Each September, the city begins its age-old ritual of turning transplants into New Yorkers. Atlanta-native Rembert Browne just started an urban planning program at Columbia. Today he went in search of the Broken Angel House from Dave Chappelle and Michel Gondry's 2006 documentary, Block Party. More sculpture than building, the house was a creative feat built over decades, beginning in 1979 when the owners purchased the old Brooklyn Trolley factory.
How Ms. Joan Tom, an ex-investment banker from Goldman Sachs, came to be building a Sukkah in Union Square in the middle of the night is an excellent question. She spent a week constructing "Fractured Bubble," and the tasks ranged from weaving twine, collecting phragmites from Queens, de-leafing in Gowanus and finally a midnight installation in Union Square.
"It's like old New York," says a happy customer waiting for her kitchen knives to be sharpened Saturday morning near Columbia University. The old red truck that serves as Dominic Del Re's mobile store was parked on 111th street, just off Broadway.
PARK(ing) Day, is coming back September 17th! The concept is simple: turn parking space into public space. It's part political, part environmental, part cultural. And for urban planners and architects, creative too.
At the Maison de Verre, architectural historian Mary Vaughn Johnson gives a fascinating guided visit, bringing to life the original occupants of the home and their influence on the design.
Exploring Père Lachaise with a Diana lomography camera.
You might recognize this mosque from the film Paris Je t’aime. A Parisian teenager, Franà§ois, develops a crush on a girl and waits for her outside a mosque. She sees him across the road when she opens the large entrance doors at the intersection of two streets.
Ten minutes outside the Peripherique lies the oft-forgotten industrial underbelly of Paris: the Seine-Amont. The architecture of the region is a juxtaposition of 19th century industrial infrastructure with 20th century modernity, with a sharp contrast between traditional residential homes and public housing projects.
Tasked to capture a museum for a photography class through the Columbia University architecture program in Paris, I chose the Musée du quai Branly. The museum made a profound impact on me when I first visited in January. Feeling disoriented in the dim cavernous interior of the museum, I did not stay long but the architecture and the feeling of being in the space lingered with me for months.
Nestled between the new W Hotel and an abandoned lot a few blocks south of the World Trade Center, a Neo-gothic building at 103 Greenwich Street has a history as incongruous as its architecture. Now an Irish pub, the building began as the home of Dutch immigrant Ryneer Suydam and his family in 1799.