Renzo Piano

The teeth-chattering classes over at the new Times building are packing extra sweaters this morning after getting an email from executive editor Bill Keller about how cold the newsroom (or parts of it!) are during the present cold snap.

It seems that the elevator shafts and loading docks in the state-of-the-art Renzo-Piano designed building are funnelling cold air into the offices; and a long-term fix doesn't look too near.

Click "read more" to see the memo.  read more »

Hale and Hearty Soup chain founders Andrew and Jonathan Schnipper have leased the last empty retail space in The New York Times Building.

The brothers will be opening a new restaurant concept described as "an updated version of a classic roadside eatery serving burgers, salads and other American favorites in a fast casual, relaxed setting," in 3,200 square feet at the corner of corner of Eighth Avenue and 41st Street, according to developer Forest City Ratner Companies.  read more »

The Renzo Piano-designed new New York Times tower won’t be open for media tours until August, according to a spokeswoman for Forest City Ratner, the co-developer, and so far, Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who must have a front-row seat, has not broken the embargo.

But blogger greenbuildingsNYC got a sneak preview in April and put a bunch of photos up on Flikr of what it looked like, apparently, before the reporters and the maggots got there.  read more »

The New York Times is giving up five floors in its new Eighth Avenue building before it even moves in.

The Renzo Piano-designed headquarters, expected to open later this year, will be co-owned by the newspaper company and the developer Forest City Ratner. On Tuesday, they announced that floors 23 through 27, which were in the half owned by The Times, and floors 29 and 30, owned by the real-estate company, had been leased to law firm Goodwin Procter.

The move had long been rumored.

- Matthew Schuerman

Japanese retailer Muji has signed the first retail lease at the future New York Times headquarters on Eighth Avenue. The retailer, with products supposedly based on a "philosophy of simplicity, minimalism and consumer functionality," has taken 5,000 square feet in the tower for its American flagship.

The store, according to a release from Times tower developer Forest City Ratner, will overlook "the moss-and-birch-tree garden on the ground floor," and will open in time for the 2007 holiday season.  read more »

Full release after the jump.

- Tom Acitelli

The lease for the New York Times Building was pretty specific about keeping out downmarket chain stores. So it's no surprise that the first retail tenant to sign up is MUJI, an "environmentally conscious retailer based in Japan," whose products can be picked up in the MoMA Design Store.

Full release after the jump  read more »

• Developer Herb Miller listed his Washington, D.C., home last spring for $28 million--the highest asking price in our nation's fair capital--and now he's sold the place. Is that as good as the Washingtonians can do? Manhattan can beat $28 million with its left arm tied behind its back. [WSJ]
• London is entirely another story. In hip neighborhoods like Knightsbridge, 77-square-foot storage rooms are $335,000 apartments. There's no electricity, which would cost another $59,000--bringing price per square foot to $5,116.88. [AP via Drudge]
• The opulent real estate fans at Luxist admire the Upper East Side's Woolworth Mansion [above], on the market with Sotheby's for $23.45 million. They advise that prospective buyers "look up while eating in the dining room." [Lux]
• Staring at photographs of "every ad in Times Square all on one page" proves that even Renzo Piano's NYT headquarters can't save the neighborhood from eternal damnation. [Ironic Sans, via Gothamist]
- Max Abelson
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From an announcement from The New York Times' internal website, a note of architectural interest:

This morning, Thursday, Oct 19th at 7:30 a.m., the second section of the mast at the top of our new building will be raised into position. This is the beginning of a process that will see three more lifts and have the mast completed on Nov. 6th.

The mast, incidentally, is 206 feet tall. Ahoy, Renzo Piano!

• An undercover investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance accuses Corcoran's Brooklyn office of "blatant housing discrimination against African-Americans." White clients were steered toward white neighborhoods like Park Slope and Cobble Hill, while black clients were deprived of information about incentives. 2006 is the new 1934. (New York Times)
• An advisor to the Times' architectural selection committee said that though he appreciates Renzo Piano's design for the newspaper's new tower, he is "madly in love with the Gehry." (The Gehry is the "tower-that-might-have-been," had Frank won the NYT's big competition). But is there really a measurable different between a Piano "triumph" and a Gehry "masterpiece"? (Metropolis)
• Fighting the good fight for non-billionaire housing, Mayor Bloomberg will recommend an overhaul of the city's "most popular tax break for housing developers." (Now rich Manhattanites can no longer get city money for building homes for rich Manhattanites). Does the name 421-a sound familiar? (New York Times)
• This is what House & Garden has to say about Brooklyn: "I fell in love with the one-cup coffee presses in cherry red. They also have quirky cutlery and smart pocket clocks, and craftier creations, like papery owls, mobiles, chrome cuckoo clocks and vintage, rustic-lite furniture." What has happened to this chrome cuckoo-loving borough? See above. (House & Garden)
- Max Abelson
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Forget Hearst. Dedicated workers have begun putting up the 52-story "shimmering" glass curtain that will bedeck Renzo Piano's new beauty for The New York Times. Eventually it will soar shimmeringly over Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st streets--bashful developer Bruce Ratner promises this will make for "an unmistakable part of Manhattan's skyline."

There will be color: A "lacy screen of ceramic rods" (under which the glass curtain sits) will bounce angular sunrays into a pretty Times rainbow. "It will seem as if the building is changing colors," gushes a press release.

Because rainbows are tricky to interpret metaphorically, Mr. Piano has also pointed out that his clear glass reinforces the two-way link between the journalists inside and their dedicated real-world clientele. (No more need for the Public Editor?)

Thankfully, Annie Leibovitz will be around, documenting the shimmering construction "on behalf" of Mr. Ratner. We hope she gets shots of those "automatically dimmable florescent lights."

-Max Abelson

Damn that Frank Lloyd Wright.  read more »

Yesterday, we mentioned that Renzo Piano won the Honor award from the A.I.A.'s New York Chapter for the newly-refurbished Morgan Library.

At least one critic is not too happy. The Observer's art critic Mario Naves leaves behind the glass cubes in Chelsea to take down the award-winning starchitect.  read more »

New Yorkers used to enter the Morgan through a smallish, stolidly proportioned doorway fronting 36th Street. The vestibule may have been clunky and stuffy, but it heralded a transition from the hurly-burly of city life into a realm of intimate, contemplative experience. No more. Mr. Piano's atrium is mainly interested in herding the crowds and then wowing them. It's a noisy public arena wedged inside an institution renowned for quiet pleasures.

- Michael Calderone

Last night, the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects announced the winners of the 2006 Design Awards.

Amongst the big winners were Renzo Piano and Beyer Blinder Belle (Morgan Library expansion) and Gabellini Sheppard Associates (Top of the Rock).

On June 28, they'll all toast one another during a luncheon at 7 World Trade Center.

And Dan Doctoroff can take solace in the fact that NYC 2012 took home the prize for commissioned project. Nevertheless, it looks like 2016 is already out of the question.  read more »

- Michael Calderone

• Now that architect Renzo Piano has completed museums in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, others are starting to get jealous, and calling him a "safe" choice. His latest, the expansion of the Morgan Library and Museum collection, opens to the public on April 29. It is described by The New York Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff as "a sublime expression of the architect's preoccupation with light, the design transforms the world of robber barons and dust-coated scholars conjured by the old Morgan into a taut architectural composition bursting with civic hope." Also of note: Piano is the architect of the new Times building.
• "In New York an artist's occupation often is staying one step ahead of the real-estate market." So, one enterprising gallery owner of the "hipster nation" is branching out to Leipzig, Germany. (The New York Times)
• A $168 million, 26-acre water park will likely be approved for Randalls Island. (The New York Times)
• About two-thirds of area residents accepted buyouts from the Atlantic Yards project. About 40 percent of the remaining neighbors rent in Ratner buildings. (The New York Times)
• Poets House is moving from Soho to Battery Park City. (The New York Times)
• Even townhouse owners like modern design, but they know better than to take it outside...or build a fence. (New York Post)
• Jonathan Miller makes a chilling observation: every country has housing issues. (Matrix)
• A Jewish community house will be replaced by a mixed-use tower, with a synagogue at the bottom and floor-through apartments at the top. Gevalt. (The New York Times)
• The Four Questions, inspired by Bruce Ratner. (via Curbed)

- Riva Froymovich

After brisk sales, some billionaires are taking a step back from the 15 Central Park West, according to the New York Post. And at Trump Park Avenue, a prince moves into the apartment above A-Rod for $6.2 million.

Barbara Corcoran first joked about firing CEO Pam Liebman, and then rode off into the sunset.

The New York Post looks at what $1 million can buy you these days in Manhattan.

Richard Meier and Renzo Piano have a friendly chat in the New York Times. Piano: “The fact that art is robbery is well known--robbery without masks. In some ways that's good. It's robbery where you give back, like Robin Hood.”  read more »

And the Top of the Rock is ready to battle the Empire State Building.

-Michael Calderone

When Frank Gehry abruptly pulled out of a 2000 competition to design The New York Times’ new headq  read more »

When Frank Gehry abruptly pulled out of a 2000 competition to design The New York Times’ new h  read more »

Morgan Proposal Makes Architect Grouse, Community Board Smile There are certain unspoken rules when  read more »