An elliptical chapel near Oxford (pictured), a wooden skyscraper for Stockholm and Heatherwick’s Thames bridge proposal all feature in Dezeen Mail issue 157, along with the latest news, jobs, competitions and reader comments from Dezeen.
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News: London’s Royal College of Art has announced that designer Tord Boontje will leave his post as head of the Design Products course at the end of September after four years in charge.
In a statement released by the Royal College of Art, Tord Boontje explained that he’s stepping down in order to focus on his own design studio.
“It has… become increasingly difficult to combine the role with running my own design studio, engaged as we are with numerous international projects and activities. As this requires all my focus at the moment, I have decided it is time to halt my academic activities after four very successful years,” he said.
The news comes as the college’s annual Show RCA exhibition of work by graduates opens to the public today. The Royal College of Art says it will now begin the search for Boontje’s replacement.
Boontje took over from Ron Arad as head of Design Products in 2009, though many expected the role to go to fellow Dutchman Jurgen Bey.
Boontje gained his MA in Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art and returned in 2000 as a tutor on the Design Products course, where he taught for four years before moving to France to establish his studio there. He opened a shop at his studio in Hackney, east London, in 2012.
At last year’s RCA graduate show, Dezeen filmed a tour of the Design Products graduate work with Boontje . In Milan the previous year, he gave us a tour of the college’s show Intent and told us about trends affecting young designers.
See more stories about Tord Boontje »
See more stories about the Royla College of Art »
Here’s some more information from the Royal College of Art:
Head of Design Products Tord Boontje announced today that he is to leave the Royal College of Art at the end of September 2013
Appointed in September 2009, Professor Tord Boontje has led the Design Products department at the RCA for the last four years. Born in Enschede in the Netherlands in 1968, Boontje studied industrial design first at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and then at the Royal College of Art, where he received his MA in Industrial Design. Following graduation he set up his eponymous design company, Studio Tord Boontje. In 2000, Boontje returned to the College, this time as tutor in Design Products, teaching for four years before moving to France in order to establish his studio there. After 15 years – bringing his design career full circle – Boontje returned again to the RCA, this time as Head of Design Products programme, replacing Ron Arad.
During his tenure leading the world renowned department, Boontje strengthened its academic reputation by raising support for research. Along with increased student recruitment, he also increased the size of the department’s academic and technical teams. Commenting on his time at the College, Boontje said:
“It has been an amazing experience and a great pleasure to lead Design Products for the last four years; I’ve been lucky enough to work with incredibly talented and committed colleagues and students. It has however become increasingly difficult to combine the role with running my own design studio, engaged as we are with numerous international projects and activities. As this requires all my focus at the moment, I have decided it is time to halt my academic activities after four very successful years.’
Dr Paul Thompson, Rector of the Royal College of Art added:
“Tord’s tenure as Professor has been characterised by challenging and thought-provoking briefs, notably around new materials and sustainability. As a Professor, Tord has shown great sensitivity, generosity of spirit and openness towards his students. He has grown the MA programme, engaged an interesting and diverse range of faculty and been a great colleague to work with. We’ll miss him a lot, but wish him and Emma Woffenden every success with their studios.”
The College will undertake an international search to find a new Head of Design Products. The RCA graduate show, including the work of Boontje’s Design Products students, opened today in Kensington. This will be Boontje’s last graduate show as Head of programme.
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Design Products at Royal College of Art appeared first on Dezeen.
This gentle twist of concrete bridges an Alpine river on a scenic road between two towns in western Austria.
Designed by Austrian studio Marte.Marte Architects, the bridge crosses the Schanerloch gorge on the road that leads from the city of Dornbirn towards the hamlet of Ebnit to the south.
Referencing the arched stone bridges traditionally constructed in the region, the architects created a solid concrete volume with a gently arching profile and a twist in its middle that responds to the angle of the road.
“The result is a concrete sculpture that might look unspectacular in plan and from the driver’s point of view,” says architect Marina Hämmerle, “but from the shore of the river winding through the gorge it unveils its compelling fascination: it playfully mimes the frozen dynamic of the mountain road and captures the dramatic place in reinforced concrete.”
The Schanerloch Bridge was completed in 2005, but has been seen by few others than the drivers passing through.
A number of bridge designs have been unveiled recently. OMA proposes a bridge for hosting events in Bordeaux, while Thomas Heatherwick has designed a garden to span the River Thames in London.
See more bridges on Dezeen »
See more architecture in Austria »
Photography is by Marc Lins.
Here’s a project description from Marina Hämmerle:
Schanerloch Bridge, Ebnit Dornbirn
The bridge through the Schanerloch gorge is part of the impressive road from the city of Dornbirn to the hamlet of Ebnit which picturesquely situated by the well of the river Dornbirner Ache at the foot of scenic mountains. The spectacular route to this ancient settlement area is characterised by a series of natural rock tunnels and stone bridges.
Originating from the well-known typology of the stone arch bridge, modern technology takes the geometry of the arch to its very limits. The reduction of the arch rise to a statically necessary minimum is combined with a twist along one axis. The latter is also responding to the bending road as a curve immediately follows the bridge in both driving directions.
The result is a concrete sculpture that might look unspectacular in plan and from the driver’s point of view, but from the shore of the river winding through the gorge it unveils its compelling fascination: it playfully mimes the frozen dynamic of the mountain road and captures the dramatic place in reinforced concrete.
Perfect in form, a masterpiece of design and statical calculation precisely fixed in the spectacular scenery.
Client: City of Dornbirn
Location: Ebniter Straße, 6850 Dornbirn
Architecture: Marte.Marte Architekten ZT GmbH, Weiler
(Arch.DI Bernhard Marte, Arch.DI Stefan Marte)
Overall length: approx. 23m
Overall width: 5,50m bis 6,50m
Driving clearance (width): minimum 4,75m
Reinforced concrete arch: minimum thickness 35cm
Conrete volume: approx. 180m3
Footing: directly into the adjacent rock wall
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Marte.Marte Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
News: fruit may no longer come with sticky labels thanks to an EU ruling approving the use of chemicals applied with a laser to brand fresh produce.
The European Union has approved the use of iron oxides and hydroxides on the skin of fruit, which are used to make laser markings stand out more clearly without penetrating the peel.
Alongside company branding and information on country of origin, the tattoos could include barcodes or QR codes that shoppers would scan to access more details about the produce.
Spanish company Laser Food, which has developed a machine that can apply laser logos to as many as 54,000 pieces of fruit an hour, has been campaigning for the ban on the chemicals to be lifted since 2009.
The company claims the technique could have environmental benefits by reducing the paper, plastic and glue used in stickers, as well as preventing fruit being sold on without details of its supply chain.
Other packaging design we’ve reported on recently includes medicine packs designed to fit in between Coca-Cola bottles to take advantage of the company’s vast distribution network and limited editions of famous products with no brand names on the packaging.
See more stories about food design »
See more stories about packaging »
Images are by Laser Food.
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on fruit appeared first on Dezeen.
News: Thomas Heatherwick has denied any knowledge of a design presented to the London Olympic committee in 2007 by an American firm, which bears a strong resemblance to his cauldron used at the climax of last summer’s Olympic opening ceremony.
Images of a proposal for a pavilion shown to LOCOG in 2007 by New York design studio Atopia were published by The Guardian newspaper this morning and show a cluster of petals atop long slender poles that looks strikingly like the design by Heatherwick Studio, which consisted of 204 copper petals that came together to create a single flame.
Heatherwick, who was awarded a CBE on the Queen’s 2013 Birthday Honours list last week for services to the design industry, says the idea that his studio’s design was influenced by Atopia’s project or by LOCOG is false. “This claim is spurious nonsense. The ludicrous accusation that LOCOG briefed us to work with, develop or implement a pre-existing idea and that we acted in accordance with this briefing is completely and entirely untrue.”
The designer added: “Before this week, I – and the entire team I was working with – knew absolutely nothing about this proposal, or the ideas it is claimed it contained. None of us saw or were shown the illustrations published in The Guardian on 19 June 2013 until two days ago.”
“Danny [Boyle, artistic director of the opening ceremony] and I evolved the idea for the cauldron over many months, in iterative rounds of discussions and I am appalled at the suggestion that either of us would let ourselves be influenced by any previous work. We were most definitely not steered by LOCOG towards this or any other idea. Any suggestion to the contrary is an affront to our creative integrity.”
Danny Boyle has also dismissed the claims, stating: “As Artistic Director of the London 2012 Olympic Ceremony, I asked Thomas Heatherwick to take on the design of the Olympic Cauldron because of the integrity and originality of his ideas.”
“I also absolutely and categorically reject any suggestion, whatever its motive, that Thomas or I were influenced by anything other than our obligation to create a ceremonial work of art that celebrated British originality, creativity and engineering,” Boyle added. “This is total nonsense and must not be allowed to spoil our appreciation of Thomas’s magnificent work.”
Speaking to Oliver Wainwright in The Guardian, Jane Harrison, the co-director at New York design studio Atopia said that Heatherwick’s cauldron “looked identical to something we had proposed to the London Olympic committee back in 2007, after which we hadn’t heard anything.”
Harrison added that Atopia’s proposal also featured a similar narrative to the construction of the cauldron at the opening ceremony, which was assembled from petals brought to the stadium by each of the competing nations.
“We devised a structure of petals on tall stems, which would travel from all of the participating countries, then be brought into the stadium by children. The petals would be assembled during the opening ceremony to form a flower-like canopy, and distributed back to the different nations after the Games,” she explained.
Atopia has only recently been allowed to raise its concerns after a gagging order preventing architects, engineers and builders from promoting their involvement in the Games was lifted.
Heatherwick received acclaim from the public for the design of the cauldron, although its positioning inside the Olympic Stadium and out of sight for many visitors to the Olympic park sparked controversy.
See all stories about Thomas Heatherwick »
Below are the complete quotes from Thomas Heatherwick, filmmaker Danny Boyle and former head of ceremonies for London 2012, Martin Green:
Thomas Heatherwick, Heatherwick Studio
“This claim is spurious nonsense. The ludicrous accusation that LOCOG briefed us to work with, develop or implement a pre-existing idea and that we acted in accordance with this briefing is completely and entirely untrue.
Before this week, I – and the entire team I was working with – knew absolutely nothing about this proposal, or the ideas it is claimed it contained. None of us saw or were shown the illustrations published in The Guardian on 19 June 2013 until two days ago.
Danny and I evolved the idea for the cauldron over many months, in iterative rounds of discussions and I am appalled at the suggestion that either of us would let ourselves be influenced by any previous work. We were most definitely not steered by LOCOG towards this or any other idea. Any suggestion to the contrary is an affront to our creative integrity.”
Danny Boyle
“As Artistic Director of the London 2012 Olympic Ceremony, I asked Thomas Heatherwick to take on the design of the Olympic Cauldron because of the integrity and originality of his ideas.
Before Tuesday, neither of us had seen, heard of or knew about the existence of the illustrations published in The Guardian on 19 June 2013.
Thomas and I evolved the idea for the cauldron over many months of discussions. I categorically deny that LOCOG briefed us to work with, develop or implement any pre-existing idea that had been presented to them.
I also absolutely and categorically reject any suggestion, whatever its motive, that Thomas or I were influenced by anything other than our obligation to create a ceremonial work of art that celebrated British originality, creativity and engineering.
This is total nonsense and must not be allowed to spoil our appreciation of Thomas’s magnificent work.”
Martin Green, former Head of Ceremonies, London 2012
“Neither these nor any other images or presentations played any part in the briefing I gave to Danny Boyle and Thomas Heatherwick at the beginning of the process to create the Olympic and Paralympic Cauldron. The design for the cauldron came about solely from the creative conversations between Danny, Thomas and myself.”
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cauldron is a copy as “spurious nonsense” appeared first on Dezeen.
Bunk bed booths provide sleeping sanctuaries at this hostel in Split, Croatia, by local designer Lana Vitas Gruić (+ slideshow).
The new hostel houses 15 beds divided between two rooms accessed from a lobby, which features branding also by Gruić of Atom Design.
In the largest room, colourful units with simple white rails and ladders each house two beds, while the blue block in the centre of the largest room is double-sided to accommodate four.
Two more units are situated in a smaller all-white room, with an extra bed raised high above the ground that appears to balance on lockers.
Desks and shelves accompanied by a mixture of chair styles offer space for guests to eat or use laptops within the dorms.
Photos of lesser-known sites around the city have been blown up to cover walls.
Owners Mila and Toni Radan worked with Gruić to convert the disused apartment, located close to the city’s port and historic Diocletian’s Palace. “From the beginning, it was our desire to create a comfortable, functional and modern space that has the spirit of a Split street,” they say.
Recently we published a story about five wooden cabins that fan out around a site on Tokyo Bay to form capsule accommodation.
Other projects in Croatia include a fashion boutique with rubber-coated fabric pinned to the walls and a house with one storey the dramatically overhangs the floor below.
See more hostel design »
See more architecture and design in Croatia »
New hostel in Split
Split has got a new hostel. Emanuel Hostel is located in Tolstoy Street and is part of the apartment house from the first half of the 20th century. Mila and Toni Radan, the owners of the hostel, adapt completely ruined apartment into a hostel with 15 beds. Toni, who is otherwise engaged in adaptations of similar objects, creates forms and deployment of space, and interior design and visual identity is done by Split designer Lana Vitas Gruić (Atom Design Studio).
From the beginning, it was our desire to create a comfortable, functional and modern space that has the spirit of a Split street. The design was created as a product of fusion, conjuction of the hostel’s name meaning, identity of the Mediterranean climate and the tendency of creating a design hostel. The style is eclectic, as evidenced by the contrast of clear, modern lines of bed forms with chairs and accessories from the 50s and 60s of the last century.
In addition to being a place to relax, refresh and sleep, the hostel can serve as a space for socialising – a kind of a living room with internet service and free breakfast so it does not have exclusively a transitional character of typical of hostels, but a warm, pleasant and airy space that is not only a “dorm”.
Since in the Mediterranean life is always happening outside, on the streets, and there is a strong culture of cafes, we transferred that same street and exterior onto the hostel’s interior walls with photos of Split motifs. To avoid banalisation, photo-wallpapers’ motifs are not the much-vaunted ones of Split such as towers, peristyle, waterfront or street moments of a full market-place and fish-market. We have tried to achieve a fine blend of an outdoor and indoor living, a street object like barrel beside an armchair which is part of someone’s living room. From such approach we interpret relaxed quality, almost modesty, that nonetheless does not occur by accident, but as a result of a methodical work and experience.
Hostel Emanuel is a place with a story and a family project which primarily arises from the enthusiasm and the special spirit of its owners and all who participated in that process.
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by Lana Vitas Gruić appeared first on Dezeen.
Ten years after completing the Ílhavo Maritime Museum in Portugal, Lisbon studio ARX Portugal has extended the building by adding an aquarium dedicated to codfish (+ slideshow).
The aquarium is contained within an angular metal-clad structure, positioned over a white concrete base. Bridging a public plaza, the building sets up a winding route between the existing museum and its accompanying research centre.
ARX Portugal placed the aquarium tank at the centre of a spiralling pathway, allowing visitors to look into the water from different heights and positions.
The architects explain: “The visitor’s path is a spiralling ramp, a journey that begins in suspension over the tank and turns into a diving mode of gradual discovery, an experience of immersion in the cod habitat.”
An informal auditorium offers a stop along the route, where visitors can learn more about the fish, while extra facts and pictures are printed across the walls.
A private basement floor houses technical equipment needed to maintain the tanks and there’s also storage space to house the museum’s archive.
ARX Portugal completed the Ílhavo Maritime Museum in 2002 and it was one of five projects nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2003.
The studio’s other projects include a top-heavy concrete and glass house and a residence with a gaping chasm through its centre.
Photography is by Fernando Guerra.
Here’s a project description from ARX Portugal:
Ílhavo Maritime Museum Extension
The codfish aquarium connects two other buildings and sets a complex built ensemble, united around the subjects of the sea and fishing. In this unusual structure, the Maritime Museum is the place of memory, the Aquarium the space for marine life and CIEMAR, installed in the old renovated school, the research centre for the activities of man linked to the sea.
In articulating these three units the building is both an autonomous urban equipment that relates to the context and defines a public space, but it is also a building-path, which develops in a spiral around the tank as it connects the Museum to the old school.
In a context of small scattered houses, it is shaped by the interstices of this urban domestic fabric and establishes a new public domain. But in doing so it breaks into two horizontally overlapping bodies searching for a scale of transition.
In its proposed matter duality, the white concrete body emerges from the ground and sets the basis for defining a square. The floating black body of metal scales sets the height of the square, in a public urbanity redefined into three dimensions.
At the heart of the building we find the fish and the sea. The visitor’s path is a spiraling ramp, a journey that begins in suspension over the tank and turns into a diving mode of gradual discovery, an experience of immersion in the cod habitat. The informal auditorium, with extensive visibility into the aquarium, marks a pause in the visit for contemplation and information about the life of this species.
All technical components of control are placed in the basement, guaranteeing a subliminal operation of all the life support systems, the quality of the seawater, the control of air temperature and even the new reserves of the Maritime Museum.
Location: Ílhavo, Portugal
Owner: Ílhavo Municipality
Project: 2009–11
Construction: 2011-12
Architecture: ARX PORTUGAL, Arquitectos Lda.
José Mateus
Nuno Mateus
Work Team: Ricardo Guerreiro, Fábio Cortês, Ana Fontes, Baptiste Fleury, Luís Marques, Sofia Raposo, Sara Nieto, Héctor Bajo
Structures: TAL PROJECTOS, Projectos, Estudos e Serviços de Engenharia Lda.
Electrical and Telecomunications Planning: Security Planning
AT, Serviços de Engenharia Electrotécnica e Electrónica Lda.
Mechanical Planning: PEN, Projectos de Engenharia Lda.
Sanitary Planning: Atelier 964
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by ARX Portugal appeared first on Dezeen.
Nine stone cabins are sheltered beneath a single thatched roof in this addition to a hotel resort in Nha Trang, Vietnam, by architecture practice a21studio (+ slideshow).
The buildings nestle into the rugged landscape of the I-Resort, forming an uneven row that wraps around a pair of staggered outdoor swimming pools and also includes a small bar and restaurant.
The architects at a21studio used indigenous techniques to construct the cabins, helped by a team of local masons and carpenters. Walls are built from locally quarried stone, while the roofing is made from timber and coconut leaves.
“The wooden roofs are constructed in a traditional way with mortise and tenon joint techniques,” explain the architects. “These joints are easy to assemble and the connections are very strong, neat and hard to wobble.”
The layout of each cabin is the same; a living room occupies one side of the space, while a toilet and washroom are tucked away at the back and a small paddling pool sits at the front.
Patterned tiles add a mixture of colours to the interior walls and floors. Windows are circular and entrances are positioned along the sides.
The bar and restaurant also shelters beneath the thatched roof and is positioned at the centre of the plan. This space is filled with reclaimed furniture and features a wall covered in old doors.
Other thatched cabins we’ve featured recently include reconstructed residences on an island in Indonesia and a bamboo bar in Vietnam’s Binh Duong Province.
See more thatched buildings »
See more architecture in Vietnam »
Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.
Here’s some more information from a21studio:
9 Spa
9 spa is a set of nine hotel houses with spas, mud and mineral baths together with a small bar and restaurant, located in the centre of the group. The buildings are perched in the folds of halfway terrace up to a rock mountain and looking down to the service area, which has run business from two years ago. On this side, the project is received a lot of rain but lacked of wind from the river.
Using indigenous building techniques and materials, and adopting local custom as the key to managing the project, both architecturally and otherwise, 80 village masons, carpenters and craft persons were enlisted to build the hotel in a period of 9 months. The project was designed as a combination of dry-stacked stone with wood structure, quarried right on the site. All other materials such as coconut leaves and used furniture are used on the same manner.
The houses are set up in different specific angles and placed separately by a distance to let rain water go down easily from the top of mountain. The spaces between the blocks make an entrance lobby for each house. Moreover, it helps to increase ventilation for the whole area. The wooden roofs are constructed in a traditional way with mortise and tenon joint techniques. These joints are easy to assemble and the connections are very strong, neat, and hard to be wobbled. Unlike old buildings, in which these techniques are adopted popular, 9 spa is structured with lighter and lissom looks. Above this wooden structure, the roof is divided into 3 layers, including 20 mm thick wood panels, which gives an aesthetic look to ceiling and links all beams together, water proof and 30 mm coconut leaves, respectively. Besides, the project also makes use of old furniture from nearby buildings such as doors, tables and chairs or patterned tiles, give the buildings a distinctive look, the beauty or serenity of old items that comes with age.
The bar, with less than a dozen seats and the wooden floor, faced out to a garden looking to public resort, which makes the hotel hideaway from eventful area downhill. The level of restaurant floor was above from the ground, thereby linking the outside space to the interior and offering a new viewpoint to the customers, while not touching to existing nature. On the other words, by any means necessary, nature is treated as the core value to the whole building, that its beauty can be contemplated at every corner of the project. That could be a row of mountain far away through a rounded window or a garden view is enframed as a picture by unusual opens.
In conclusion, a group of nine hotel houses are linked by a continuous wooden roof, reflecting its surrounding environment and landscape. By using local materials as rock and wood together with adopting old furniture, 9 spa gives an extraordinary value to the existing project.
Client: I-resort
Location: Nha Trang, Vietnam
Project area: 1080 sqm
Building area: 450 sqm
Materials: rock, wood, coconut leaf, used furniture and tiles
Completed: 2013
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by a21studio appeared first on Dezeen.
News: urban improvements such as cycle paths, parks and public transport could transform Brooklyn and help turn New York City into the USA’s leading location for technology firms, according to plans unveiled this week.
“New York City, now the second leading tech hub in the nation, can overtake Silicon Valley in the top spot,” said the Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition, as it unveiled a strategic plan to transform former industrial areas of the borough into a high-tech hub.
The coalition wants to transform the area between Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO and the Brooklyn Navy Yard by creating new office spaces, improving transportation and pedestrian access, and adding cycle paths, footbridges and more green areas.
New York architects WXY Architecture + Urban Design drew up the plan. WXY founding principal Claire Weisz said: “The plan will help make the Tech Triangle a great place for tech firms to be – encouraging cafes and new outdoor spaces, better cycle routes, and new spaces for startups.”
“The city has a golden opportunity in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle,” said Tucker Reed, president of Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, one of the organisations backing the plan. “This new strategic plan lays out specific ideas which will make the Brooklyn Tech Triangle the most attractive place for tech to set up shop and stay.”
The initiative comes at a time when New York’s technology sector is experiencing a surge in activity, with companies including Facebook opening new offices in the city and Cornell University partnering with the city to build a large tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the East River.
This boom is part of what some commentators see as a broader shift that is seeing tech firms move away from the sprawling, suburban culture of Silicon Valley to more compact, urban locations such as New York and London.
In an article in The Wall Street Journal last year, urban studies theorist Richard Florida claimed that technology firms are moving to cities to be closer to designers and end users, as well as the vibrant urban culture that cities offer. Engineers today are “less interested in owning cars and big houses,” preferring to live “somewhere which has lots of bars and lots of places you can eat,” Florida wrote.
Brooklyn is already home to many innovation-based firms, including online marketplace Etsy and 3D printer brand MakerBot, but the coalition believes that limited spaces for new businesses could stifle growth.
In response, WXY have devised a scheme to create a “Special Innovation District” by incentivising the redevelopment of industrial buildings.
WXY’s managing principal Adam Lubinsky said: “Brooklyn’s synergy between living and working in a creative environment will benefit from initiatives like the Special Innovation District, bolstered by relocation incentives tweaked for startups and incentives for landowners to upgrade their buildings.”
The architects also propose creating a hot-air balloon-inspired observation platform, a cafe and a “tech terrace” with a huge digital screen. Brooklyn Tech Triangle claims that the proposals could act as a blueprint for other innovation districts in New York, helping the city to overcome Silicon Valley as the most popular location in the country for technology firms.
Research conducted by the coalition found that more than 9,600 people were employed in 560 tech companies in Brooklyn in 2012, which generated $3.1 billion. This figure is set to almost double by 2015.
The strategy has been backed by the public, private and academic sectors and now requires support from the government and real estate companies so over 370,000 square metres of space can be adapted to house technology and creative companies.
Several other cities have recently launched initiatives aimed at challenging Silicon Valley’s dominance of the technology industry, including the Tech City district of East London, which is home to a shared workplace operated by Google and is the site of a proposal for an office building covered in digital advertisements by architects 00:/.
See all stories about technology companies »
See all stories about New York »
Here are some more details about the plan:
Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition reveals strategy to surpass Silicon Valley
Plan details proposals on workforce development, real estate incentives and zoning, transportation linkages and public space creation
New York City, now the second leading tech hub in the nation, can overtake Silicon Valley in the top spot, according to a strategic plan released today by the Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition. The strategy – which has broad public-, private- and academic-sector backing – calls for enhancing workforce development, increasing the availability of affordable real estate, and improving transportation and public environs. It also points out that failure to take action now could jeopardize the City’s economic vitality. Focused on the areas between Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the plan is widely viewed as the model for creating innovation districts throughout NYC.
The Brooklyn Tech Triangle is a magnet for innovation-based entrepreneurs and has emerged as the City’s largest cluster of tech activity outside of Manhattan. It is projected that in two years the area will support 18,000 tech-related jobs and 43,000 indirect jobs. However, a lack of appropriate commercial and light industrial space to support the innovation economy and an adequately trained workforce, among other factors, threaten to stifle this growth, according to the strategic plan authored by a team led by WXY Architecture + Urban Design.
The Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition – led by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, DUMBO Improvement District and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation – seeks to address these challenges. If the Brooklyn Tech Triangle plan is fully implemented with support from government, the real estate community, tech firms and academic institutions, up to 4 million square feet of space in the Tech Triangle would be occupied by tech and creative businesses in 2015.
Funding and other support for the Brooklyn Tech Triangle initiative has come from Empire State Development Corporation, Office of New York City Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, New York City Department of Small Business Services, New York City Council and Speaker Christine Quinn, Borough President Marty Markowitz, New York University, Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and the Brooklyn Community Foundation.
“The City has a golden opportunity in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle,” said Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. “To seize it, we need to create space for tech growth and tap into our talent pools of local residents and students enrolled in the area’s 12 universities. This new strategic plan lays out specific ideas which will make the Brooklyn Tech Triangle the most attractive place for tech to set up shop and stay.”
The Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition conducted an economic impact study of the tech sector in Brooklyn in 2012 that found there are more than 520 tech companies employing over 9,600 people, generating $3.1 billion of economic output and is poised to nearly double by 2015, requiring an additional 2.2 million square feet of office space. Following the study, the coalition formed a task force comprised of local tech firms, entrepreneurs, government representatives, real estate firms, area residents and civic leaders and educators to develop a strategic plan to capitalize on this upward trend.
“Innovative companies want to grow and create great jobs here. We have to unlock the potential of our real estate – the buildings that were home to New York’s industrial boom once before – to make sure they can do just that. We also have to unlock the potential of our local workforce to make sure they can give those jobs to New Yorkers for years to come,” said Alexandria Sica, executive director of the DUMBO Improvement District. “The Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition looks forward to working with residents, companies and elected leaders to turn these ideas into reality.”
“This is an activation plan for the 21st century and a blueprint for ensuring that surrounding communities can benefit from economic opportunities emerging in the Tech Triangle, and that innovation economy businesses find space to grow,” said Andrew Kimball, president/CEO of Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp.
The post New York “can overtake
Silicon Valley” as tech hub appeared first on Dezeen.
News: British architect Colin Stansfield Smith, a pioneer of UK school design, has died at the age of 80.
Stansfield Smith was head of the Hampshire County Architects Department from 1973 to 1992. Under his lead, the department developed a radical approach to designing primary and secondary schools that was shaped by use and environment rather than architectural style.
Well-known projects include Newlands Primary School in Yateley, Queen’s Inclosure Primary School in Waterlooville and Whitehill School in Bordon.
The architect was awarded a CBE in 1988, picked up the RIBA Gold Medal in 1991 and was knighted in 1993.
After leaving Hampshire in the hands of colleague Bob Wallbridge, Stansfield Smith became an architecture professor at the Portsmouth University School of Architecture, where he designed a new faculty building. He also continued to work on school commissions privately, including Woodlea Primary School in Bordon.
He died on 18 June, following a stroke two weeks earlier.
Read more about school design in the UK »
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(1932-2013) appeared first on Dezeen.
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