Discussing the collaborative development of a multimedia installation for the Venice Biennale
Essex Crossing
215–225 West 28 TH Street
Discussing the value and accessibility of architecture and design in NYC
Midtown Viaduct
Integrating Dynamic Landscape Design into Collaborative Praxis
With Gregory Rogove
With Gregory Wessner
By Patrick Cullina
Carroll Gardens Courtyard House
Mid 1600s
Indian trails repurposed as main Brooklyn streets by settlers Brooklyn street grid mapped
Mid 1800s
Development of Carroll Gardens
1885 1850 1820
Tenement Housing built
1901
Tenement House Act outlaws "old" tenement housing typology
1869 1883
Construction of Brooklyn Bridge
Late 1800s
Development of Soho Cast-Iron Historic District
1967 1933
New York City demolished several blocks in the Lower East Side with an unfulfilled promise to construct new lowincome apartments
Prohibition shuts Brewery down; complex turned into light manufacturing 102 Greene Street; 47–49 Greene Street
Phased construction of the William Ulmer Brewery complex
1965
Creation of Landmarks Preservation Commission
Annexation of Williamsburg to New York City
Development of Tribeca East Historic District Romanesque Revival in New York City
Creation of Landmarks Preservation Commission
Creation of Landmarks Preservation Commission
Construction and demolition of the original Pennsylvania Station
Abstract Expressionism develops in New York City
Construction and use of “West Side Elevated Line” for freight transport
Creation of Friends of the High Line to repurpose elevated tracks as a park
Creation of Landmarks Preservation Commission
West Chelsea rezoned
Phased construction of the High Line
280 St. Marks Avenue is an 80,000 square-foot-multi-family building with 32 residences. The street front townhouses update the classic Brooklyn townhouse for a multi-family context. They feature private front yards with entrances that open directly onto the sidewalk. Inside, the plan preserves the traditional arrangement of lower floors with the living room and kitchen and upper floors with bedrooms. The penthouses have floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors that open onto private terraces looking out over the leafy green spaces of the neighborhood and to the Manhattan skyline beyond.
At the center of the building is over 5,000 square feet of communal space, featuring a front lobby and a double-height residents’ lounge with communal table and pantry kitchen. The oversized windows and doors open directly onto the landscaped 2,945-square-foot backyard garden designed by Patrick Cullina. Additional amenities include a fitness room, bike room, common roof deck with grill, and underground parking.
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STREET ELEVATION
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The design, approved unanimously by the Landmarks Preservation Commission upon its first public hearing, marries the historical with the contemporary, balancing the solid masonry elevation with an addition composed of glass and steel. The 5,000-square-foot sanctuary space, which features the original stained glass sanctuary windows, houses the congregation on the ground level, and another 3,000 square feet of community space is located below. Above the sanctuary, a two-bedroom apartment is designated for the pastor’s family, and five luxury apartments, ranging in size from 2,800 to 4,000 square feet—including a two-story penthouse unit—will rise in a massing that is evocative of the original sanctuary’s gabled roof and the cruciform shape of many Romanesque churches. The entrance to the residential lobby is through the restored central doors to the church, while the Church entrance lies behind a new double wood door created in the image of the historic church doors. The entrance leads to a gallery space and the new sanctuary space,
CHURCH
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On the interior, the layouts reference the major historic divisions of the sections of the building, and historic materials and finishes will be exposed and restored. A new metal ceiling replicates the historic pattern, original columns remain exposed, and the vaulted cellars will be preserved. The bright and open upper levels will have a distinct focus on materiality and texture while the lower commercial levels strive for an atmosphere of timelessness by putting a focus on the solid brick masonry of the existing building.
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1885-OFFICE 1880-STORAGEHOUSEADDITION
MACHINE1885-BOILER& HOUSE
1872-MAINBREWHOUSE
1872-MAINBREWHOUSE
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De Kooning credited the Armenian-born sculptor Raoul Hague with introducing him to the possibilities of loft-living:
Raoul Hague . . . came to New York . . . and saw this loft. It reminded him of . . . the way the poor live in the cities of Europe. Even with all the problems, no heat, draftiness . . . not comfortable. He took a loft to live in, to work in, and we all began to see what we could do with them. We all began to rent them. 2
on his third group of “Woman” paintings: “There was paint all over the floor because he kept scraping them down.” 3 The bare-bones workspace apparently permitted such unfettered studio practices.
De Kooning proved particularly adept at adapting such run-down urban spaces to suit his needs. Photographs of his studio interiors from the 1940s and 1950s reveal the Spartan living and working conditions in which he produced many of his most consequential abstract and figurative paintings. His friend, painter Nicolas Carone, recalled visiting de Kooning in the early 1950s, when he was working
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De Kooning brought decades of experience in loftliving to the new studio he chose to rent in 1958 on the top floor of the 19th-century building at 831 Broadway. By the time he selected this work site, de Kooning had attained both critical and commercial success that enabled him to design a more commodious work environment. Reflecting on his past as a struggling member of what would become the New York School, he once lamented that he and his friends had to resort to working “in some leftover hole in the wall that nobody . . . wants anymore.” Instead de Kooning believed that “art is good enough to be made” in a setting specially designed for that purpose. 4 With sufficient financial resources at his disposal, he renovated the top floor at 831 Broadway to create an open floor plan. Photographs of the remodeled interior show that several fluted columns and old radiators were all that remained from the
FIGURE 2
WILLEM DE KOONING, DOOR TO THE RIVER, 1960. OIL ON CANVAS, 80 X 70 INCHES. WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK
DE KOONING, ROSY-FINGERED DAWN AT LOUSE POINT, 1963.
original space in an otherwise stripped-down, modern loft. [FIG. 1] The generous proportions of that space with its large, front- facing windows and skylights provided a light-filled arena for painting. Thomas B. Hess, the painter’s friend and critical champion, dubbed de Kooning’s new studio a “luxury loft.” Beyond its ample size, the interior featured gleaming sanded and waxed wood floors, sleek designer chairs by Charles Eames, and “a refrigerator capable of producing ice with suburban efficiency.” 5 Photographer Dan Budnik, who documented the artist at work over a two-week period in 1962, was struck by the studio’s lighting conditions:
Walking into Willem de Kooning’s 831
Broadway studio . . . was like entering a New York artist’s dream space. Daylight from skylights and large front windows reflected off white walls and a polished natural wood floor, creating a proper balance in ambient light . . . 6
According to Hess, de Kooning even devised mobile painting walls on casters the better to capture optimal lighting conditions by moving his canvases as he worked. 7
From the time that renovations were completed around 1960 until 1963, de Kooning worked in his customized loft—the last of his Manhattan studios. The large abstract landscapes that emerged from that period were as luminous and expansive as the space where they took shape. Paintings such as Door to the River, 1960 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) [FIG. 2] ; Untitled, 1962 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.) [FIG. 3] ; or Rosy-Fingered Dawn at Louse Point, 1963 (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) [FIG. 4] bespeak de Kooning’s growing pastoral sensibility. That sensibility would find full expression when, later in 1963, the painter chose to leave New York City to settle permanently on Long Island’s east end. Throughout his years at 831 Broadway, he had been planning to build a new studio in the Hamlet of Springs on property he had purchased from his brother-in-law. The customized
features of the Broadway studio became prototypes for de Kooning’s far more ambitious studio design in Springs. For de Kooning, 831 Broadway served as a proving ground and transitional work space. His final Manhattan address signaled the transformation of the humble artist’s loft into a working studio at once practical and exalted.
1 Mark Stevens and Analyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004): 89. For the sequence of de Kooning’s successive studios, see Chronology in Judith Zilczer, A Way of Living: The Art of Willem de Kooning (London: Phaidon, rev. ed., 2017).
2 Willem de Kooning, interview by Anne Bowen Parsons, 21 November 1967, typescript, Anne Bowen Parsons Collection of Interviews on Art, 1967-68, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
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3 Nicolas Carone, telephone interview, 12 October 2005.
4 Willem de Kooning, letter to Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 18 May 1964, in Judith Zilczer, Willem de Kooning from the Hirshhorn Museum Collection (New York: Rizzoli, 1993): 152.
5 Thomas B. Hess, de Kooning: Recent Paintings (New York: Walker and Company/M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., 1967): 10.
6 Dan Budnik, “Photographing de Kooning,” in Willem de Kooning: Printer’s Proofs from the Collection of Irwin Hollander, Master Printer (New York: Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., 1991): 124.
7 Thomas B. Hess, Willem de Kooning (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968): 101.
FIGURE 3
WILLEM DE KOONING, UNTITLED, 1962. OIL ON CANVAS, 80 X 70 INCHES. HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C.
FIGURE 4
WILLEM
OIL ON CANVAS, 80 X 70 INCHES. STEDELIJK MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM
Venice Biennale 2018 Installation
TYPE EXHIBITION INSTALLATION
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In 2018, DXA studio was invited to take part in the Time Space Existence exhibition, held as a part of the European Cultural Centre's fourth biennial architecture exhibition in Venice, opening alongside the Venice Architecture Biennale. The six-month event showed a broad selection of work from architects, photographers, sculptors, and universities from across the globe. Participants' work focused on the fundamental, existential questions associated with the concepts of time and space, and how architecture interacts with those philosophical ideas. DXA exhibited a scale facade mockup with a projected video and animation of an early design iteration of the renovation and addition to the 831 Broadway building, which once was home to Willem de Kooning’s art studio.
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1884 (OPENING DAY)
1907 (PEAK YEAR)
2020 (CURRENT CONDITION) 2020 (CURRENT CONDITION)
(PHASE I)
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(FINAL)
We envision that through this redesign, the bridge can emerge, 250 years after its construction, as an exemplary embodiment of human ingenuity once again, integrating sustainable and resilient technologies and practices.
By reducing traffic lanes on the bridge from, a majority of the access ramps can be removed, which frees up much-needed land for city use. This space can become a contiguous series of parks extending from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Other parcels can be used to establish museums. These buildings and the parks are envisioned to be carbon negative, utilizing sustainable materials and technologies such as tidal turbines, geothermal wells, and even low-tech solutions like oyster farming.
(2020)
PHASE I REMOVALS (2030)
REMOVAL OF LOWER FREQUENCY AND DECOMISSIONED ON-RAMPS
PHASE II REMOVALS (2040)
REMOVAL OF AL ON-RAMPS
REMOVAL OF REMAINING ON-RAMPS AND FDR CONNECTIONS
FINAL PROPOSAL (2050)
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ADDITION OF CONSOLIDATED FDR CONNECTIONS TO THE NORTH
MANHATTAN BROOKLYN
TO CITY HALL PARK
PROPOSED PROGRAM
EXISTING PARKS
NEW PARKS
POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT SITES (INCL. AFFORDABLE HOUSING & NEIGHBORHOOD FACILITIES)
CIVIC / INSTITUTIONAL
RETAIL + F&B
SUSTAINABLE MOBILITES
AUTONOMOUS TRANSIT
PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENT FERRY CYCLING
URBAN RENEWAL
URBAN RENOVATION RESEARCH PROGRAM
GATHERING SPACE / PLAZA
GREEN ENERGY
NEW GREEN SPACE
URBAN FARMING
OYSTER REEF
HABITAT REHABILITATION
CULTURAL PROGRAM CLIMATE RESILIENCE
CURRENT/TIDAL ENERGY
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
SOLAR ENERGY
MOTION-GENERATED ENERGY
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OPPOSITE PAGE: PLAN PHASING DIAGRAMS AXONOMETRIC, SITE PROGRAM AND URBAN INITIATIVES
The new museum structures employ innovative and characteristic design to complement the iconic Brooklyn Bridge. Cross-laminated timber is used for the external lattice structure as a novel and eco-friendly material, and a nod to the bridge’s pine foundations. A central core is supplemented by vertical and sloping columns to provide lateral and vertical stability.
Expansion of the bridge’s upper deck and its strategic perforation to provide natural light to the lower deck permits the introduction of linear planters comprised of seasonally expressive sequences of dynamic landscape plants. Planters are recessed into the deck where possible and assist with the management of bridge runoff. The plantings are comprised of colorful matrices of grasses, wildflowers and woody plants drawn from local ecologies like the coastal plain, riparian corridors and upland meadows—rich communities with compelling arrays of flowers, foliage, fruit and form that, when woven creatively, engage visitors, birds, and pollinators alike.
The result is a future infrastructure that highlights and nurtures a civic and sustainable intervention rooted in the history of New York that is able to respect the monument of the Brooklyn Bridge while employing a forward-looking response to the current demands of the city.
