Roosevelt Island Science & Technology Center Counter Proposal to Cornell & Technion

Recently in the news, we saw a proposal for a Science and Technology Center, that is to be located on Roosevelt Island. A multi-billion dollar collaboration between Cornell university and Technion Institute of Technology, and supported by Mayor Bloomberg, this project is meant to catapult New York City into a leading technology center.

We felt compelled to rethink a Technology & Science center that is more closely tied to the urban morphology of Manhattan.

The Tower of Stacked Labs has the overall dimensions and scale of a Manhattan block that is rotated 90 degrees to an upright position. The overall volume is broken down into diversely sized labs, studios, work spaces, ateliers, workshops, auditoriums, etc allowing individuation of space and small scale identification.

The open space between the volumes will remain open and be developed as 'hanging gardens' and accessible to the public. They can be reached by stair or elevator and will form a vertical park.

Maziar Behrooz photographed by Francine Fleischer

Thanks to Francine Fleischer for this photograph of Maziar Behrooz and her portrait series taken inside one of our RDMU pods. To see more of her portraits and photos of the PODs, click here.

affordable housing for seniors in amagansett, ny

amagansett, new york

The Hamptons, contrary to common perception, suffers from a lack of affordable housing for year-round residents. In this project, we tried to address this deficiency by providing affordable housing units with commercial amenities across the street. 

Each building is comprised of a one-bedroom unit per floor. All units have a private garden, either on grade or on on the roof (for the second floor unit).

what we did this summer.

photo: Kim Acee

This summer, we saw the publication of the recently completed Arc House in a variety of media and formats from print, to video, to web. These included The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, Yahoo Real Estate, Green Building & Design magazine, Home Review magazine, Acura Style magazine, and webzines such as WallPaper*, GreenSource, ArchDaily, Dezeen, Inhabitat, Curbed, Architizer and thousands (literally) of other design and architecture websites (for details go to our press page).

Our work on the Sayers' Roof Garden & House in Wainscott is nearing completion and looking good. The roof gardens are in place and healthy. The seamless resin floors are poured and showing their subtlety of color and feel (to the barefoot). The triangular pool appears like a hinge and makes all the various site components come together.

We are preparing a small book on a single project. This will be announced later.

Our work in New Orleans to provide alternative paths of experience for disadvantaged youth is ongoing and promising.

And finally we are exploring both medium and large scaled solutions for two dense urban environments -to be announced later.