Tag: battery park city community Center

Architecture + Energy

December 22nd, 2008

BATTERY PARK CITY COMMUNITY CENTER, NYC

hMa’s Battery Park Community Center is designed to meet the standards for a Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating. hMa believes that good buildings should have the efficiency of the best hybrid cars.

hMa has experience designing buildings using passive energy systems including solar panels, geo-thermal energy, and other sustainable sources. We hope to achieve zero carbon footprint in 2009. hMa was part of the team that drafted the original Green Guidelines for Battery Park City. We’ve used our experience and expertise from multiple projects to create green standards that we apply to all projects.

We look forward to 2009. hMa supports Farm Sanctuary, and the Nature Conservancy, as part of the firm’s ongoing commitment to ecologically friendly construction practices in architecture.

BEST WISHES FOR 2009!

hanrahanMeyers architects
Battery Park City Community Center on Dwell.com

September 12th, 2008

hMa is pleased to have been featured recently on a Dwell.com design blog. Here is what Dwell blogger Jamie Waugh had to say about the project:

Approaching 9/11, New York's unspoken heart is in Battery Park. Relevant, then, is the community center Hanrahan Meyers is developing immediately north of Ground Zero. It's condo central in those parts, and the community center will be the base of two new residential towers; but the North Neighborhood structure will be a public works project drawing modernity and peacefulness to the area that once knew hideous chaos.

The structure's highlight is a public 500-foot long glass "Wall of Light" with an LED light installation the firm designed along with Tillotson Design Associates, illuminating a sound composition by New York composer Michael Schumacher. It will bring to light the passive energy systems fueling the Community Center: a program including swimming pools, a gym, a theater, classrooms and recreation and dance spaces. Completion date: 2010.

Visit Jamie's blog on Dwell.com

Battery Park City Community Center : view of arcade looking north
Architecture and Water water architecture; community center design; minimalist house design

October 31st, 2007

2008: Dune House
2007: WaveLine
2006: Holley House
1999: Hudson River House

hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) design projects around themes based in the Natural realm. In 2006, hMa published ‘Designing with Light’ cataloging the firm’s researches into Natural light and architecture.

Since the firm’s inception in 1987, hMa has also featured Water as an element of their work. In that spirit, hMa is presenting four projects, beginning with Dune House, a project that is still ‘on the drawing boards’ which may be in construction by 2008; WaveLine, a multi-purpose space finished 2007 and not yet open to the general public; Holley House, a 7,000 square foot house in Garrison, New York, completed in 2006; and Hudson River House, a house designed in 1989 for clients in Nyack, New York.

In each project presented in our gallery of hMa’s ‘water-works’ - the overriding theme is the idea of designing an architectural frame that intimately connects the inhabitants of the space to water.

test pattern for BPC glass arcade based on water and soundwaves; read more about hMa's research here

As an extension to hMa's work with water, the firm is designing a new Community Center opposite Ground Zero in Manhattan. The project features a 550-foot long glass wall where hMa are collaborating with sound artist Michael Schumacher. The theme for the wall is 'water'. The facace will feature a dot pattern representing a new work by Michael Schumacher, based on water sounds. Schumacher is composing pieces for a new CD, to be released to coincide with the opening of hMa's building. A major feature of the new BPC Community Center will be an aquatic center including adult and children's pools.

To read more about hMa's work please visit our website: www.hanrahanmeyers.com.
hMa: Green Architecture and Sustainable DesignEcology and Architecture; LEED Design; Victoria Meyers Architect

October 2nd, 2007

Chattanooga Nature Interpretive Center

Platinum LEED Battery Park City Community Center

hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) are committed to Green Design. In 1987 hMa designed their first public building that gave the firm national recognition as architects with their winning design for the Chattanooga Nature Interpretive Center. hMa’s Interpretive Center was a forward thinking Green building featuring a solar panel as the building entrance canopy, in addition to other sustainable features. HMa gives 2 % of the firm’s income to Nature conservation groups every year as an offset to the impact of the firm’s construction projects. hMa currently are architects for a Platinum LEED Community Center at Battery Park City, with construction planned for 2008.

hMa’s philosophy of design with a connection to Nature is displayed boldly on the firm’s website. hMa specializes in Nature based design that incorporates Green and sustainable technologies and materials. The tagline on hMa’s website, ‘design is a frame to Nature’, reflects the firm’s commitment to Green and sustainable design.

hMa implements their own proprietary Green specifications that apply to all hMa projects including: recycled content GWB; use of low VOC paint; and use of high efficiency, energy star rated equipment. hMa has experience from their role as master plan architects overseeing Green guidelines for Battery Park City Residential Developments since 2000. In 2005 hMa were hired as architects for the new Platinum LEED Community Center for Battery Park City’s North Neighborhood development.
Battery Park City Community Center

August 27th, 2007

left: glass arcade wall of hMa's Battery Park City Community Center; right: an eastern songbird

hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) are pleased to announce that they are designing a new 55,000 square foot sustainable and green Platinum LEED rated Community Center adjacent to Ground Zero. The project will feature a 540 foot long glass wall facing West Street. hMa is designing the glass wall in collaboration with New York composer Michael Schumacher. Mr. Schumacher’s piece is a combination of various bird songs. The piece will be etched on the wall in a design by hanrahan Meyers, using a bar code. The ‘bird wall’ faces toward West Street, and links the site and Battery Park City’s grounds with the future Freedom Tower at Ground Zero. The wall will be dedicated to song birds, including species that have become extinct. For more information about the Battery Park City Community Center, go to our webpage: www.hanrahanMeyers.com. For more information about Michael Schumacher, go to: www.michaeljschumacher.com .

hMa designs award-winning New York apartments, houses, and public buildings. hMa are part of the team that developed the Green guidelines for Battery Park City Authority. As master plan architects for Battery Park City's North Neighborhood, hMa wrote design guidelines for the first Green high-rise residential towers in the United States (the Solaire and Riverhouse). hMa brings their knowledge of cutting-edge Green technologies to every project that the firm works on.
6 People Changing the Way We LiveVictoria Meyers, architect, for hanrahan Meyers architects; sustainable design; green urbanism; Battery park City Community Center

May 22nd, 2007

The following is an excerpt from Arrive Magazine's May/June issue, pictured above. Click on image to enlarge. Victoria Meyers architect, for hanrahan Meyers architects

Six People Changing the Way We Live
by Kris Frieswick

Growing up surrounded by the wide spaces and light of Abilene, Texas, for half the year, and densely forested, rural Pennsylvania the other half, award-winning architect Victoria Meyers developed a lifelong craving for nature and light. In her work she strives to bring both those elements into the projects designed by her and her partner Tom Hanrahan. A devotee of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Meyers says her modernist, minimalist designs "create spiritual places that put you in direct contact with nature."

Finding a way to do that in urban spaces like Battery Park City or a 1,600-square-foot urban loft in midtown Manhattan may seem impossible, and that's why her work has won so many architectural awards. The firm's latest concept, a 60,000-square-foot community center near Ground Zero, is being designed as a platinum LEED-certified building – the highest designation of environmentally sustainable construction – and will manifest Meyers' design goal. The community center, which is slated for completion in July 2012, boasts a 500-foot-long "Wall of Light" that will pour natural light into all of the building's primary spaces. A preliminary plan also calls for music, based on water, in a piece composed by friend and collaborator, Michael Schumacher. The glass wall will "reach out to the rest of the environment in a very vocal way that says this is a part of what we need to be as a civilization," Meyers says. "Maybe clean water, or a bird species is more important than having 24 different jackets, each of which is disposable at the end of the season."

View the complete issue of Arrive here.

See more from hMa at hanrahanmeyers.com .