Archinect - News

Take a look at the new urban farm coming to the Javits Center this month

2021-08-17T08:41:00-04:00

A sprawling new urban farm is coming to one unlikely New York venue this month after a $1.5 billion reinvestment into the state’s “Crown Jewel” convention hall.

The Javits Center will have some verdant new features when its renovation is officially unveiled this month thanks to an innovative, collaborative design by Stantec, tvsdesign, WXY, and Brooklyn Grange with green roofers Adaptive Green acting as contractor. The project is a joint venture of LendLease, Turner Construction, and tvsdesign, with Stantec providing the landscape architecture planning.

Image: © Chloe Barran

The existing green roof has been expanded while a new 1-acre urban farm has also been added along with a pavilion and greenhouse space that will save about 8 million gallons of stormwater annually in addition to providing fresh produce to the center’s catering and dining operations year-round.

Image: © Chloe Barran

“This expansion comes at a critical time for our city, our state and our industry and serves as a si...

Javits Center hospital to close down

2020-04-30T12:56:00-04:00

As COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to decline in New York, the federal government moves forward with the shuttering of the Javits Center which housed a 2,500-bed field hospital for COVID-19 patients. According to Gothamist, as of last week, only 141 of those 2,500 beds were occupied. Additionally, the USNS Comfort, a Naval hospital ship, is expected to depart as well, as it's 1,000-person capacity carried only 32 patients.

The USNS Comfort

"We are encouraged by the data which suggest the curve is flattening in New York and we are working with the city and state to begin the strategic drawdown of resources," a spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told Gothamist on Friday.

Both facilities are due to shut down as soon as April 30th.

2,500-bed hospital conversion at NYC’s Javits Center opens

2020-04-03T18:59:00-04:00

This week, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that work on the plan to convert the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a 2,500-bed temporary hospital has been completed.

The temporary hospital facility is one of four sites currently under construction across the region, facilities that will make up the first phase of an effort launched by the Governor to increase the number of hospital beds across the downstate area. The conversions are being handled by a federal response team led by the Army Corps of Engineers. Additional project partners include: The state of New York, the city of New York, the New York National Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the General Services Administration, the Defense Department, and members of the United States armed forces, according to the the US Department of Defense website.

In the case of the Javits Center, the expansi...

AIA publishes COVID-19 database to share best practices in hospital conversion design

2020-04-03T17:57:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is currently assembling a database containing information on the health care facilities, both traditional and temporary, and the design professionals around the world mobilizing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, AIA announced the creation of an internal COVID-19 task force that seeks to provide expert advice on how existing buildings can be rapidly converted for temporary hospital use.

Previously on Archinect: “AIA launches COVID-19 task force to advise building adaptation for hospital use initiatives.”View of the repurposed Oakland Municipal Auditorium during the 1918 flu epidemic. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Edward A. "Doc" Rogers.

As part of that group’s work, AIA has published the COVID-19 ArchMap, an online library created in partnership with the Kansas University Institute of Health + Wellness Design. The website collects information on these medical facilities in order to create a searchable resource for med...

NYC considers converting Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to temporary medical facility

2020-03-21T13:39:00-04:00

[Gov. Andrew Cuomo] has requested four field hospitals of 250 beds each from the federal government, for a total of 1,000 beds. He is looking at Javits for all of those. He's also asked for four Army Corps of Engineers temporary hospitals. For those, he's looking at the Javits Center; SUNY Stony Brook; SUNY Old Westbury; and the Westchester County Center, another events venue.

New York's roofs may get a lot greener soon

2020-03-19T08:00:00-04:00

Local Laws 92 and 94, which went into effect on November 15, 2019, require all new buildings and major roof alterations to be capped with a green roof, solar panels, or some combination of the two. If successful, the new policies could transform New York’s skyline.

In their publication Urban Omnibus, The Architectural League of New York asked experts from the Green Roof Researchers Alliance to elaborate on the implications of NYC's ambitious decarbonization legislation, the Climate Mobilization Act, which — since November 2019 — requires all new buildings and major roof alterations to feature either a green roof, solar panels, or a combined solution.

Green roof live cam on Javits Center. Stream via Javits Center on YouTube.

"Green roofs are so important for New York City in the changing climate," explains Danielle Spiegel-Feld, an urban environmental law and sustainable energy policy researcher and professor at New York University School of Law, in the interview. "They’re so important for stormwater mitigation. They’re so important for water management, which becomes increasingly crucial as rain flows become heavier in the summer. They’re so important for the urban heat island effect. They’re a critical part of our adaptation strategy, so we ...

Let’s Raze Javits Center (but First Finish Renovations)

2012-01-24T13:56:00-05:00

“It’s just such an awful building that the only reason to keep it would be as a monument to stupidity,” said Mark Wigley, the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.