Natan Wise March 3rd, 2014 It may just be my tendency to overanalyze and cross-relate, but I felt that Constace Haydock’s lecture and the subsequent trip to the Museum of Architecture perfectly captured the creative, let’s-convert-this-space-into-something-more-practical character trait latent in New Yorkers. Firstly, the lecture itself was wonderful. Ms. Haydock showed a bunch of incredibly […]
Rossella Failla- Russell Shorto’s “The Island at the Center of the World,” offers a new prespective on the story of the Dutch colonization of Manhattan. The first settlers on the island were the Dutch, pioneered by Henry Hudson and the Dutch East India Company. What I found interesting were the motivations of the Manhattan settlers. […]
Joseph Maugeri IDC4001H Who is Adrien Van der Donck and why have I never heard of him? The story of this man is one of the most interesting things I’ve learned all week. He was a man that seemingly had it all in his Dutch Republic homeland. There were tolerant attitudes, clean and safe streets, […]
Rossella Failla- Sustainable development has been a rising notion throughout the New York City area. The concept is meant to meet the needs of today’s society without compromising the needs of the future generations. Our guest speaker, Ms. Haydock, explained some aspects of sustainable development in New York City. She spoke of regional planning, which […]
Konstantin Dukhovnyy, IDC 4001H – Prof. Maciuika, 3/3/14 New Amsterdam, New York, New World, yet nothing new in the greed of the few. One of the most surprising yet understandable events that Russell Shorto’s Island at the Center of the World highlighted was how the settlement of New Amsterdam was taken by England and renamed New […]
Navtej S. Ahuja Professor Maciuika Shaping the Future of NYC 4 March 2014 Sustainable development and restoration is the perfect solution to stop the urban monster from destroying the environment. However, in the city where money is God, when does the cost of a sustainable future outweigh the cost of short-term monetary success? Unfortunately, […]
Navtej S. Ahuja Professor Maciuika Shaping the Future of NYC 4 March, 2014 Peter Stuyvesant is often remembered for one event; surrendering the island of Manhattan (known as New Netherland at the time) to the English. Often glossed over by those studying the history of what is now perhaps the greatest metropolis of the world, […]
To be marked as a history, one must always be the first, best, and the finest that are triumphed not for his or her procedures but the victorious outcome itself. However, Russell Shorto in his writing overturns this stereotypical perspective of context of what history should be. He overthrows the concept of history as a […]
Konstantin Dukhovnyy, IDC 4001H – Prof. Maciuika, 3/3/14 The evolution of sustainability in today’s society has led to a better understanding of the world we live in and the ground we walk on. As the “New York Restoration Project and ‘Edge-ucation’ Pavillion” showed us, more emphasis is being put on creating a sustainable landscape and public space, […]
Helen Li IDC4001H The Power of Monopolies over Government In modern society, setting up a business is easy. One just needs a sponsor who can provide funding. The hardest part is to find this sponsor or multiple sponsors who are interested. Most, if not all, sponsorships today are long term economic investments and funding usually […]
It’s not the same. Living in the city is a completely different world compared to living in an area where there are miles and miles of green grass surrounding you. When you live in the city it’s difficult to connect with nature. You aren’t able to appreciate it as much […]
Jenna Hosier Maciuika IDC 4001H March 2nd 2014 Thousands of pages of historical records being thrown out of windows, lying amidst the rubble of fires, tattered and stained throughout hundreds of years, finally surface and become translated. This is without a doubt the most revealing new information and the driving purpose of Russell Shorto’s history […]
The most surprising thing I learned from reading Russell Shorto’s “Island at the Center of the World” was that Henry Hudson attempted to sail across the “top of the world”, on a wooden boat with only 11 other people onboard and powered only by the wind, an excursion that Shorto comments is “pure madness” (p. […]
Stephen Elliott IDC 4001H Sustainable development has long been an abstruse, esoteric concept that has less cohesion than the mud in Sherman Creek. It is a relatively new field of interdisciplinary studies involving principles of economics, an understanding of sociology, theories of urban planning, and a hefty dose of idealism to tie it all together. […]
I borrowed the phrase for my title from an environmental equality visionary named Majora Carter. Although I was not in class last Tuesday, reading through my fellow students reviews on the New York Restoration Project exhibit and the discussion from guest speaker Constance Haydock, I felt that if the exhibit and the speaker’s missions were to be […]
Joseph Maugeri IDC4001H 3/2/14 There is now a plan to transform the depressing, neglected waterfront slice of land on the Harlem River back into a usable space for residents. Supposedly at one point, the land was used as a medium for residential water-sports and other recreational. But once the industrial revolution begun affecting the city, […]
Island at the Center of the World by Russel Shorto reveals the history of Manhattan, the detailed and personal accounts of the figures, especially the Dutch, that would transform the history, culture, and ideology of America. In the prologue and epilogue, Russel Shorto explains his desire to tell the tale of Manhattan in a cohesive […]
Visiting the Sherman Creek Park exhibition at the NYC Center for Architecture served as a perfect segue to Constance Haydock’s “Sustainable Sites Initiative” presentation. During her presentation, Haydock mentioned that the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation planted a number of little gardens along sidewalks throughout NYC. The gardens’ purpose was to create a sustainable […]
In architecture, as with anything else, design is crucial. Designing an aesthetically pleasing building is just as important as designing its ability to stand tall and just as important as portraying a certain message with the design. Designing a museum dedicated to architecture then proves to be a difficult task. The NYC Center for Architecture […]
European arrogance and technology determined the future of Native Americans in the New World. American history paints a picture of the bravery of pioneers crossing the Atlantic Ocean, exploring foreign lands, and taming “barbaric peoples”. Somewhere in the midst of it all, we briefly acknowledge that we decimated and displaced these people. A couple of […]
Helen Li IDC 4001H-Prof. Maciuika March 1, 2014 The Difference between a Gallery and an Exhibit The exhibition, “New York Restoration Project” in the NYC Center for Architecture does not provide visitors with an educational and serious, exhibit-type feel, instead, it offers a quiet and relaxing atmosphere that of a mini gallery. Lacking the […]
The New York City Center for Architecture was quite a surprise. When we got there, we could hardly recognize the building. In fact, we walked past the building and had to backtrack before actually locating the place. Being a building of architecture, I was quite surprised that it did not stand out immediately or was […]
Our visit to the Center of Architecture was a great synopsis of our guest professors’ brief lecture of beauty of landscape architecture and its sustainable methods to our environment. The Edgeucation Pavillion Design competition of a small, 15 acre, park between 163rd street-201st street is a great practice of the principles of SITES as their […]
