Looking Into the Future
The Center For Architecture Displays the Designs Of Tomorrow
By CHRIS SCHMIDT
Environmentally conscious design generates a lot of talk in architecture circles, much of it lip service. Witness the airborne gardens and wind-powered turbines of the newly dedicated Freedom Tower. The forest-in-thesky idea has already been jettisoned, and with the projectÕs budget tightening by the week, it seems the turbines are likely to suffer the same fate.
An offhand comment made a few years ago by James Truman, Conde NastÕs editorial director, illustrates perfectly the popular response to most eco-friendly design. When asked by a reporter what made the construction of the new Conde Nast headquarters so ÒgreenÓ Ñ it had been touted as the most environmentally advanced building in New York Ñ the British-born editor said dismissively that it had something to do with Òthe right glues and that sort of thing.Ó He added, ÒPeople wonÕt be walking around on hemp.Ó
Metropolis magazine, however, has made its search for authentically sustainable design something of a holy grail. In a new exhibit on view at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village, the monthly design magazine unveils the winners of its Next Generation Design Competition, virtually all of which grapple towards a better, greener way of living. (The exhibition is the second such recent venture by the magazine; in May, Metropolis sponsored an affiliated exhibit at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair called ÒRaw: Next Generation,Ó which featured innovations such as a sofa made out of sod Ñ now thatÕs green!)
Single Speed Design, a four-person architecture firm based in Cambridge, Mass., won the competitionÕs $10,000 award. Collaborating with a Boston developer, the firm came up with a plan to take dismantled sections of the cityÕs elevated freeway (casualties of the Big Dig, BostonÕs vast transportation overhaul) and turn them into public housing. The plan has a certain urgency: With more of the freeway coming down as the new underground tunnel opens to traffic, the reinforced-concrete road panels and steel support columns are becoming landfill fodder.
But the winning proposal has more than recycling in its favor. The remarkable strength and durability of the freeway materials lend unusual abilities to the construction: Individual apartments can cantilever out, creating stunning views and terraces beyond normal exterior boundaries. The apartmentsÕ interiors, meanwhile, can withstand five times the normal floor weight, making it possible for owners to accommodate their most felicitous whims: a pool table, a floor-to-ceiling aquarium, or an indoor pool.
The entries of runners-up in the competition were just as utopian, if less glamorously so. Lira Luis of Phoenix,Ariz., submitted the most socially conscious entry. Ms. Luis, originally from the Philippines, designed a ÒPortable Transient Shelter PodÓ to house sea-industry workers who often sleep on the docks of Manila.
Neil Foley of Bangladesh contributed a ÒBio-Bin,Ó a waste receptacle that automatically sorts trash into biodegradable, nonbiodegradable, and recyclable categories Ñ so we wonÕt ever have to worry about whether the orange juice carton goes in the blue bin or the green.
One room over, youÕll find the companion to the Next Generation exhibit: the ÒOculus: Faces of the FutureÓ display. Fifteen New York-based architecture firms were selected by Oculus, the in-house magazine of the American Institute of ArchitectsÕ New York Chapter, as the next Gehrys, Koolhaases, and Hadids.
There is surprisingly little path-breaking design evident in the work of these participants, however. What these designers seem to share, other than a uniformly minimal, modernist (read bland) aesthetic, is an ability to get things built Ñ though this is no small feat for an architect on the rise.
Also somewhat disappointing is the fact that the architects are represented only by video presentations looped together on three monitors. The architects had mixed success in translating their designs to the medium of video. The architecture firm Koko Architecture + Design had the best presentation: The architects drew the outlines of their design on a blackboard in chalk; the film then dissolved into a photograph of the realized design.
Many of the Faces of the Future displays were little more than portfolio demonstrations, which is fine, if you want to know who designed the Marc Jacobs store on Bleecker Street (Stephan Jaklitsch) or the restaurant SubaÕs wonderful floating underground dining room-grotto (Andre Kikoski).
The juxtaposition of the two exhibitors was an instructive, if sobering lesson in the difficulties of contemporary interior design and architecture. The most innovative designs remain unbuilt, but there is always building money for work that looks as good as a glossy-magazine spread.