Audrey Wachs

This weekend, 256 public and privately-owned sites across New York City will open their doors to thousands of architecture and history nerds for the 13th annual Open House New York (OHNY) Weekend. All sites are free to visit, though some require registration in advance. Gregory Wessner, executive director of OHNY, said the…

A long-standing fortress of state secrecy is under siege. The federal government is selling Washington, D.C.'s J. Edgar Hoover Building to a developer who, citizens hope, will turn the FBI's headquarters into a mixed use development. Designed by Charles F. Murphy and completed in 1975, the 2.8 million square foot…

Busybodies and neighborhood know-it-alls rejoice: today, New York City, in partnership with civic data managers Vizalytics, launched a beta version of neighborhood.nyc, a new website that maps street-level information derived from 311 calls and city agencies. While this information was and is available in the NYC Open Data Portal, it often required…

To avoid total inundation and more of those hot, sticky summer days, New York City is trying hard to forestall the impact of global warming. While tackling coastal resiliency, the city is turning its focus to buildings, the source of 75 percent of the city's greenhouse gas emissions. To address the issue, last…

Fun fact: there's a set of fully furnished rooms, designed by Michael Graves, that lives in storage at the Brooklyn Museum. Built between 1979 and 1981 for Susan and John Reinhold, the suite within their duplex at 101 Central Park West was donated to the museum when the couple divorced in 1986. Preserved in…

What's tall, glassy, and grows all over? Manhattan luxury residential buildings, the latest of which is almost complete. On October 9th, developers presided over the topping off ceremony of 252 East 57th Street, a new luxury tower on the Upper East Side by SOM and interior architect Daniel Romualdez. The team designed…

Citibank announced on Friday that it will donate $10 million t0 the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) for the renovation of Tribeca's Pier 26. For Citi, it's a sweet quid pro quo: the river pier is adjacent to Citi's soon-to-be global headquarters at 388–390 Greenwich Street. Philadelphia-based OLIN will lead the park's design team. Rafael Viñoly will…

A shocking report today that, after 120 years, British architecture publications Architects' Journal and Architectural Review will go out of print in the next 18 months surprised many in the architecture and publishing worlds. One insider tells AN that, at least for Architectural Review, that is just a rumor: "the situation is messy,…

The New York Historical Society announced today that Czech architect Eva Jiřičná will design a new space for exhibitions and study on the 20,000 square foot fourth floor of the society's Central Park West building. The 3,000 square foot, two story gallery will showcase the society's permanent collection of…

The final bucket of concrete anointed the top of Kohn Pedersen Fox's 10 Hudson Yards today. Built to LEED Platinum standards, the 52 story office building, at 30th Street and Tenth Avenue in New York City, is the first of sixteen buildings on the 28 acre site. Unusual among commercial skyscrapers…

Call it High Line fever: since the first leg of James Corner and Diller Scofidio + Renfro's High Line debuted in 2009, High Line–like projects have popped up all over the city and across the country. Now, not ten miles from the original, the Bronx may be slated for its…

Today is World Architecture Day. According to its organizers, the International Union of Architects (UIA), the theme of this year's World Architecture Day is architecture, building, and climate. Founded in 1948, the NGO is a coalition of national organizations representing approximately 1.3 million architects from 124 countries. The 2015 theme is a…