Category: Articles
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Kent Avenue: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
After years of construction, Kent Avenue is finally rebuilt. The street is like a runway now – prime territory for fast driving.
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B(N)B Lost Opportunity, South Williamsburg
Continuing the Building (North) Brooklyn awards ceremony, and following up on last week’s post for Lost Opportunity: Williamsburg, today we bring you 216 Broadway, winner of of the B(N)B for Lost Opportunity: South Williamsburg. Normally, we don’t venture past Broadway for architectural criticism – the barrel is very small, and its filled with a lot…
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Building (North) Brooklyn II
Continuing our series on design awards for North Brooklyn architecture (following the woeful neglect of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce), today we present the award for the best new restoration trend: California stucco (a.k.a. EIFS, Dryvit, et al). Berry and North 9th. Yes, what better way to celebrate this historic workmanship of your rowhouse than…
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Building (North) Brooklyn
Tonight, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce will present its Building Brooklyn design awards for architectural merit. We here at brooklyn11211 will not be attending, in protest of the fact that not a single North Brooklyn project has been honored this year (as far as we can tell, only one North Brooklyn project was even nominated).…
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Aloft with a View
Its hard to imagine a waterfront hotel with no view, but the much-rumored Aloft hotel at Broadway and Kent just might qualify. To the west, there is nothing but a one-story building and then the East River.
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Goodbye for now
The Quadriad proposal continues to be a cliff hanger. After much confusion over what exactly Quadriad was proposing, and therefore what it was approving, Community Board #1 voted last month to table the resolution in support of the Quadriad plan.
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Quadriad Reprieve
Last night, Brooklyn’s Community Board #1 voted to table the proposed resolution in support of the Quadriad project. The motion to table came after it became clear that many Board members did not understand the full scope and impact of the Quadriad plan. Based on the close vote at the Land Use committee last week,…
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Giving Away the Store
Its also not clear how the developer proposes to identify the subdistricts – such as the the ten-block area identified in the Northside – that specifically qualify for the “AF” zoning bonus.2 Such areas would be “selected by City Planning” the developer says, but there is no criteria provided for such selection.3 So in a…
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Thoroughly Modern Contextual
Though it starts out well, this story has a bad ending. In the sea of banality that is new construction in North Brooklyn, there are actually a few buildings that stand out (for the better, that is). These buildings, which are contextual but in a completely modern skin, are an excellent rebuttal to those who…
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The Modern Tenement
176 South 4th Street Architect: Bricolage (2002 – 2005) Photo: Gregg Snodgrass for Property Shark Recognizing that there is an important place for the background building in our street scape – or put another way, that not every building can (or should) be “high” architecture – I will say that this building is not bad…