649 6th

context

With all the consideration, shaping and planning that goes into our house it's a natural spill-over to begin to relate house to neighborhood to city and town. I've been circling around a few ideas for a couple of days, and I think there is a connected line here somewhere. It all started when I caught sight of a much further along "blue" building on the Lower East Side when I met up with friends on Friday night to see an all-time favorite flin flon.

Further to my previous post regarding "where have all the fabric shops gone," I finally got a sneak peek of the construct to describe the current trends. Think of mushrooms in the forest: dotted about here and there brightly colored flares with impossibly balanced masses hovering over the loamy dirt. You see it in Williamsburg all over the place. Corner lots and garages used as launch pads for urban residential mushrooms. Usually luxury and usually architechturally striking (using that expression very loosely). Not sure how I feel about them. Do they crowd the infrastructure or do they reduce surburban sprawl? Who buys all of this luxury and where do they come from? It boggles my mind. But much like the Thor nods at Blue, the intermittent placement creates an interesting dialogue above the strata of lower stories.

My neighborhood was rezoned back in November curtailing the mushroom effect, though to be fair our mushrooms were almost all garden variety. On my corner a six-story building is going up that will dwarf the rest of the block. Construction had barely begun when the rezoning took effect. I went to one of the hearings where I learned the developer has architechtural aspirations for the property. I was of mixed emotion. I didn't really want a building that big on the end of my block, but if the contractor was forced to cease construction then perhaps a smaller, more hastily planned and economically constructed building might take its place. On behalf of the majority voice, the community board recommended that the variance be denied; however, the Department of Buildings approved and construction has resumed. Which scenario is worse?

I guess the whole point here is context. What is a neighborhood's vernacular and is there a forward-looking variant that can be both sustainable and esthetically pleasing, weaving new construction into the existing architecture.

My sister has undertaken an amazing project in NH. Informed by New Urbanism, she is developing 22 acres of real estate in downtown Peterbourough. She recently completed a public charette to finalize the plans for the community. Drawn from the existing vernacular, the idea is to create a traditional neighborhood setting that people expect of old New England, not a new subdivision where all the houses look the same. The structures will be smaller, more densely packed units -- very energy efficient with an eye toward sustainability. The sensibility stops short of rammed earth or straw bales or other alternative design, but that type of green is not their mission. New Urbanists are trying to create a sense of place that agrees with an ingrained notion of community.

I decidedly think there's a place for the New Urbanist model. It's application would benefit the rebuilding and redeveloping of neighborhoods in medium-sized cities throughout the country. The sense of self and community they strive for must be good for the soul. The Gulf Coast region immediately springs to mind as a place that could be designed through this lens. Need to do more research on this though as I've heard of a backlash from local and possibly displaced residents. Don't know how their model could be employed in denser, urban areas. If you can't plan a community from the start how do you shape it's organic transitions?

Which leads me back to my mushrooms of the skyline. I've got my reservations. Where does affordable houseing fit into the fungi patch? And where does all that loam go? But on Friday I began to see a patchwork of sizes and shapes that -- think greenhouse towers -- will etch the urban skyline.

yardage

I moved to New York about 16 years ago exactly. Slowly Progressing from the East Village to the South Slope in Brooklyn I've seen a few neighborhoods change. We had been looking for upholstery fabric to redo the three Danish pieces we got on ebay back in the Spring

I had been shopping at places like ABC carpet. Their selection is not nearly what it used to be but their prices remained well... retail. I longed for the days of old musty, saw-dusty smelling fabric dealers on lower Broadway and the lower east side.

It was about the time I realized the American Apparel had replaced my favorite fabric store on Orchard St. that it dawned on me. Manhattan was really no longer that different than the rest of America. A broad array of consumer choices where even the most rarefied material has been homogenized and packaged for easy digestion

What Manhattan represented to me 16 years ago is sort of gone. What's replaced it isn't necessarily bad, it's just different. The fabric dealers I long for did not disappear they just moved deeper into the boroughs. I'm not saying that a Dunkin Donuts on every block is a good option but like it or not, walk down 5th Ave from 23rd to Washington Square-- I challenge you to find a shop owner that's not either 1) struggling to hang on or 2) part of a much larger chain that can be found in malls near you.  But I digress...pardon the rant.   

I finally found this guy on Broadway South of Canal. I walked in, he asked me what I wanted. "I'm looking for a canvas or perhaps a wool, very plain for plain cushions." He showed me a few things. Nothing really blew me away. Then he asked me what I was covering. I told him about the pieces and he said, "I have the perfect thing". And he did, it's a Knoll remainder that there was plenty of to do all 11 cushions of the three pieces. Just for a moment it was 1990 again.