AAInter 6

Ed Keller Studio

Alisa Andrasek Studio

I • NY
Hi all, I have complied a list of a few places I consider home. Of course there is a lot more to see and discover but from my experience with visitors in NY (and also from my own traveling…) I’ve learned that people like to find things on their own. This is a mini version of MY New York. At the end of this trip you will all have your OWN New York.

And a few little tips – it is relatively safe to take the subway, though I would try to refrain from using it alone, after midnight (it runs all night). Cabs are the best way to get around. You tip the driver by rounding up and adding a dollar. Also, in bars, you leave a tip to the bartender (usually a dollar for every drink…)

NY is safe, but as much as you may feel at home there after a while, don’t forget to look after your bags. They do tend to disappear in crowded place…

YOU MUST TAKE YOUR ID EVERYWHERE because they card in bars. You won’t be able to get in if you don’t have an ID.

Central Park
The boat house (enter from 72nd st. and 5th ave.)
The Reservoir – jogging in the morning, enter on 5th Ave. and 90th st.
Central Park zoo – especially the Penguin house!

Upper west Side
The Cloisters (over looking the Hudson) up on 190th St.
Strawberry fields – Central Park West and 79th St. (in front of the Dakota House)
Zabar’s and H&H bagels  – Broadway and 81st St.

Upper East Side
Inside the Metropolitan museum – the indoors garden with the huge wall looking into the park
FAO Schwartz – the famous toy store
The parrots in the tree on 81st and York Ave.

Midtown Manhattan
The Oyster bar in Grand Central
The Great Library – 5th ave. and 40th St.
Bryant park at lunch time – on the chairs close to the Flatiron building
The Rainbow room bar – at Rockefeller plaza 65th floor
And, yes, go up to the observation deck at the Empire State Building

Union Sq.
The Coffee shop – My favorite brunch on Saturdays, or early coffee any day – Union Square West and 16th St.
Farmer’s Market (WED, FRI, SAT morning)
Irving Plaza on Irving Place – music venue – the best shows.
ABC – the big furniture store – there are about 6 different little coffee shops in it – Broadway and 19th St.

Chelsea -
Galleries on 22nd St. and 25th St. Between 10th And 11th Ave.
EAT dinner on 10th Ave. and 22nd St.
The market on 15th St. bet 9th And 10 Ave.

East Village
Sushi downstairs on 9th St. and 3rd Ave.
St. Marks book shop – same corner
Tompkins Sq. park – for the amazing dog run
Japanese vintage stores – 7th st. between First avenue and Avenue A

West Village
Pastis – Little West 12th St. and Hudson
Magnolia bakery – Bleeker and 10th St. (closing at midnight! best cupcakes in the world!)
Film Forum – West Houston and 6th ave. – excellent movie theater – lot’s of retrospectives and art house films

SoHo
Dean & Deluca – Broadway and Prince St.
Lucky Strike restaurant -  Wooster and Grand St.
Pearl Paint – best art supply store – Canal and Mercer

TriBeCa
All the streets. Just walk around…

NoLita
Cafe Havana – the best spicy corn – Elizabeth St. and Prince
Rice – Mott St. and Elizabeth
Lombardi’s Pizzeria – best thin crust pizza Spring St. and Mott (or any Ray’s for fat, oily, huge pizza slices. Guilty pleasure…)

Lower East Side
Double Happiness – corner Mott St. & Broom in the basement – hidden but you can find it…
71 Clinton Fresh Food – restaurant – sublime! if you can get a seat…
Economy Candy store – the oldest one in NY – Rivington St.

Downtown
Brooklyn bridge walk and coming back on Manhattan bridge
Century 21 – opposite WTC designer cloths in discount prices
Battery park promenade

Of course there’s also Williamsburg in Brooklyn (L train, first stop in Brooklyn) and Long Island City in Queens (for PS1) 7 train from Time’s Square.

Here’s a link for some events that may not be advertised in Time Out, which is anyway good to get when there – Flavorpill.com

Panel:

Brett Steele

Vasilis Stroumpakos

Jonas Lundberg

Andreas Lang

Yusuke Obuchi

Nate Kolbe

friday nights always so fun at the AA!

and thanks a lot to our friends from Penn University for having a few drinks with us!

we are looking forward to our joint review!

use to the links to the right to get to know a bit more of everybody’s individual projects

The unit’s agenda centers on occupancy, and questioning its potential for the standing point in the design of new big buildings. The site shall be Manhattan, and exploiting the possibilities of new gaming engines, the design environment of choice.

new york

New York is chosen as the site for our ongoing experimentation as it presents a high density of multiple perceptions. It is a city where dreams converge, allowing for diverse opportunities within a single urban reality.        The unit will be based in New York fore three weeks in April where collaborations and exchanges will be made with wide range of people and institutions. Presentations and seminars will be held at architectural departments of universities in the area such as; Columbia, Princeton and Pennsylvania, discussions with artists and developers and also with the game developer, Rock Star.

The analysis of New York before this unit trip as taken many forms and spanned from more conventional means such as studying districts, property Values, existing development sites and demography to a level where the object that is being analyzed is lost and treated as a platform of free speculations.

occupancy

The analysis has driven us to strongly question the meaning of occupancy. An interesting debate has spanned across the year’s work. We have pushed the discussion for occupation to be addressed through more than just a physical presence, or spatial relations with the environment.                 In order to help see the true depth of this theoretical topic a series of seminars with the students of the masters course in history and theory at the AA has been set up together with there tutor, Mark Cousins. In these seminars the topic is discussed and debated openly and but also relating back to the individual projects of the unit.

We have found that interaction is key to the understanding of occupancy. It is more about effect, relations, and triggering an activation process in the environment. Time and simultaneity become therefore essential elements of play for the linking of the ideas of occupation. Only now do game engines become a promising tool: with their real-time execution, they stand aside from other forms of new media. They allow us to raise the idea of occupation through activation into a higher level of interaction, beyond that of commonly understood spatial conceptions.

platform

Another great possibility of this technology is the cross-feedback of multiple simultaneous players. The real-time feedback loop carries many promising implications and new possibilities throughout the design process. And it is the need of following a game structure, as opposed to a narrative one, that forces us to design patterns and relations, instead of linear cause and effect processes. What is manipulated now is therefore non-material.       The game interface thus becomes the connection between spontaneous and intuitive real-time human control and the precise pursue of effect, yielding a potentially new understanding of occupation. The technology used in order to realize the interactive platforms carry great possibilities but are not always that user friendly and to help us realize our concepts a range of professionals are regularly brought in for workshops and lectures. Sony Game and “Hollywood Concept Artists” have trough out the year during workshops and tutorials help realize what a game environment could do conceptually while the game tech department of UCL have trough weekly workshops helped with the pure technical side.

generative landscapes

The immediacy of the multiple feedback successfully provides a platform for the generative landscape to develop. This allows for the manipulation of non-material sets of relations, accomplishing a dynamic generation of effect and occupation. Generative landscapes slowly materialize along the interaction, setting the basis for our new big buildings. They are projects which will encompass a highly stylized experience, beyond the material building itself, as part of the package delivered across the many expositions of the unit to outside criticism. Throughout the mentioned approach, every student has been developing and pursuing his or her own thesis, pushing it – at the time being – into a rich diversity of speculative scenarios.