Triangle Fire Memorial Jury Seeks ‘Something That Can’t Be Ignored’

It was 102 years ago this week that a fire broke out in the cutting room of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. When the fire department responded to the blaze, which soon spread to the “fireproof” building’s eighth, ninth, and tenth floors, the ladders and hoses didn’t reach past the sixth floor. Some 146 workers perished in less than 20 minutes. The tragedy, which played a pivotal role in the movement to enact worker safety laws, is getting a permanent memorial, but what form should it take? (We’re thinking three sides?) The group spearheading the initiative is now seeking ideas with an international design competition.

“We need something that can’t be ignored,” says Mary Anne A. Trasciatti, executive director of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. “That compels passersby to take notice, stop, and reflect. That will make them work for a better world where something like the Triangle Fire never happens again.” To enter, simply sketch out your idea for the memorial on a 24” x 36” sheet and submit it online (register here by April 5 and upload your entry by April 12). A jury that includes Daniel Libeskind and Deborah Berke will select a shortlist of ten entries to further develop their designs and later reconvene to make a final selection of the top three prizewinners and honorable mentions.

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Situ Studio Creates ‘Heartwalk’ for Time Square

Times Square is awash in hearts this month. Tracey Emin‘s “I Promise To Love You” neonworks are now playing nightly on screens throughout the NYC hub in what is the largest coordinated effort in history by Times Square sign operators. And today the Times Square Alliance debuts Situ Studio‘s “Heartwalk,” the winner of its annual Valentine Heart Design competition, conducted this year in collaboration with Design Trust for Public Space.

The designers at Brooklyn-based Situ Studio looked to the collective experience of Hurricane Sandy as inspiration for their installation, made from hundreds of boards salvaged from storm-ravaged boardwalks in areas such as the Rockaways and Atlantic City. The heart-shaped enclosure, located opposite the TKTS booth, is illuminated from within. Visitors can prowl the perimeter and peek through the slats or step inside, through a flattened area at the base. “We were interested in creating a room within the city–a public space that was simultaneously interior and exterior,” says Situ Studio partner Bradley Samuels. “‘Heartwalk’ is a reflection on the things that bind us together, ephemeral and permanent.”

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Metropolitan Museum Breaks Ground on New Plaza, Fountains


(Rendering by OLIN)

Change is afoot along the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s four-block-long outdoor plaza (fear not, the crowd-pleasing front steps will remain just as they are). Last renovated four decades ago with an eye to vehicular access, the plaza is undergoing a $65 million transformation masterminded by an OLIN team led by partner Dennis McGlade. The new outdoor plaza will open to the public in the fall of 2014 as “The David H. Koch Plaza,” announced the museum at last week’s groundbreaking (a symbolic affair, postponed by Hurricane Sandy, as excavaction got underway in October). Koch, a museum trustee, donated the entire project budget.

Among the upgrades are improved museum access, including additional seating options on either side of the grand staircase and opening up a variety of pedestrian routes by replacing existing pavement with granite paving. Then there are the fountains: it’s out with the door-impeding long ones and in with contemporary circle-in-a-square versions. Flanked by long stone benches, the new granite fountains will flow year-round thanks to freeze-fighting recycled steam. Fluidity Design Consultants promises “glassy water streams” that will be individually size-controlled and programmed to present a wide variety of programmable patterns. Visitors that can tear themselves away from the sure-to-be-mesmerizing water features can frolic among some 100 newly planted trees, including allées of large Little Leaf Linden trees, to be pruned in the form of two Palais Royal-style aerial hedges. All of this will be cleverly illuminated by a new lighting scheme developed by L’Observatoire International.

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Watch This: A Year in the Life of the High Line

With the new year fast approaching, the abandoned railway-turned-urban skypark that is New York’s High Line takes a look back at a triumphant–and occasionally trying (thanks, Sandy)–2012 in this peppy photo montage. Approximately 4.4 million people visited the High Line this year for leisurely strolls, free film screenings, field trips, artworks by the likes of Richard Artschwager and El Anatsui, photo ops with self-seeded plants and wild grasses, parties, and all sorts of other reasons you’ll see in the below “year in pictures.” Pull up a tapered plank and enjoy.

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Fly Through Norman Foster’s Design for the New York Public Library

Change is afoot at the New York Public Library, which tapped Foster + Partners to mastermind an ambitious expansion that will more than double the public space within the 42nd Street building while preserving the 101-year-old landmark’s facade and its original interiors. Norman Foster joined NYPL President Anthony Marx last week at the library to unveil the initial schematic designs, which call for a new 100,000-square-foot lending library along with enhanced spaces for scholars, writers, and researchers. The video below offers an animated sneak peek at what the library will look like in 2018, once the project is completed. Entering through the library’s Fifth Avenue entrance, the camera travels on an east-to-west axis through the building’s first floor.

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Nifty, Gifty: Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Lincoln Center Inside Out

Diller Scofidio + Renfro excels at inversion, masterly flipping concepts of public and private, nature and structure (see also: High Line, The). The interdisciplinary design studio’s transformation of New York’s Lincoln Center is revealed in the pages of Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account, hot off the Damiani presses. Falling somewhere on the continuum between art book and architectural diary, the monograph chronicles the extensive redevelopment project through photographs, drawings, renderings, texts, and interviews. Upping the book’s giftability quotient are the series of 30 gatefolds: large-format photographs by the likes of Iwan Baan and Matthew Monteith that open up to stories and ephemera documenting the spaces shown in the images.

In Miami? So are Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro. The trio will be signing books today at Design Miami from 1-2 p.m. before heading across the street to chat with Ari Wiseman, deputy director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, as part of the Art Salon series at Art Basel Miami Beach.

This is part of a series of elegantly wrapped December posts about desirable goods that we suggest you purchase with the laudable yet vague intent of giving to others and then keep for yourself. Got a “nifty, gifty” idea? Tell the UnBeige elves: unbeige (at) mediabistro.com

Previously on UnBeige:
Nifty, Gifty: Rodarte’s Out-of-This-World Ornament

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In Brief: Buckyball Takes Manhattan, $100 Million for Central Park, Tesla Museum, iPad Mini Debuts

• Public art meets Buckminster Fuller’s brand of “energetic-synergetic geometry” in “BUCKYBALL” (pictured) by Leo Villareal. The new sculpture goes on view tomorrow in New York’s Madison Square Park thanks to the Mad. Sq. Art program, which has previously commissioned works by artists such as Jessica Stockholder, William Wegman, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Villareal’s nested geodesic spheres are lined with 180 LED tubes arranged in Fullerene formation, with individual pixels along the tubes that can display 16 million distinct colors at the direction of custom software. You have until February 1, 2013 to catch a brain-bending BUCKYBALL light show in the park.

• And speaking of leafy urban refuges, Central Park is $100 million richer thanks to John Paulson. The hedge funder (and park lover) announced yesterday that he is donating $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy. According to The New York Times, it’s the largest monetary donation in the history of New York City’s park system—and possibly the nation’s. And lest you suspect a bid for Paulson Plaza, nope. Nothing in the park will bear his name.

• Over in Long Island, a web-based campaign has succeeded in raising $1.3 million to preserve the laboratory of scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla. Fire up your Tesla coil and listen to the Science Friday interview with Matthew Inman, who spearheaded the crowdfunding effort to rightfully honor the man he describes as “the greatest geek who ever lived.”

• In other geektastic news, the iPad Mini is upon us. Thinner and considerably lighter than the third-generation iPad, it’s perfect for those with little arm strength: Apple touts it as “a revolutionary design you can hold in one hand.” To flummox your buying decision, the company chose the same day to announce the fourth-generation iPad. Both new models go on sale next Friday, with the iPad Mini starting at $329 and the iPad 4 starting at $499.

• If you want our advice, liquidate your tiny tablet device fund and hit the Madeline Weinrib sample sale, which runs from today through Sunday at ABC Carpet & Home in New York. The sale will include the designer’s vibrant handmade carpets, pillows, fabrics, furniture, fashion, and accessories, all reduced by 40% to 70%. Because ikat beats iPad any day.

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Watch Out, London Eye! New York to Get World’s Tallest Ferris Wheel


Wheel’s Up. A rendering of the New York Wheel, to be built on Staten Island.

Round and round she goes, and where she stops…well, it will be Staten Island. Start overcoming your acrophobia through therapeutic sketch-journaling now, design fans, because New York City is getting its very own London Eye-style “observation wheel,” and at 625 feet—roughly 60 stories—high, it will be the world’s tallest. Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose name one rarely hears in the same sentence as “world’s tallest”) and other city leaders joined representatives from the company in charge of the project yesterday for the announcement of plans for the New York Wheel, which will be built on the northeastern side of Staten Island and offer riders swell views of the Lower and Midtown Manhattan skylines, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn, and the New York Harbor. The mega Ferris Wheel was proposed in response to the NYC Economic Development Corp’s request for bids for projects that would increase economic growth, boost tourism, and create jobs on Staten Island.

The wheel will be nestled beside a large terminal building that will feature exhibitions about NYC history, alternative energy, and environmental sustainability—created in collaboration with Cornell’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Johnson and the global relief and development agency CARE. Meanwhile, both the wheel and the terminal building will be constructed with an eye to Platinum LEED certification. Among the architects, engineers, designers, and consultants who have been tapped to work on the project are Starneth (the Ferris Wheel specialists that built the London Eye) and Perkins Eastman. Construction on the New York Wheel is expected to begin in early 2014 with a grand opening scheduled for early 2016. If all goes according to plan, the 36 capsules will carry some of their first passengers on New Year’s Eve 2015.

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Hats Off to London: Olympic Host City Tops Statues in Style for ‘Hatwalk’


The King George IV statue in Trafalgar Square wears a new hat designed by Stephen Jones. Below, Lord Nelson in a design by Sylvia Fletcher of Lock & Co. (Photos: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

How does London top an opening ceremony full of dark Satanic mills, dancing ill children, Mr. Bean, a star-crossed love story that may have involved time travel, and the guy who wrote Tubular Bells? With hats, lots of lots hats. The Olympic host city surprised residents and visitors this week with “Hatwalk,” a quirky collaboration between the Mayor of London, Grazia magazine, and sponsor BP that placed giant hats on the venerable public artworks of the capital. With the help of milliners such as Phillip Treacy and Stephen Jones, 21 statues were fitted with elaborate chapeaux (made of plastic or other non-conductive materials). The task of securing them fell to a crew of workers and a fleet of cranes in the wee hours of Monday. It’s not a project we can imagine happening anywhere else. “Around the world, people tend to associate us with hats now,” says Jones. “Historically of course, this was always true. But I think nowadays, thanks to things like the Royal Wedding, and the Jubilee, people around look and see someone with a crazy hat on and think, ‘Oh, they must be British.’ Hats really are representative of British culture.”

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Back in NYC, Project Runway Hits the High Line

In New York, one day you’re in and the next day you’re out. Then, many days later, you’re rediscovered by preservation-minded neighbors, photographed by Joel Sternfeld, saved from demolition, and reimagined by James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio + Renfro. And, just like that, you’re back in again! The abandoned railway-turned-public park that is New York’s High Line becomes even more fashionable this week, thanks to a collaboration with Project Runway. With nine seasons, two networks, and one legal brouhaha under its shiny neon belt, the reality TV competition show returns on Thursday with 90-minute episodes filmed on location in New York (the opening challenge takes place in Times Square). Get a headstart on season ten by heading to the High Line, which is being temporarily transformed into a virtual runway: jumbo digital screens installed along a portion of the Chelsea Market passage will feature interactive digital images of Runway staples Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn, Michael Kors, and Nina Garcia, and fashion photographers, who according to Erika Harvey at Friends of the High Line, “will react in real time as park visitors strut their stuff while walking along the elevated park.” The “Make it Work Moments” installation opens this afternoon and runs through Thursday.
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