Hasta La Ideas

A Tale of Two Terminals JFK’s Terminal 6, designed by I. M. Pei of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, and the TWA Terminal designed by Eero Saarinen.

On last night’s episode of Pan-Am, we learned that there was a time when a cyan stewardess uniform could not only save one from death at the hands of the Stasi but also afford entry into champagne-laden government functions (at least when President Kennedy was involved). Nowadays, dacron separates and a name badge tend to impede one’s progress, and the golden age of air travel? Its icons are being demolished. Such is the fate of Terminal 6 at New York’s JFK Airport. Designed by I.M. Pei with fetching all-glass mullions, it opened in 1969 as the National Airlines “Sundrome” and was vacated three years ago, when JetBlue decamped to the shiny, Pepsi-sponsored land of wonders that is Terminal 5.

“The boarding gates are already piles of rubble,” wrote David W. Dunlap in a recent post about Terminal 6 on The New York Times‘ City Room blog. “The main pavilion, whose white steel roof seems to float ethereally over cascades of diaphanous green glass, is expected to come down by the end of October.” But all is not lost. Eero Saarinen‘s curvilinear TWA Terminal is getting a second life. The designated city landmark has been undergoing extensive renovation under the auspices of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the direction of Beyer Blinder Belle. Next Sunday afternoon, the swooping site will welcome visitors as part of Open House New York. Arrive by 1 p.m. to catch a talk by project manager Charles Kramer of BBB and James Steven, the PANYNJ’s manager of JFK Physical Plant and Redevelopment.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Hot off the heels of the insanely fast redesign competition for the President’s Park South and the opening of the forever controversial Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the move to spruce up Washington DC’s most visited areas continue at a healthy clip. Just before the weekend, the Trust for the National Mall launched the National Mall Design Competition. Writing that the Mall “has been loved to death” and is struggling to keep up appearances since its last major preservation effort nearly 40 years ago, the competition has put a call out for redesign plans for three sites in particular: Union Square, the Washington Monument grounds at Sylvan Theater and Constitution Gardens. Unlike the aforementioned President’s Park South competition, which seemed as though it was started and finished in around an hour and a half, the Mall project will be taking its time (pdf), blocked out in a series of stages, with potentially eight teams picked between now and December, renderings out in April of next year, and winners named in May of 2012. The budget for the restoration is currently estimated at $700 million, with half coming from donations and the other from matching federal funds. Former First Lady Laura Bush, now no stranger to landscape-centric capital campaigns after overseeing her husband’s presidential library in Texas, has signed on as the Honorary Chair to help raise the money. Here’s a list of the problems that propelled the Trust into action:

The National Mall has been loved to death.

With more than 25 million annual visitors and 3,000 annual permitted events, the National Mall is the most visited park in the NPS system.

Pierre L’Enfant, who designed the National Mall in 1791, could not have anticipated this magnitude of use. The National Mall is not equipped to withstand this level of use or engage so many visitors.

The National Mall now requires more than $400 million for critical deferred maintenance and an estimated $300 million for restoration and improvement projects.

The last time the National Mall received adequate resources was for the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. These decades of neglect have left the National Mall in need of repair.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It’s been too long since we’ve had an “architecture in hard times” folk hero. There was John Morefield, the unemployed architect who would shell out building and design advice for five cents a pop, but we haven’t really heard much out of him since early last year. Fortunately, California-based teenager Austin Hay has entered the picture. The 16-year-old has been building a tiny home on wheels all by himself in his parents’ backyard, using materials “acquired at salvage yards.” So not only does he have his youth going for him, and his green building-by-necessity practices, he’s also aware of the ongoing world-wide financial troubles and is already happy not to be paying a mortgage. With that sort of youthful insight, we expect someone to start making “I’m with Hay!” buttons and patches here any day now. Here’s a video tour of his self-made digs:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you’re the type who wept big salty tears over the closing of the CBGB club in 2006 because it meant the death of New York, then you aren’t going to like this post in the slightest. Recently you might remember reading that the Hotel Chelsea, also referred to as the Chelsea Hotel, had finally been purchased by real estate developer Joseph Chetrit for just over $80 million after a buying process that had started several months prior. The legendary hotel, where it seems nearly anyone and everyone who was famous for any sort of artistic endeavor had at one point stayed, had remained open and largely unchanged until the start of this month, when it officially closed down for Chetrit’s plans for renovation. It’s now been announced that Gene Kaufman has been hired as the architect to do said renovations. Kaufman’s hiring hasn’t sat particularly well with fans of the Chelsea, because despite his having been a very successful architect, an associate working for Rafael Vinoly at one time, and the man who recently took over ownership of Charles Gwathmey‘s firm, critics believe that a great whitewashing is in store for the famously gritty hotel. The Daily Telegraph describes the outcry against Chetrit and Kaufman as “Bohos go bonkers as Holiday Inn architect is brought it” and Ed Hamilton, a writer who has called the hotel home for the past decade and who runs the Chelsea Hotel Blog, has been documenting the affront with posts affixed with titles such as “The Whitewash of the Chelsea Hotel Begins” and “Chelsea Hotel Lobby Desecrated for Fun & Profit.” Thus far, the notoriously reserved Chetrit hasn’t responded to the criticism, but for his part, Kaufman has spoken out, telling the Wall Street Journal that the renovations are “more like a restoration” and that “it will be subtle.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Quoth the Baltimore city planning department: nevermore. Okay, we’ll admit that that’s a downright terrible joke in the face of the sad subject matter and perhaps the laziest segue into a post ever, but it’s early and the middle of the week, so what can you do? Moving on… Even though the crippling financial downfall that took countless museums and cultural institutions down with it seemed to have slowly lessened over the past year or two, the NY Times reports that another museum has fallen on hard times and is facing closure: the Edgar Allen Poe House and Museum.The paper writes that, due to budget cutbacks, last year Baltimore stripped away its $85,000 annual support for the museum, which resides in the house Poe himself lived in for two years in the 1830s. Without that funding, and the fact that their visitor numbers have been extremely low, given that it’s located “amid a housing project, far off this city’s tourist beaten path,” unless their current financial situation is remedied, the museum will run out of money and be forced to close sometime next summer. Fundraising efforts thus far have been mildly successful, but those behind the museum see only two options for its ongoing survival: the city turns back on the annual support or someone steps in with loads of money to help bail it out.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.