The defining feature of a city—its street and block pattern—is a convenient tool to organize land, circulation, open space, and infrastructure. A city’s street and block pattern gives residents a way to navigate its bounds. When we think of New York City’s street grid, we tend to think of the linearity and...
Planes, Trains & Automobiles
In the current economic climate, securing support for public spending continues to be a challenge, and this is no less true for the most costly forms of new public transit infrastructure. It is not just rail projects that are contested, but all new spending on large projects, from...
By Stan Eckstut, FAIA
In my experience, Large Scale Architecture can be both a boldly inspiring and a humbling kind of practice. Practicing Large Scale demands that we think like visionaries, but that we know how to fit in and accommodate others.
Let’s start with the bold and visionary part. Our...
How the out-of-classroom experience can foster social and emotional learning
By Sean O’Donnell, AIA, LEED AP
“The social universe of the school is at the center of the teenagers’ lives. That fact presents a danger … but also a promise: for school also offers every teenager a living laboratory...
How the out-of-classroom experience can foster social and emotional learning
By Sean O’Donnell, AIA, LEED AP
“The social universe of the school is at the center of the teenagers’ lives. That fact presents a danger … but also a promise: for school also offers every teenager a living laboratory...
A comparison between two competing schools of thought provides some insights. Consider the typical building designed under the influence of the Beaux-Arts system. A public building designed by a Beaux-Arts architect could generally be counted on for a rational distribution of functional relationships through the...
In a city of continual and often disconcerting change, Battery Park City is that rare New York hybrid: a pioneering urban experiment that has stood the test of time. In recognition of this fact, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) recently bestowed its prestigious Heritage Award on Battery Park City, citing its...
Nearly thirty years after EE&K’s landmark masterplan for Battery Park City, Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects’ design for the final two parcels of land in Battery Park City, Sites 23 and 24 is emerging from the ground. The Liberty Green & Liberty Luxe Apartments, which are joined at their base,...
On March 7th, hundreds of millions of people around the world watched a parade of movie stars and other celebrities walk the red carpet into the Kodak Theatre for the 82nd annual Academy Award ceremony. While most viewers were probably waiting for a glimpse of Brad & Angelina, or the winner of the best picture...
While school budgets are being taxed by declining revenue, escalating construction costs and skyrocketing transportation expenses, our need to provide high performance, forward thinking educational environments for our children and communities remains a constant.
Over the past few decades, our aspirations to...
The relationship between the home and the city provides a mirror on the evolution of a society. This progression is perhaps most dramatically displayed in the recent history of residential planning and design in China.
In the traditional Chinese city, families lived in the Courtyard House. Common open space...
Creating public access to the water is one of the central challenges in the design of urban waterfronts. Innovative design solutions are needed in order to overcome the legacy of two centuries of urban waterfront development – the late 19th-century industrialization of maritime and commercial waterfronts, followed...
In the ongoing effort to retrofit the suburban landscape to accommodate transit and pedestrians and make more efficient use of the vast swaths of land occupied by automobile-dominated infrastructure, the cloverleaf interchange has been a primary area of focus. With the vast amounts of land they occupy, and sweeping...
As the final two buildings rise in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City, New York One takes a walk-through one of the country’s watershed large scale developments with Stan Eckstut and reflects on lessons learned for the current environment.
By Matt Bell
The college campus is perhaps one of the most unique archetypes in American urbanism. It has persisted for over three centuries as an icon of the ideals of American higher education exerting a powerful emotive force. University graduates in the U.S. often look upon their years on the leafy...
In September 2008, the P.S. 59 opened its doors as the first public school in New York City to achieve compliance with the sustainable design standards mandated by the City Council for all public construction. The design radically transformed a 90-year old residential building into a neighborhood elementary school,...
By Sean O’Donnell
Like great theaters, the best learning environments inspire incredible journeys, both metaphorical and real. Within these settings, teachers and students readily adapt the environment to create the “sets” and choreograph the on-going “play of learning.”
This theatrical...
As the final two buildings rise in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City, New York One takes a walk-through one of the country’s watershed large scale developments with Stan Eckstut and reflects on lessons learned for the current environment.
GW’s location in the heart of Washington, DC is key to its mission and critical to its success. The opportunities and resources surrounding the campus attract outstanding students, faculty, and staff to GW and also help shape some of the University’s most successful academic, research, and clinical programs. By...
The Las Vegas Strip is one of the world’s most recognizable destinations. With its spectacular hotels, legendary casinos and larger than life signage, the Strip occupies a singular place not only in the gaming and hospitality industries, but American culture as well. As the Strip has matured, its paradigm of...
It’s not Florianópolis, the island paradise off the coast of Brazil where Pat McKeever and her husband, Jim, had planned to retire. And it’s not Fort Bragg, California, where they owned and ran a bed-and-breakfast in a Victorian farmhouse overlooking the Pacific. But it’s not a bad view from the third-floor...
The historic building boom that has so dramatically remade Shanghai’s skyline in the past decade has produced one of the most startling urban transformations ever seen. While the boom has resulted in a glittering collection of trophy buildings and stand alone icons, its effect on the vitality of Shanghai’s...
While school budgets are being taxed by declining revenue, escalating construction costs and skyrocketing transportation expenses, our need to provide high performance, forward thinking educational environments for our children and communities remains a constant.
Over the past few decades, our aspirations to...
Inspiration in Challenging Times: ULI Announces Ten Winners for The 2010 Awards For Excellence: The Americas Competition; Heritage Award Winner Also Selected
BOSTON (April 16, 2010) — Ten outstanding developments from the Americas have been selected as winners of the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Awards...
Combined International Practice will Create Expanded Capabilities in Large-Scale Architectural Projects and Client Value
New York, NY (November 2, 2010) Top international design and architecture firms Perkins Eastman and Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects (EE&K) are pleased to announce that they...