Fumihiko Maki

The folks involved with a new building at 51 Astor Place sent out a rendering of the proposed tower last night, and it seems architect Fumihiko Maki plans a building rather reminiscent of his planned Tower 4 at the World Trade Center (a.k.a. 150 Greenwich Street), with a corrugated facade and distinct angles. The site sits just across from the school’s signature 1859 Cooper Union Foundation Building.  read more »

Developer Edward Minskoff has agreed to buy a building from Cooper Union, with plans to raze the structure at 51 Astor Place and put a Fumihiko Maki-designed office building in its place, according to a report in The Real Deal.

The price of the building sale was not revealed. Mr.  read more »

Anticipating the type of questions that arise this time of year, developer Larry Silverstein held a press conference today to assure everybody that rebuilding at the World Trade Center site continued on track, that shovels will go into the ground for his three towers in January, and that they would open in 2012.

If that’s not news, the 200-odd media people who turned out, many from national and international news outfits that cover developments like this from a distance, will try to believe really hard that it is. Instead of starchitects Richard Rogers, Sir Norman Foster and Fumihiko Maki, who attended last year’s unveiling of the actual designs, senior staff people from each of the three firms gave updates.

Yet the renderings looked remarkably the same, aside from a few details at street level.  read more »

The Port Authority and Larry Silverstein announced that they finalized April's shuffle at Ground Zero which puts the Freedom Tower moves into government hands. Sort of final that is, but the number of loose ends ($1 billion in missing insurance money and whatever the lawyers find in actually doing the documents) is getting smaller.  read more »

People (perhaps even we did at one time in our lives) like to point out how much Daniel Libeskind's site plan has been abandoned, but today's unveiling of the next three towers at Ground Zero shows there's a lot of Danny left. Compare this after-dark rendering:

... with Libeskind's revised plans from September 2003:  read more »

From left, the Freedom Tower (David Childs) as we know and love it; and designs unveiled today for 200 Greenwich Street (or Tower 2, by Sir Norman Foster), 175 Greenwich Street (or Tower 3, by Sir Richard Rogers), and 150 Greenwich Street (or Tower 4 by Fumihiko Maki).  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

• The landlord wants to evict Hot 97. Too many shootings. (The New York Post)
• Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki horn in on Ground Zero. (The New York Post)
• Iacopo Falai is the new Wylie Dufresne. (The New York Times)
• Expect to hear more about the ten-alarm fire in Greenpoint. (The New York Sun)

- Tom McGeveran

Ground Zero is set to become a Hall of Fame for the all-stars of contemporary architecture now that  read more »