http://archrecord.construction.com/n...ters_point.asp
New Library by Steven Holl Part of Grand Plan for Hunters Point
September 21, 2010
By C.J. Hughes
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Public libraries across the country are cutting employees and closing facilities, but the one that serves the borough of Queens, New York, is taking an opposite tack: It’s planning to open one of its largest branches to date, and it’s hired architect Steven Holl to design it.
The city announced in July that it had chosen Holl to design the 20,000-square-foot facility, which will sit by the East River, across from the United Nations complex. The $21 million project, which is set to open in 2013, will break ground next summer. A schematic design will be unveiled in November.
The Hunters Point neighborhood, where the library will be built, has undergone a major transformation since the 1990s. The former rail-yard now features a half-dozen residential high-rises, plus a public school and parkland. Four new apartment towers, a second school, and more parks are planned for a nearby parcel.
The library is expected to offer shelving for 85,000 books and DVDs, as well as a performance space and offices. It also will have slightly more room for community meetings than other facilities do, up from 75 seats to possibly 100, says Peter Magnani, a library director. Also on the site will be an information kiosk for Gantry Plaza State Park, located next door.
“This is a really important building for us from a public-relations perspective,” since it will be visible from so many high-traffic roads, like the FDR Drive and the Queensboro Bridge, Magnani says. “The message it will send is that our library is a beacon of knowledge.”
The Hunters Point library, which will be the 63rd in Queens, will serve a borough that seems to take reading seriously. With 23 million items loaned a year, the library system is, its officials say, the busiest in America. (In New York, the Queens Library operates separately from the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, and the Brooklyn Public Library, which covers Brooklyn.)
Holl, who is based in New York, has designed a smattering of projects there, like the Higgins Hall Center, a glass-walled 22,500-square-foot wing completed in 2005 that connects two architecture school buildings at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute.
More recently, the firm designed the Campbell Sports Center for Columbia University, where Holl is a tenured architecture professor. The planned five-story, 48,000-square-foot complex, which will abut Baker Field where Columbia’s football team plays, is to feature offices, and auditorium and a hospitality space, though its design is a work in progress.
The Queens library would be Holl’s first public project. Because funding will come from public sources, the firm’s selection was made by a city agency, the Department of Design and Construction, which picked Holl from among a short list of eight candidates. Those pre-screened candidates participate in the agency’s six-year-old Design and Construction Excellence program, which encourages creative public-works projects.
For architect Chris McVoy, senior partner at Steven Holl Architects, New York’s decision to boost library service while similar institutions reduce it speaks to a larger point: The Internet may not be as detrimental to physical texts as first thought. “A decade ago people were predicting the death of books,” he adds, “and we have found the opposite to be the case.”
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Just a little more on the height range of the Hunters Point towers...
http://www.nycedc.com/ProjectsOpport...n%20Design.pdf
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The nine towers would be narrow and rectangular and would range in height from 260 feet (26 stories) to 400 feet (40 stories). Two of the nine towers would be permitted to rise to that maximum height. The new buildings would be residential, with retail and community facilities at the base.
The tall towers on Sites A and B would also be clearly visible in the distance in views up Manhattan Avenue from the commercial hub of Greenpoint. These towers would join the Queens West towers already present in that view corridor and would not block any important visual resources beyond. Overall, therefore, the proposed actions would not adversely affect any visual resources visible from the Brooklyn portion of the study area.
From Manhattan and Roosevelt Island, new buildings at Site A and Site B would contribute to the creation of a new Queens skyline, which together with Queens West to the north would appear as a prominent collection of towers and lower buildings. This new skyline would be similar to what is anticipated immediately to the south along the Greenpoint waterfront in
Brooklyn as a result of the recent rezoning there.
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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