Bloomberg Design and Construction Excellence Commission

The Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) building in The Bronx via Inhabit

 

I was walking up Second Avenue the other day. On the corner of 69th Street there was a fenced off piece of nothing. The building had been demolished and an empty lot of dry earth and stone rubble was all that remained. What I noticed first was the light; it's brighter away from the shadows of tall building. A breeze whistled unfettered down the street to ruffle my hair and raise the smell of earth last exposed in the time of Edith Wharton.

What had been there just a few weeks before? I couldn't immediately recall. Two rumpled 19th-century 5-story brick tenement buildings: the type that is ubiquitous (but every day less so) across the east side, upper and lower. One of the store fronts had housed an Italian restaurant closed for over a year. Undoubtedly, a high-rise glass and steel residential building will rise up in its place.

It's sad to think of old buildings where generations have lived being torn down, and yet, it's also sad to think of New York not continuously renewing itself, looking towards the future.

Engine Company 201 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn via Flavorwire

The loss of older buildings is often felt acutely because of the design features ubiquitous in an earlier, more ornate age. Many newer, but not new, buildings seem purely functional, yet not in a cool, stripped down Bauhaus kind of way. Government buildings, often working with tight budgets, have traditionally been among the most soul-dampening.

However, in the past decade, New York's Design and Construction Excellence Initiative (DCE) and subsequent Department of Design and Construction (DDC), have injected a shot of adrenaline into government bids. Mayor Bloomberg first announced the DCE in 2004 and appointed the British architect David J. Burney as design commissioner.

While mindful of the bottom line, Burney made clear that the city values design. Jobs did not automatically go the lowest bidder, but to design firms willing to think both creatively and cost-effectively.

Engine Company 277 in Bushwick, Brooklyn via Flavorwire

One of Burney’s first acts as commissioner was to challenge STV architects to design something exciting for Engine Company 277 in Bushwick. The building subsequently received the 2004 Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design from the Art Commission of the City of New York.

The recession has increased the number of top-notch design firms available to work with the city. Via the DCE, the small budgets and strict requirements endemic to government buildings have inspired not just functional formulaic buildings, but rewarded flexible thinkers who view these challenges as sources of inspiration.

Many of the DCE's projects have targeted station houses, libraries, and other municipal buildings in neighborhoods under served by innovative high profile architects.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts via Flavorwire

Design is sometimes portrayed as the spoiled younger sibling to more substantive pursuits. But good design seems to fulfill quite a primal therapeutic human need, dating back to the vivid sketches on cave walls. Design is an outward expression of our most noble aspects of humanity, and it engages us, and makes us take pride in the spaces we inhabit. The DCE marks an exciting turn in the progression of New York. If we must have new, let's make it our best new.