Picking a date for the Gazprom

Gazprom, a giant Russian natural gas company, has apparently invited a number of big name architects to come up with ideas for a new complex in St. Petersburg called Gazprom City. Despite the fact that they're part of the Russian government and the biggest company in the country and they don't really have to let anyone know anything about what they're doing, they've gamely decided to post the finalists of the design competition on their website and display the conceptual models at an art museum.

The three above are pretty amazing. I think the middle one is Liebeskind, but I'm not entirely sure. While I don't think it's my favorite (the one that looks like a flame on the left is awfully pretty), there's something about it that really captivates me. How strange would it be to work there? When you're in a regular office building, it's easy to imagine how to get to some other office, but here, you'd really have to know what you were doing. I tend to be good with directions and like the feeling of getting lost or exploring, and I prefer the crazy streets in parts of London to the straigtforward grid of midtown Manhattan, so I like the idea of a building that you could get lost in. And I would love to stand underneath it and look up.

But take a look at this one:

I don't know exactly what is going on here, but it seems like there are five buildings that are connected by some kind of open frame structure, with three levels of park terrace stretching between them. That's so sci-fi I'm getting goosebumps. There's something about the whole thing that puts me off, but I love the concept of making streets and parks in the sky. I'm sure it's a very green building, as well.

The Force better be strong in you, Skywalker

I have a longer post coming about the High Line in Manhattan (a park being built on a derelict elevated rail line), but here's a nice segue from my posts about the Panorama.


These renderings depict the Skywalk at the soon to be completed Grand Canyon West Resort. I assume that this thing has a pretty wicked anchorage, as it seems like they've taken great pains to make it super strong.


It's the shot below that made me think of the Panorama, although the buildings depicted are their actual size, though of course the Skywalk isn't to scale in this rendering.


Thanks to K for bringing this to my attention.

Future Imperfect

There's a fun little article in the New York Times today about a design competition sponsored by the History Channel, of all people, challenging architecture teams to imagine what NYC will be like 100 years from now. There are a lot of fun ideas, considering they only had a week to put their presentation together. They range from the extremely plausible (a future Manhattan without cars) to the insultingly ridiculous (all of Manhattan built up to 65 stories with the outer boroughs turned completley into parkland.)



Some of the better ideas sound like a lot of fun, though. One imagined a floating city in the sky above Manhattan, which would become a giant park. Another imagined a bunch of modular units floating in the waterways around the city that could dock where they were needed. This is actually about to really happen, when the Neptune Foundation brings their "Floating Pool" to the city next summer.



The winning idea imagined Manhattan swamped by global warming, so their future city was built up over the newly created canals, no doubt using them in a lot of sustainable and green ways.

I love thinking about the future, and I love the idea of this competition. The teams were only given a week to work on their presentations, and I'm impressed with some of the stuff they came up with.

But of course I can't spend all this time on Manhattan without finding something to say about my beloved Brooklyn, so I'll leave you with this shot of Alexis Rockman's mural "Manifest Destiny" which imagines a waterlogged future version of the Better Borough.