Displaying items by tag: environmental

San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) broke ground on its highly anticipated expansion on Wednesday, May 29, 2013. Around 300 supporters gathered to witness the kick-off of the construction project that will add 225,000-square-feet to the museum. The renovated space is expected to reopen in 2016.

 Snøhetta, an international architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design firm based in Oslo, Norway and New York City, designed SFMOMA’s expansion, which is expected to cost around $610 million. 89% of the capital has already been collected through fundraising. Officials upped their original estimate for construction from $555 million in May.

 SFMOMA’s expansion will more than double the existing exhibition space and provide nearly six times as much public space as their currently Mario Botta-designed building. The renovation will create a new outdoor terrace, a sculpture terrace, and state-of-the-art conservation studios. The museum will also take a more environmentally sensitive approach to day-to-day operations. SFMOMA hopes to gain LEED Gold certification by reducing their energy costs, water use, and wastewater generation.

Built in the 1930s in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park on land donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr., The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a sight to be seen. Assembled from architectural elements dating from the 12^th through 15^th century, The Cloisters, which includes landscaped gardens, features a collection of nearly 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

Besides an impressive collection and scenic gardens, The Cloisters boasts a picturesque view of the Palisades, a line of steep cliffs that run along the lower Hudson River. Rockefeller’s grandson, Larry, is teaming up with the Met, to preserve the vista, which risks being obscured by LG Electronics’ new corporate headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

The plans for the new LG location have the building stretching upward 143 feet, standing several stories above the tree line almost directly across the Hudson River from the Cloisters. Rockefeller, who has met with LG officials to discuss altering the building’s plans, is not alone in his concerns. A number of environmental groups have also filed lawsuits asking the company to reduce the new headquarters’ height. The Met has also written letters pleading with LG as well as a judge handling one of the environmental cases.  

Designed by architecture giant HOK, LG will begin construction on 27 acres this year. The project is expected to conclude by 2016.

Known for his massive environmental works of art that interact with the natural landscape, the Bulgarian artist, Christo (b. 1935), has been ordered by a federal judge to halt the installation of his latest project until a lawsuit involving the work reaches a conclusion.

Created by Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude (they worked collaboratively under the moniker Christo), Over the River involves hanging long stretches of translucent fabric for two weeks above various parts of the Arkansas River in Colorado. Girded by steel cables that will be anchored on either bank, the project will consume almost seven miles of the river.

The environmentalist group Rags Over the Arkansas River Inc. (ROAR) brought the lawsuit against Christo as they fear the project will affect local fisheries and natural habitats and disturb the locals. Although the Bureau of Land Management approved the project in 2011, Christo will serve as a co-defendant alongside the Bureau in order to uphold his and Jeanne-Claude’s vision.

The couple’s iconic body of work includes The Gates, which was installed in New York City’s Central Park in 2005, and Running Fence, a 24 mile-long artwork that ran through California’s Sonoma and Marin counties in 1976. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s projects often stirred up controversy based on their sheer scale, but it is also this otherworldliness that makes them visually unforgettable.