Monday, April 20, 2009

Developments:

Willoughby Square:
"Willoughby Square is proposed south of MetroTech to establish a corporate address for the new commercial office buildings and to provide an attractive environment for evening and weekend use by residents and employees. The space would include cafes, restaurants and new retail establishments.

A triangular park is proposed on Flatbush Avenue Extension at the entrance to Willoughby Street. This park will provide a gateway from the Fort Greene community to Willoughby Square and the new commercial core office buildings." Downtown Brooklyn Plan (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/dwnbklyn2/dwnbklynplan12.shtml)


City Point:
"The 125,000-square-foot site anchors the eastern end of the Fulton Street Mall area, bounded by Willoughby Street and Flatbush Extension to the north, Fleet Street to the east, DeKalb Avenue to the south, and Gold Street/Albee Square West to the west."
"City Point is a unique mixed-use development that is driving the ongoing renaissance and revitalization of Downtown Brooklyn. It is the only project of its kind to offer the ideal combination of office, retail and a mixture of affordable and market-rate rental housing. City Point will be the first major commercial project constructed in accordance with New York City's 2004 Downtown Brooklyn Plan and is slated for completion in 2010." (http://www.citypointnyc.com/)

117 Livingston Street/29 Gallatin Place:
"The Treeline Companies completed the ground lease for the property at 29 Gallatin Place, representing a currently unused portion of the flagship Macy's department store property in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn. The Treeline Companies will undertake an extensive redevelopment of the unused portion of the property to produce approximately 100,000 rentable square feet of Class-A office space." from Real Estate Weekly, 2005 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_10_52/ai_n15781262/)
I think most of this information should be used for the "future" backdrop imagery and included on an overall plan.

Links to renderings of Proposals on Fulton Street Mall
The folders are organized by location -
CityPoint/Albee Square, 117 Livingston/A+S (Macy's) Development
http://mysite.pratt.edu/~dwalther/A653-5/Proposed%20Renderings/

Kiosk/Intro
I also posted a Fulton Street Zoning map which is taken from the NYC Planning website:
http://mysite.pratt.edu/~dwalther/A653-5/map16c.pdf
(For a little more info on how to understand this please see my plans assignment:
http://mysite.pratt.edu/~dwalther/A653-5/WaltherPlanAssignment.pdf)
If I were the curator, I would narrow down the focus for each site. I think that the common themes for the site are the proposed future changes and therefore, it is important to show this visually.

I think that each site should use the same basic guidelines however can be displayed slightly differently. i.e., BAM may more successfully be shown through the use of perspective images looking down the streets to show the many blocks of the site, where as Fulton Street Mall may use a combination of both.

I think the organization of the research needs to be clear. Images to represent the current state should be on the "blue wall" with corresponding future images in the back. If there are no future images for the particular site, dotted lines can be exhibited on the wall to show the sites potential, or if there is no potential, maybe it just remains as is, which may be the case for some of the historic buildings. I believe that using this language will show the ways the sites change and remain the same...

As for the time line, I think that it would be clear to run it below the street scape images somewhat independently. In order to keep it clear and coherent.

I also see the need for maps. I currently think it is very difficult to find our place in the exhibit/with just street scape images. I think that each site should have a clear map that prefaces it or maybe shown on the kiosks, with all of the information we are displaying (historic buildings, present buildings and proposed.) I believe that this will add clarity to the exhibition.

As for information gathered through surveys and interviews, i think that this could be added into the time lines of each site, i.e., "Mr. X's shop opened on Fulton Street, 1990" or "Mrs. Y moved into the neighborhood." Therefore it becomes more cohesive and does not look like we stuck a bunch of as found items on to a wall. For reference, we could place the surveys on one of the kiosks, but I think that the overall walls need to remain clean and clear.

Friday, April 17, 2009

177 Livingston - property behind macy's gallatin place/hoyt.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_10_52/ai_n15781262/

http://treelinecompanies.com/177liv-p.html

Monday, April 13, 2009

Architects of City Point

http://www.greenbergfarrow.com/expArchMix-AlbeeSquare.html

Monday, March 30, 2009

I have put together a PDF with links to information I have found on proposed projects near/around Fulton Street Mall:

http://mysite.pratt.edu/~dwalther/A653-5/Proposed%20Developments%20Links.pdf

I have also uploaded web images I have found in my search. It can be found at the following:

http://mysite.pratt.edu/~dwalther/A653-5/Proposed%20Renderings/

Lastly, I researched properties for sale/lease and have put the property information sheets together in a folder:

http://mysite.pratt.edu/~dwalther/A653-5/FSM%20Properties/

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Fulton Street Mall Future Research Update/Plan

Last week I sent out emails to three of City Point's developers and to two contact addresses at DBP. I am still waiting on a response from them. If I do not hear back from them by the end of the week, I will attempt to call the offices to find out who to contact next.

Since I am unsure of the information I will get back from the developers, I am going to compile information from the Web, including articles about the future of the district, images and a list of porojects. I will complete this prior to Tuesday's class and probably post it onto "mysite" so it is accessible to the other students.

I also began to look at properties that are for sale/lease along (near) Fulton Street Mall. As I was collecting the information, I was trying to figure out if this fit in with future or present and I think it is a little of both. Much of this information is PDFs, so I will put it in a folder on mysite as well. An idea of how this could be displayed, is possibly having a board of available properties, similar to how Real Estate firms do in their windows with the different listings...

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Changing Faces of Downtown Brooklyn

Vrushti and I collaborated on a proposal that examines the "changing" facades throughout Downtown Brooklyn.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Assignment 2

As noted early, I began my research in order to investigate the housing situation at the site. It lead me to looking at the surrounding areas including the Willoughby Square Development, just north of the site. This development will greatly impact Fulton Mall, bringing in more commercial and residential space. The building proposals are also in contrast to the current buildings that reside in the area.

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership put together these short sideshows that illustrate the changes:

http://www.dbpartnership.org/utils/imgshow.aspx?sid=9

http://www.dbpartnership.org/utils/imgshow.aspx?sid=11


Assignment 1