23 parks and 1 historic site.

According to the Press Release

The Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) today put forward a list of closures and service reductions in order to achieve its proposed 2010-11 agency savings target and help address the State’s historic fiscal difficulties. As part of a comprehensive plan to close an $8.2 billion deficit……

The plan also assumes $4 million in park and historic site fee increases that will be identified at a later date, and the use of $5 million in funds from the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) to finance OPRHP operations.

SOURCE: New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation

To see the list of parks and historic sites

Continue reading NY State to close parks and raise fees

New look for Federal Plaza, gone are the green benches

The award winning Federal Plaza designed by Martha Schwartz is going to get a new design as the plaza is reconstructed over a 12-18 month period to fix the plaza deck that is settling and leaking affecting the building and carpark below the plaza.

The current design of swirling green benches designed by Martha Schwartz will be removed and replaced by magnolia trees, low evergreen plantings, marble benches and  a fountain designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA).

The Tribeca Trib recently reported  about  Matthew Urbanski’s (a principal with MVVA) presentation of the new design to Community Board 1’s Seaport/Civic Center Committee.

Much of the design, Urbanski said,  was influenced by the “microclimate” of the plaza, which receives too much sun in the summer and too little in the winter, plus a wind tunnel effect along Worth Street. The magnolia trees are positioned at the northern end of the plaza where they can provide shade and some shielding from winter winds.

To read and see more about the new plaza design go to the [SOURCE: Tribeca Trib - Yet Another Look in Store for Federal Plaza]

New York luring developers with landscape

New York is creating new parks in Queens at Hunter Point South to lure developers and then tenants to the area. Weiss/Manfredi are the landscape architects for the project and the New York Times recently quoted Michael Manfredi as saying

“The city needed to signal to a fairly skittish development community that it’s serious about this project,” a partner in the New York firm Weiss/Manfredi, the landscape architects on the project along with Thomas Balsley Associates. “Unlike most projects, where open space follows housing and lots of charged debate, here the open space comes first.”

Read the rest of the article in the New York Times

[SOURCE: New York Times - Landscaping as a Seductive First Step]

ALEC APPELBAUM

Landscape Architects in NY Mag’s – Reasons to Love New York

New York Magazine recently published its ‘Reasons to Love New York’ and in at No.33 was Because Times Square will never be finished and reported that

When the department of Transportation closed seven blocks of Broadway to cars this summer, New Yorkers were offered an object lesson in how profoundly urban space can be altered by a few traffic barriers and a bucket of paint. Within hours, the newly pedestrianized Times Square was colonized by wanderers, nearby office workers, and tourists calling home (“You will not believe where I am standing!”).

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