Victoria Meyers : Invisible Buildings

Manhattan Waterfront Design: Waterfront Architecture + Music: SaMPlinG: hMa / Michael Schumacher / DJ Olive

Victoria Meyers architect, founding partner of the architectural firm, hMa, collaborates with artists in other fields.  The artist who Victoria has the most long-running collaborative experience with is Michael Schumacher.  hMa is showing 'Open Fabric', the firm's original design proposal for the redevelopment of Manhattan's West Side.

 Michael Schumacher / hMa: Architects Design Music: Performance at the Kitchen, 2004.  For information, contact:  vMeyers@hanrahanMeyers.com.  Post; Victoria Meyers architect.

The Victoria Meyers architect / Schumacher collaboration started with Victoria Meyers' proposal to San Francisco MoMA for a show titled:  'Sampling'.  The show was to focus on the idea of using 'samples' to make architecture, art, and music.  This preceded the Meyers - Schumacher collaboration, and included DJ Olive, painter Bruce Pearson, and sculptor Roxy Paine.    After the 'sampling' collaboration, Michael Schumacher came on board as a permanent collaborator with Victoria Meyers architect.

DJ Olive, 2010

For the Samples show, Victoria proposed showing hMa's master plan proposal for the development of Manhattan's West Side waterfront. hMa had produced a design titled:  'Open Fabric'.  Open Fabric proposed a series of formally complex buildings to mediate the edge of Manhattan with the water.  hMa's proposal included several areas with waterfront parks, and different developments to create a positive urban experience in approaching the water's edge.

diagram for  'Open Fabric' plan by hanrahanMeyers architects.  For information contact:  info@hanrahanMeyers.com.

In 2000 hanrahan Meyers were recognized as new New York design talent, winning the Young Architects award from the Architectural League of NYC.  For the public lecture accepting their award, Victoria Meyers presented hMa's masterplan design for the West Side of Lower Manhattan, starting at Canal Street, continuing north to 34th Street. 

site plan, ' Open Fabric' masterplan for NYC West Side development by hanrahanMeyers architects. For information contact:  info@hanrahanMeyers.com.

After Victoria Meyers' presentation of the Canal Street Masterplan, her firm, hMa, was hired as the official masterplan architect for Battery Park City's North Neighborhood.  Working with Battery Park City Authority, hMa explore ideas around large-scale Masterplanning design incorporating cutting-edge sustainable practices. 

 Battery Park City:  North Neighborhood at night.  hanrahan Meyers architects, Master Plan architects since 1997
 

For more information about hMa's Masterplans and Landscapes, visit the firm's website:  www.hanrahanMeyers.com.  For more information about 'Open Fabric' contact:  info@hanrahanMeyers.com.

Natural Wave Structures and ArchitecturehMa Research: WaveLine; Latimer Gardens Community Center; Sound Theory and Architecture

  Acoustical decay curve for music : Victoria Meyers architect: research into Wave Forms

WaveLine is a steel and masonry pavilion of subtle but powerful vision, with modest dimensions.  The building is located in Queens, New York and uses the contrast of its contemporary materials and graceful form to define a new place for performance and sport within an existing public housing complex.

The main façade of WaveLine is the building’s bent roof plane constructed using standing-seam galvanized steel and aluminum.  The interior is a simple, white, one-room volume for performance and sport.  The pavilion ceiling is a faceted surface expressive of the overall form of the building’s exterior. 

main elevation: WaveLine Victoria Meyers architect

WaveLine is a term from ship-building and physics referring to the shape most likely to glide through water without resistance.  The formal properties of the project were influenced by researches into non-resistant structures.  hMa also consulted with acoustic designer Yasuhisa Toyota whose sound calculations of reverberation times for chamber music performed in the space also influenced the roof shape.

The pavilion is 5,000 square feet, and the adjacent community center is 20,000 square feet.  WaveLine finished construction in June 2007.

  3D rendering of WaveLine

Green Urbanism, Ecological Urbanism, Battery Park City, and City DesignBattery Park City North Neighborhood; Masterplan Guidelines; Urban Design; Green Streets

North End Avenue: Battery Park City North Neighborhood:  Irish Hunger Memorial. Post: Victoria Meyers architect

Victoria Meyers architect (hMa) supports major advances that are happening in green and sustainable technologies and practices.  These changes have radically altered how people see their relationship to the environment.

Cities everywhere are becoming greener, cleaner and healthier places to live.  A major aspect of this change for the better is the 'green streets' movement.  Green Streets is a new Landscape Design Initiative to use planted areas to control and clean rain water run-off.  It is a more natural approach to controlling storm water run-off that results in islands of Nature within cities.

North End Avenue:  Entry to DWi-P Green Roof:  Ballfield Terrace.  Post: Victoria Meyers architect

Green Streets work by diverting street rainwater run-off from the city's storm/sewer pipe system and manages it on-site using a landscape approach.  Once water is within the landscape area, it is retained to a certain depth, often up to 12" deep, by a series of check-dams.  Water cascades from one cell to another, until plants and soil absorb the runoff or until the curb extensions reach their storage capacity.  The landscape system infiltrates water at a rate of roughly 3 inches per hour.  If rain is too intense, water will exit the system, through another curb cut at the end of the curb extension, and flow into the existing street inlets.

These systems have the ability to manage most rain water run off and, through the natural filtration abilities of plants, purifies water that would otherwise go into a storm or, even worse, sewage system.

The City of New York currently diverts all of its rainwater run off into the City's sewage system. hMa applauds Mayor Michael Bloomberg's efforts to 'green' the City by creating hundreds of new pocket parks and greenscapes throughout the five Boroughs.  We would like to encourage the City to think about implementing a 'Green Streets' system for the City of New York, perhaps choosing a limited area as a 'demonstration project'.

  Battery Park City North Neighborhood:  View toward Ballfields from DWi-P Green Roof.  Victoria Meyers architect

hMa sees Green Streets as the most important urban innovation since the City Beautiful Movement in the 1890's / 1900's.  It is about time that Americans make their cities more natural and, by being more natural, more humane. Green Streets work hand-in-hand with other contemporary design initiatives, including Green Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism.  

hMa have been the Master Plan Architects for Battery Park City's North Neighborhood since 1990.  In that capacity, they have written design guidelines for over 4 million square feet of Green construction.  Under hMa's watch, Battery Park's North Neighborhood developed the first high-rise LEED certified residential tower - the Solaire - in 2003.  hMa also were responsible to overview the development of all Parks in the North Neighborhood, where Green Streets principals of water management are currently being actively applied.

To read more about hMa's Master Plan designs, visit our website, www.hanrahanMeyers.com.