Thursday Office Tours
Office visits for Tod Williams-Billie Tsien Architects, Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis, and Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners will be conducted simultaneously as three separate groups at the end of our walking day on Thursday. We ask that you distribute yourselves equally among the three firms, all of which are extremely engaging design firms here in New York City.
Separate sign up posts to follow.
Standard Hotel NYC Tours!
We are finalizing discussions with the Standard Hotel at the moment, and it looks like they will be able to give us tours (in separate groups) each morning. As a result it will be quite important that we are all on time each morning (9:30am at the Standard) in order to attend the tour. If you are late, your tour WILL leave without you!
Additional Tour Suggestions
It’s Sunday August 23rd. A few of you are arriving today, or have arrived already, and some of you have booked flights to stay in New York after the Field Trip. What are you going to do with yourselves in NYC? I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of things you run across, but here are a few suggestions:
1. Go see PS1 in Queens. http://www.ps1.org/ The Summer Warm Up is Saturdays, but the Museum is open regular hours 12noon-6pm Thursday through Monday
2. Go visit Dia:Beacon. http://www.diabeacon.org/ The Dia was a fantastic art space in Manhattan that opened up a wing north of New York City about the same time they had to move out of their NYC space. There is hope the Dia might return with a new gallery/museum on the High Line, but as of right now the Dia: Beacon stands alone. Thursday through Monday 11am-6pm. Take a train from Grand Central Terminal or Harlem-125th Street and get a discount package ($23/student), a fantastic day trip. http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/mnr/html/getaways/outbound_diabeacon.htm
3. Take the L Train to BROOKLYN. One place to get off would be Bedford Avenue, the former hotbed of hipster activity, now overrun with overdeveloped high rise condos. Tons of fantastic restaurants abound in Williamsburg. Diner is down on Broadway. Bonita is south of the Williamsbug Bridge on Bedford, as is DuMont Burger. DuMont proper is at the Lorimer Stop (2nd L stop). Fanny, designed by Sekou Cooke, is on Graham (Graham 3rd L stop).
4. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s better to walk INTO Manhattan on the Bridge, take the Red Line 2/3 to Clark Street in Brooklyn, and walk to the Bridge. It will dump you at City Hall in Manhattan. On the Brooklyn side you might grab an ice cream at the base of the bridge/waterfront (the long line is worth it), or stop into Grimaldi’s for a pizza pie that Sinatra used to fly out in private airplane loads for his parties in Las Vegas.
5. Visit Columbia University. Take the Red 1 Train to 116th and Broadway (the 2/3 will get you to 96st faster where you transfer). Columbia’s campus is almost like a fortification against the city. It’s high wall rise from the city street and seal off the campus from the city around it, creating an idyllic academic paradise.
6. See a show ON BROADWAY, or better yet, save a little money and see one OFF BROADWAY!
7. Take the Ferry to Staten Island, then take the same Ferry right back. Not much to see in the suburban Staten Island, but the Ferry gives one of the best views of the Statue of Liberty as it passed back and forth from SI and Manhattan.
8. Find a free bench in on of the various urban parks in New York. Union Square, Gramercy Park, Madison Square Park, Tompkin Square Park might some of the highlights. These smaller urban parks maintain a strong connection to the urban context of their borders, but allow a slight reprieve from the density of the city.
9. Get a Burger/Shake at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park!
10. Get a Burger and a McSorely’s Dark at Corner Bistro in the East Village (if you are 21)
11. Get a plate of home cooking at Mama’s in the Lower East Side
12. Visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and see what life was like in the ultra-dense fabric of Manhattan, 108 Orchard. http://www.tenement.org/
Technology/Documentation
Email was sent out to all studio members:
We have a few things we have set up to help you document and share you travel experiences while in NYC. As some of this information is protected email addresses, I’m emailing this out rather than posting it to the WordPress site. The information that is not protected will be posted to WordPress later.
WordPress
You have all already received the link for the WordPress site, where you can leave comments
Twitter-
We have set up class user ‘ccaurbanstudio’. This twitter feed is can also be accessed by clicking the Twitter feed on the wordpress site.
Set up your own Twitter account to document what you are up to while in NYC and ‘follow’ ccaurbanstudio. We’ll follow you right back and
see what everyone seeing/finding/exploring. If you already have a personal twitter account, please set up a new one for the trip, so
that we have information specific to the field trip. If you pair Twitter with your phone you can update these tweets via text messages.
Flickr-
We have set up a Flickr account, also accessible from the worpress sidebar, located at:
If you have a mobile phone with internet and camera, you can instantly upload your photos by emailing them to: ****IN EMAIL ONLY***
Descriptions and Tags: You can use the subject line to give your photo or video a title and the body to add a description. You can also use a
special code to add tags before you send your email, but we have no idea what the special code is? perhaps #?
You an also email these later, from a laptop at the hotel, or other internet service.
Hopefully many of you will be able to use these new elements of technology to keep a digital log of what we are up to while we are exploring the city. This will offset the amount of work we need to do upon our return to SF in organizing and uploading all our images.
NYC Meeting Times – Meeting Point
We will be meeting at the same point on Wednesday-Thursday-Friday. There will be no meeting point for Saturday, as you are all free to do your own explorations and tours.
We will be meeting at 9:30 each day in front of the STANDARD HOTEL in the Meatpacking District. MAP The Standard is at 848 Washington at W13th Street. There are a series of yellow outdoor tables and chairs in front of the Standard. Your professors will meeting you at this spot each day. Please be ready to listen, participate or depart immediately at 9:30am. If you are still unfamiliar with the NYC Transit, err on the side of being early. This means having your coffee and pastry already in hand if you require them. Please make sure to have your cameras and sketch books on all days.
Wednesday will be your longest walking day. We will expect to cover up to 8 miles of walking. Comfortable shoes! For those attending the BTA office tour, please dress respectfully, keeping the heat in mind.
Thursday we will also be walking but we have a slightly shorter route. Everyone will be participating in an office tour this day, please dress respectfully, but keep the heat in mind.
Friday we will be walking again, a route comparable to Thursday’s.
Airports: EWR
Newark Liberty Airport is fairly close to Manhattan, but it means navigating New Jersey’s Transit System in order to reach New York’s Manhattan.
Train
Newark has a similar Airtrain to NY’s JFK that will rapid transport you from EWR to the NJT System. From the Newark Liberty International Airport station, the Red or Blue lines will take you into Penn Station in Manhattan. Penn Station has A and C Subway lines that can take you to the Jane Hotel. See the Subway Post for more information.
NYT System Map
Bernard Tschumi Architects Tour! [FULL]
Bernard Tschumi Architects(BTA) has just confirmed that they will be able to give us an office tour during our trip. This is in addition to the other office tours that we have been planning and comes with a few special restrictions. The tour will happen on Wednesday, August 26th from 12noon – 1pm. BTA can only accommodate 12 of our students, so we will be taking the first 12 students to sign up here via comments.
This is a fantastic opportunity to see the inside of one of the most influential offices in the United States. BTA’s work has been constructed word wide, Bernard’s leadership drove the GSAP at Columbia for a decade, his writings ‘Manhattan Transcripts’ are part of our class reader, and he will be lecturing at CCA this semester. We are extremely lucky to have this chance for an inside peek! Please sign up in comments!
NYC Reader
The Reader to help everyone prep for and to understand New York City is posted on Moodle, accessible only to students registered in the class with the special ‘add code’ that was email out. Please contact your professors if you can not access the information. All students are responsible for reading and understanding the articles regardless of whether they attend the NYC Field Trip.
1. Facts
Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention,” (in Cosgrove, Denis, ed. Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999)
Tschumi, Bernard. Manhattan Transcripts, excerpt (AD Editions, London, 1994)
Le Corbusier. When the Cathedrals were White, excerpt (McGraw Hill, New York 1947)
Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York, excerpts (Oxford, New York 1978)
Giedion, Sigfried. Space, Time and Architecture, excerpt (Harvard, Cambridge 1967)
Plunz, Richard. A History of Housing in New York City, excerpt (Columbia, New York, 1990)
Moses, Robert. “Mr. Moses dissects the ‘long-haired planners’” (in Ockman, Joan, ed. Architecture Culture 1943-1968, Columbia, New York, 1993)
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, excerpt (Modern Library, New York 1961)
Sorkin, Michael. “Ciao Manhattan,” in Exquisite Corpse (Verso, New York 1991)
2. Fictions
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence (1920), excerpt
Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), excerpt
Auster, Paul. “City of Glass,” excerpt from The New York Trilogy (Penguin, New York 1985)
Spiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers, excerpt (Pantheon, New York 2004)
Airports: LGA
Laguardia Airport, is the closest airport to Manhattan, but is not connected to the Subway system with an easy and quick system like Airtrain. Typically there are fewer direct flights from California to LGA .
SHUTTLE
It is possible to take an ‘official’ shuttle from LGA.
http://www.nyairportservice.com/
This is typically $12 per person and they run every 30 minutes or so. This is probably the best method of getting to Manhattan from LGA. The shuttle can drop you at Penn Station or Grand Central. If you are staying at the Jane, Penn Station has an A, C Subway line, and this is the best route to get down to 14th Street.
BUS
The MTA runs the M60 bus from LGA to Manhattan. This runs to 106th St and 116th St at Broadway in Manhattan, and serves all LGA Terminals. MetroCards can be used for bus fare, but MetroCards are not sold on board. The fare is $2.25 and exact change is required.
“M60 bus from Manhattan and Astoria
With the M60 bus, you can travel to all terminals at LaGuardia from the West Side, the East Side or Astoria (Queens). The M60 runs between 106 St and Broadway in Manhattan and LaGuardia Airport from approximately 5 am to 1 am, seven days a week. The M60 serves all airport terminals.
Connections can be made with all north-south Manhattan subway lines or with the N and W trains at the Astoria Blvd station.
If you pay your fare with MetroCard, you can transfer free between the subway and the M60 bus. The M60 also makes convenient connections with MTA Metro-North Railroad at the 125 St station. Travel time between Broadway and 116 St and the Delta Terminal is approximately 40 minutes. “
From the M60 Bus at 116th you can enter the Subway system (Columbia University) and take the 1 train downtown. If you are staying at the Jane Hotel, transfer at 59 st/Columbus Circle to an A or C train to go down to 14th Street/8 Av
Walking Directions: 14th/8th Ave to Jane Hotel
TAXI
Taxis are easy to get, but make sure you wait in the Taxi line and get an OFFICIAL NYC TAXI. Many people will come up to you in and around the terminal and will offer you shuttles and cars to where you need to go. DO NOT TAKE THESE OFFERS! They will make you wait until the car is FULL of people before they leave, you will always be the last stop, and often, they will drive around in circles and charge you extra! I always warn people about this, and someone always takes one of these offers and is charged $70! The official taxi service has a metered fare to Manhattan, so fares will vary, the taxi stand official should make sure the meter is turned on.
NOTEWORTHY
See the NYC Subway post about MetroCards/Subway Fares.
Airports: JFK
John F Kennedy Airport, originally known as Idlewild, is not the closest airport to Manhattan, but might be the easiest to get to.
SUBWAY
MTA has constructed an Airtrain at JFK, linking the NYC MTA Subway to the terminals. There is a $5 connection fare for the Airtrain, and this can NOT be covered by one of the Unlimited Ride Metro Cards. If you take this route, I HIGHLY recommend taking the A train!
MTA Info: AirTrain Connection
JFK Info: jfk_brochure_english.pdf (Airtrain)
TAXI
Taxis are easy to get, but make sure you wait in the Taxi line and get an OFFICIAL NYC TAXI. Many people will come up to you in and around the terminal and will offer you shuttles and cars to where you need to go. DO NOT TAKE THESE OFFERS! They will make you wait until the car is FULL of people before they leave, you will always be the last stop, and often, they will drive around in circles and charge you extra! I always warn people about this, and someone always takes one of these offers and is charged $70! The official taxi serve has a FLAT FARE of $45 plus tolls into Manhattan from JFK.
SHUTTLE
It is possible to take an ‘official’ shuttle from JFK.
http://www.nyairportservice.com/
This is typically $15 per person and they run every 30 minutes or so. Typically the Subway is just as good of an idea, but this option is here if you desire to investigate.
NOTEWORTHY
If you are flying in or out of JFK, keep an eye out for Eero Saarinen’s Terminal, formerly the TWA Terminal, which should be visible from the Airtrain.
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