Sam Lubell

Situated on a narrow Lower East Side lot between Delancey and Rivington Streets, ODA’s just-completed 100 Norfolk is designed to maximize square footage, starting with a tightly-constricted base, and widening as it rises; taking advantage of its neighboring buildings’ air rights. This reverse-ziggurat strategy is a time-honored one, particularly…

Say what you want about the European Union (pipe down, Brexit people) but nobody is praising its branding these days. EU officials know this and have commissioned none other than Rem Koolhaas to help reform its image in this time of nationalist and anti-globalist pushback. Koolhaas and German photographer…

Every day, about 24,000 tons of discarded materials leave New York City to head for distant landfills. Designing Waste, curated by Andrew Blum and designed by WkSps, will investigate how designers can help sharply reduce that number. Drawing from the Rockefeller Foundation and AIA New York’s Zero Waste…

You probably know that author Tom Wolfe died last week at the age of 88. Wolfe was illustrious for his acerbic, lyrical, ever-insightful commentary, and for pioneering the so-called “New Journalism.” He penned numerous best-selling books, from the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff to Bonfire of…

In recent years, L.A. County’s homeless population has elevated by astronomical levels, climbing over 23 percent in just 2017 alone. As part of the county’s overall Homeless Initiative, last September, the L.A. County Arts Commission launched Part of the Solution: Yes To ADU, a design competition soliciting…

When architects Aranda\Lasch and computational designer Marcelo Coelho were planning their entry to the Times Square Alliance and Design Trust for Public Space’s 10th Annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition, they took a trip to the area. After observing thousands of visitors taking nonstop snapshots and selfies,…

Meet the incubators and accelerators producing the new guard of design and architecture start-ups. This is part of a series profiling incubators and accelerators from our April 2018 Technology issue.  Located on the first two floors of a concrete-framed former army base in South Boston, Autodesk’s BUILD Space…

Earlier this week we learned that Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne would be stepping down to take on the city’s newly-created role of Chief Design Officer. The move is a bold, encouraging one that should go a long way toward, as Hawthorne put it, “raising the quality…

The Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices award and lecture series highlights individuals and firms with distinct design “voices”, singling out those with the potential to go on to even greater heights. 2018 saw two rounds of judging; first by a panel of past Emerging Voices winners, and…

Cedar City, Utah—about two and a half hours northeast of Las Vegas and three hours south of Salt Lake City—is a diamond in the rough. Or in this case, in the mountains. It’s surrounded by peaks and foothills and is in close proximity to a staggering array of national…

Of all the tools designed to provoke urban compliance, the most effective, it seems, is the old-fashioned letter grade. That’s the tool New York City restaurants have to use, for instance, to communicate their health department ratings to would-be diners. Thanks to newly-passed legislation, New York is becoming the first…

Citing the threat of rising seas, the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) is set to replace Battery Park City’s Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park—Machado Silvetti and OLIN’s 3.5-acre wedge near the south tip of Manhattan, offering panoramic views of the Statue of Liberty—with a new topography…