That was part of the reasoning behind the decision, a decade ago, to schedule two ambitious annual design events in October, and it seems to have paid off. The two formerly cooperative events have built up enough critical mass to stand fully on their own, drawing urban landscape lovers, those who love New York and those who just enjoy keeping up with the architecture scene.
What was christened Architecture Week in 2003 has now blossomed into Archtober, a monthlong festival of films, tours and talks sponsored by the Center for Architecture.
Open House New York, known as OHNY, which opens up remarkably designed but usually private spaces over Columbus Day weekend, has seen its own attendance more than quadruple, to more than 200,000 last year, from 45,000 attendees in 2003, its first year.
The event showed 85 spaces to the public in its first year, from the inner workings of the Waldorf-Astoria to the top of High Bridge Water Tower in Washington Heights. It was two years after the cataclysm of Sept. 11, New York was still on red alert, and people were just not willing to open their doors to strangers, said Scott Lauer, Open House’s founder. A decade later, it has expanded to more than 200 spaces, with 34 residences (several are the homes of architects and designers selected by editors at Interior Design magazine).
Five centuries of New York are represented at Open House: There is a newly restored 1661 Bowne House in Flushing, Queens. Looking for High Georgian style in the Bronx? Check out the 1748 Frederick Van Cortlandt House, where Washington really did sleep. (It appeared in an episode of “Boardwalk Empire,” where it stood in for a house in Belfast, Northern Ireland.)
From the 19th century, there are the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village and the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s historic buildings from the early 1800s. Among the 20th-century offerings are the TWA Terminal at Kennedy International Airport and the massive Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, with its glassed-in atrium.
The 21st-century gems on the tour include some works in progress, like the residential high-rise by Arquitectonica in Long Island City, Queens, that was recessed to frame the restored historic Pepsi-Cola sign, and the understated 4 World Trade Center, designed by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki and his team. (David Dunlap of The New York Times has called the World Trade Center addition “the biggest skyscraper New Yorkers have never heard of.”) Gallery225, in Harlem, designed by Focus Lighting, next to that firm’s office, hints at the future with its projection-screen walls.
Open House sites range in size from the inspiringly beautiful Via Verde low-income housing project in the Bronx to the ingenious 375-square-foot studio apartment of a designer, Suchi Reddy, in a former dental office on Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village.
(As of Thursday afternoon, six sites remained closed because of the government shutdown, including the United States Custom House at Bowling Green, the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace and Grant’s Tomb.)
Archtober lectures are open to the public, but most tours require reservations; some are free, and some cost $ 10. Archtober includes tours of the future Whitney Museum of American Art in the meatpacking district, scheduled to open in 2015; Pier 5 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, with its multiuse playing fields; the newly redesigned Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park; and the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.
Also on the Archtober calendar is the Architecture and Design Film Festival, running from Wednesday through Oct. 20. Some of the Archtober talks and conferences might appeal more to professionals than to enthusiasts, but there are lectures for design fans like “Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes.”
Many of Open House’s sites are open and free to the public this weekend. But some sites — including Paul Rudolph’s last Manhattan project, or the Long Island City warehouse where the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany glass is stored — are sold out. And at the most popular of the open-access sites, like the TWA Terminal, the line for entry can be longer than an airport taxi queue the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
For architecture zealots, the organizers of Open House offer a $ 150 pass that allows you and a guest to skip to the front of the line at every open-access space.
The event was clearly designed with New Yorkers in mind.
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
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