New York State Pavilion Revival Wins USGBC’s Natural Talent Design Competition

By Jessica Boehland

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has selected a proposed redesign of the New York State Pavilion as the winner of its fourth annual Natural Talent Design Competition. Restricted to students and professionals with less than five years of experience in the building industry, the Natural Talent Design Competition is intended to provide an applied learning experience in the LEED Rating System as well as in integrated design, innovation, and social consciousness.

After selecting design projects for their regional competitions, USGBC chapters and Emerging Green Builder groups representing 21 cities and regions of the country held the first round of judging during the summer of 2007. Winners from the first round competed in the national contest at USGBC’s November 2007 Greenbuild conference. The winning team included Anu Akkineni, of Cook + Fox Architects; Denis Blount, Ryan Biziorek, and Mia Tsiamis, of Arup; and Emilie Hagen, of Atelier Ten.
Commissioned by the State of New York for the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, the New York State Pavilion was originally designed by Philip Johnson. It features a series of concrete columns and three observation towers as well as artworks by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, among others. The winning Natural Talent design, titled Arts in Motion, envisions the conversion of the now-neglected Pavilion into a LEED-Platinum performing arts center.

The project team began with a desire to preserve the Pavilion’s cultural, historic, and architectural significance, according to Akkineni. Instead of simply adapting the Pavilion into a performing arts center, the design treats the new functions as secondary, “by tucking the arts center inside the earth,” she says. “This allowed us to preserve the original architecture and its original function as a pubic space, therefore evoking the spirit of the World’s Fair.”

The team also wanted to “revive the public artwork” that a brightly colored canopy originally brought to the site, says Biziorek. In response, the team designed a micro-turbine façade, made up of thousands of 12-inch-diameter rotors, that would generate an excess of electricity during most of the year. Each turbine would also be connected to a light-emitting diode (LED) that would brighten or dim according to wind speed, creating a “kinetic light sculpture,” according to Biziorek.

Realizing “the risk of simply sticking green technologies onto [the project],” Blount says that the team aimed to integrate environmental strategies into the architecture and function. “Luckily,” he says, “we found many opportunities where the two were mutually beneficial.” A green roof, for example, would reduce stormwater runoff while insulating the auditorium from air traffic noise, and an underground labyrinth would temper air on its way to the mechanical system, not only reducing the energy needed to heat and cool ventilation air but also reducing mechanical noise and vibrations that could disturb performances. The labyrinth would be constructed with rubble created in the demolition of part of the existing structure.

The judges for the final competition were Guy Battle, founding partner of Battle McCarthy; Christine Ervin, former president and CEO of USGBC and current president of the Christine Ervin Company; Sara O’Mara, LEED certification manager at Choate Construction; Peter Weingarten, AIA, director of international architecture at FXFowle Architects; and Heather Venhaus, environmental designer in the Landscape Restoration Program at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. While the design’s chances of implementation are uncertain, Blount says “our fingers are crossed.”

This article was produced by BuildingGreen, Inc.- www.buildinggreen.com