Technical Pro

Getty ImagesThe Times Square pedestrian plaza deserves better than beach chairs and epoxy gravel.

New York

Following an eight-month experiment, the pedestrian islands created on Broadway by barring traffic from 47th to 42nd streets and 35th to 33rd streets have been declared permanent, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proclaiming last month “the new Broadway is here to stay.” Yesterday, Janette Sadik-Khan, commissioner of the Department of Transportation, announced a design competition “to refresh the temporary plazas” at Times Square and added that a capital reconstruction project to revamp this space was on.

The mayor’s announcement referred to the transformation of the famous byway where sidewalks and traffic lanes once overflowed with tourists, office workers, theatergoers, illegal vendors, opportunistic performers, subway seekers, taxis, cars, buses, bikes and the occasional police-mounted horse. Now, along with pedestrians, the two Midtown stretches are populated with groupings of chairs, tables and some planters.

There was general rejoicing, but especially in the office of Ms. Sadik-Khan, who initiated the Broadway closings in February 2009. (While she announced back then that the move would speed traffic in the area by as much as 37%, the department’s evaluation report completed in January found that the high was closer to 17%.) The trial period began in May with little advance notice. Overnight, the busy street became an extended public patio with paving made of epoxy gravel glued in place, planters arrayed along the edges and flimsy aluminum lawn chairs set out for the grabbing. The sudden makeover triggered a summer-long photo opportunity of sprawled crowds basking happily where taxi drivers once laid into their horns.

While the mayor called the closings “Janette’s innovation,” the Regional Plan Association—an 80-year-old nonprofit group dedicated to smarter community and transportation design in the Tri-State area—has since at least 1974 advocated banning cars from Times Square and the infamous “Bowtie,” the chokepoint where Seventh Avenue and Broadway cross.

In 2003, the nonprofit Design Trust for Public Space and the local business improvement group, Times Square Alliance, developed a Streetscape Improvement Plan on the premise that the crossroad was “gorgeous from the neck up, [but] it needs a makeover from the neck down.” They gave the DOT their proposal for untying the Bowtie, allowing for sidewalk augmentation, syncing green lights to streamline traffic, and introducing more attractive street furniture. In 2006, Iris Weinshall, who was then the transportation commissioner, hit the streets with her own ambitious plan—including colored bus lanes, 200 miles of new bike lanes, and widened sidewalks specifically in Times Square where Broadway and Seventh Avenue traffic would no longer be allowed to cross. The plan was hailed as “The Iris Weinshall Renaissance,” and it was followed by another initiative, the Street Reconstruction Project, in 2007. In spite of some improvements, neither plan managed to get through the red tape to completion as envisioned. Ms. Sadik-Khan herself framed the Broadway closings as a “pilot project” to leapfrog the city’s lengthy approval processes.

Now that the plazas at Times and Herald squares are permanent, the next step is making them look worthy of the part, a process that began somewhat haltingly yesterday. With businesses, urban planners and the mayor’s office solidly behind the idea that proponents said would not only speed traffic but also seduce more tourists, cheer up lunchtime office workers and attract more customers to local stores, why isn’t the DOT taking more assertive steps in making the plazas attractive? Epoxy gravel is hardly the stuff of inspiring design. And while the announcement last month made much of the Times Square Alliance’s findings that 74% of visitors consider their Times Square experience much improved, nothing was said about the 72% who agreed the space would be “more appealing if designed better, especially the furniture.” (They’d also like some live music, please.)

On a recent weekend visit, chairs and tables at the southern end of the Times Square plaza were largely empty, mismatched and scattered far apart. Different styles of metal chairs—some gray, some red and, in one case, slatted-wood—jostled with powder-blue and silver steel benches. The tall espresso bar tables seemed more forlorn than cosmopolitan without anyone leaning there sipping coffee. The glued-in-place gravel was uneven, missing, and painted in some places with red dots for no obvious reason. Further north, at the foot of the TKTS booth—where the ruby-glass staircase that rises up behind the Father Duffy statue has become a choice perch and vantage point for viewing the flashy cyclorama of digital and neon advertisements in Times Square—the street-level seating was better integrated: Chairs, tables and umbrellas were all red, as if in spontaneous response to the more coherent design of the booth’s stadium staircase.

The dead of winter is no time to judge an outdoor plaza, of course, but it was easy to see why some critics are drawing unfavorable comparisons between the Times Square pedestrian plaza and the High Line, which also opened last spring. Intensive design and almost obsessive care went into making that elevated railroad track turned garden path an instant success on the far West Side of Manhattan. It also cost some $152 million in public and private funds ($44 million raised by Friends of the High Line), while the Broadway plan had to wing it with less than $2 million in public funding.

Ms. Sadik-Khan, who in October boasted of getting the Broadway beach chairs from a discount hardware store, said yesterday that the new design competition was to elicit ideas for “economical, temporary surface treatments” from any design professional or artist living in New York. The winner will receive a $15,000 fee from the mayor’s fund and the design is to be in place by mid-July. While that suggests a rather piecemeal and hasty approach to any serious design project, the mayor speaks more inspirationally of “an enduring, world-class street.” A request for proposals to provide an overall plaza design was also made public yesterday. The Design Trust for Public Space has expressed an interest in running its own competition for the plaza’s design, but yesterday’s press release said that only the eight large firms already qualified to work with the New York City Department of Design and Construction are eligible. Luckily many are blue-chip operations, including Selldorf Architects, Snøhetta, Rogers Marvel Architects and Thomas Phifer and Partners. None are landscape or urban planning firms. Hopes remain high, however, that having finally grabbed the space away from cars, the powers that be will make every effort to create something truly transformative for people. No one’s expecting Rome’s Piazza Navona, but someplace comfortable from which to watch the Naked Cowboy would be nice.

Ms. Iovine is executive editor of the Architect’s Newspaper.

This is the story of enterprise in hard times. It is the story of a teen who dedicated himself to improving his lot. It is the story of how one young man turned an old cell phone into a Porsche. Without any money changing hands.

Steven Ortiz is a man who understands what it is to be committed. So, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, he spent around six hours a day on his iPhone, trawling Craigslist’s barter section, seeking deals that would somehow make his asset base seem more impressive.

While his enterprise hasn’t quite reached the scale of the man who traded one red paperclip and ultimately ended up with a house, it is still quite something for a 15 year old to enjoy this level of both smarts and dedication.

Ortiz began, around two years ago, with an old cell phone he had been given by a friend. He traded it for a better cell phone. Which he subsequently traded for an iPod Touch. Some people would be happy to have traded an old cell phone for an iPod Touch. But not Ortiz. He told the Tribune that he managed to barter the iPod Touch up to a dirt bike, then another.

A MacBook Pro came into his possession, before he somehow managed to obtain a Toyota 4Runner.

The 4Runner was less useful to him than it might have been to some, as he was only 15 at the time. So he bartered that for a golf cart that had been somehow sportified. This got traded for another dirt bike. Then came a street bike and a series of cars.

One of these was a 1975 Ford Bronco, which is revered, at least in some quarters, as a collector’s item. And that’s how he got his 2000 Porsche Boxster S convertible.

This, remarkably, was a bad deal. For the Porsche is only worth around $9,000. But just imagine the looks he now gets at Charter Oak High School.

Steven’s father, Esteban, explained the principle to the Tribune: “A lot of people don’t have money right now, in this economy. So they think, ‘I really need a new phone, but I don’t have the money. Here I have this CD player lying around that I don’t use anymore, maybe I can trade.’”

Naturally, there are some who question whether he is merely a growing con man. But he insists that people have certain needs and are prepared to trade away other, perhaps more valuable, things for those needs to be met.

By the way, should you be in need of a 2000 Porsche Boxster S convertible, I have a feeling there may be one going soon. Steven is finding it difficult, having lost his job in a sushi restaurant, to meet the running costs on this fine car. So what are you going to offer him? A Lexus? A house? Or perhaps an internship with Warren Buffett?

[Thanks Chris]

A well-preserved tomb believed to be the final resting place of an ancient Mayan king has been discovered in Guatemala, scientists announced last week.

The 1,600-year-old tomb was discovered on May 29 beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz. It is packed with carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who might have been sacrificed at the time of the king’s death.

However, much more work is needed before the scientists can piece together all the clues about the tomb’s owner.

“We still have a great deal of work to do,” said Stephen Houston an archaeologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. “We’ve only been out of the field for a few weeks, and we’re still catching our breath after a very difficult, technical excavation. Royal tombs are hugely dense with information and require years of study to understand.”

Tomb discovery
Before making the actual discovery, Houston said the team thought “something odd” was happening in the deposit where they were digging. They knew a small temple had been built in front of a sprawling structure dedicated to the sun god, an emblem of Maya rulership.

“When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of ‘caches’ blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight.”

Eventually the scientists unearthed the final layer to reveal a small hole.

Steve Jobs speaks at Stanford University and inspires the students to live there own life because they only get 1 chance.

You know things are changing when you see products like this. We’ve seen it in countless demos and heard about it through prototype hands-ons and vague rumors, but Project Natal is real, and it’s ready to play. The Kinect for Xbox 360 ($TBA) is Microsoft’s killer motion tracking add-on, featuring a camera, audio sensors, motion-sensing tech to track 48 points of movement on your body, and the ability to recognize faces and voices. All of which works together to give you a unique, motion-driven gaming experience without the need for silly things like controllers. Get ready for the future cuz your in it!

Well for any of you who saw lost and would like to know where the inspiration came from… well the answer is finally here.

B-Cycle