New York Dispatches

Renzo Piano’s name sounds as harmonious and striking as his architectural works. The Italian architect is perhaps best known for his design of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the unmistakable cultural center in the heart of Paris, and thirty years after its construction, Piano uses similar techniques in the new New York Times Building, but to a different end... More»

Any architecturally-curious visitor to Downtown Manhattan will probably remember three buff-colored high-rise towers occupying the southern fringes of Central Greenwich Village, just above Houston Street. They are University Village (also known as Silver Towers) - a residential complex designed by James Ingo Freed (I.M.Pei & Associates) and owned by New York University. And they’ve just been landmarked, protecting them from future alterations or modifications... More»

Retractable roofs have been architects’ idée fixe for decades. Moshe Safdie once wrote up an idea for entire neighborhoods shielded by such roofs during the harsh season and open to the elements when it’s nice outside.

The path to these dreams’ realization has been fraught with difficulties, from budget overruns to full-blown engineering disasters like Montreal’s Olympic Stadium (after a decade’s worth of efforts to fix it, the city finally gave up and installed a fixed roof in its place. It won’t be moving any time soon).

Nevertheless, projects like that pop up again and again. And so do the difficulties. The latest example is Santiago Calatrava’s project for the Lower Manhattan Transportation Hub. Among the project’s many innovative features was a retractable roof. But will there be one in the final implementation? More»

This past weekend, we're wandering around Dumbo — that neighborhood that takes place between and beneath the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and seems comprised almost entirely of organic food marts and upscale designer baby clothes boutiques.

I was in the mood for a hot dog and beer, which is only a healthy meal when compared to my previous idea of a meal of ultra-rich chocolate. But there were surprisingly few hot dog vendors about the place, and in stark contrast to my own neighborhood, no guys wandering around offering to sell you a Corona for a buck fifty. However, while walking up Jay Street, I suddenly caught a whiff of…is that…is that taco? Yes it is. More»

I have not, traditionally, gone out and done very much on St. Patrick's Day. For a while, this was because I stopped drinking (oh, so many days wasted on sobriety). And for a while, this was because I was going through a cranky phase and didn't want to combat drunken masses crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in a New York pub. These are no longer concerns for me. As for temperance, I have returned to my Scotch-Irish roots. And as for drunken crowds crammed into pubs, I have discovered that I actually enjoy the convivial revelry of such a gathering.

So in the year 2007, I decided it was time to go out and have fun on St. Patty's Day, even if my Irish ancestors were Protestants. England shipped my Scottish ancestors to the Americas as slaves, and I still rooted for them during the world Cup, so I'm over things, even if others are still fighting over Cromwell.

But somehow, I ended up celebrating the first half of St. Patty's sitting in tapas bar Las Ramblas. Nothing says Ireland quite like tapas and white berry pomegranate sangria... More»