This summer, MPA marks 20 years since its founding in 1998. Thank you to all that have made it possible with your projects and collaboration to reach this significant landmark moment! The event featured a beautiful and delicious cake by Duane Park Patisserie, decorated with a photo of Elmhurst Community Library by Richard Barnes.
Photo gallery on our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mparchitectsnyc/
2017 Best of Design Award for Civic – Educational: Elmhurst Community Library
Architect: Marpillero Pollak Architects
Location: Queens, New York
With over 80,000 users speaking more than 57 languages, Elmhurst is the second-busiest circulating library of the 64 in Queens Library’s network. The building’s massing maximizes the impact of an existing community park and highlights the civic role of two reading rooms that emit a welcoming glow after sunset. The main circulation spine extends the streetscape toward a group of trees in the block interior. A system of brightly colored “portals” supports orientation and interaction among programmatic spaces catering to diverse age groups, reinforcing the library’s neighborhood significance. The main architectural elements are two structural glass cubes that position patrons within the community park and on the urban thoroughfare of Broadway. The park cube makes legibile the operations of the library’s two main floors with a monumental stair grounded by a bookshelf, while the Broadway cube floats above the main entry displaying the work 955 Shapes by artist Allan McCollum.
“This handsome new library takes full advantage of its site with its richness in textures and colors, and provides a welcoming cultural and educational resource for this Queens community.” —Irene Sunwoo, Director of Exhibitions, GSAPP (juror)
Structural Engineer:
Severud Associates
General Contractor:
Stalco Construction
Percent for Art (Selected Artist):
Allan McCollum
Structural Glass:
W & W Glass
Material Supplier for Terra-cotta Rainscreen:
Boston Valley Terra Cotta
We are honored and pleased that Elmhurst Library has been recognized as 2017 Brooklyn Queens Design Awards Design of the Year. The Library also received BQDA Award Of Excellence and People’s Choice Award for Institutional Projects. https://archpaper.com/2017/06/2017-aia-brooklyn-queens-design-awards/
Linda completed Social Economic Environmental Design (SEED) Training in Washington, DC with Design Corps.
SEED® is a principle-based network of individuals and organizations dedicated to building and supporting a culture of civic responsibility and engagement in the built environment and the public realm. The SEED Network connects similarly minded members of the public with designers from the fields of architecture, industrial design, communication design, landscape architecture and urban planning.
Design Corps creates positive change in traditionally underserved communities by using design, advocacy, and education to help them shape their environment and address their social, economic, and environmental challenges.
This seminar will articulate a conversation about how to creatively recombine a city’s productive tensions between the “real” world and “imagined” representations of its spatiality. Paradigmatic exhibitions on architecture and the city, spanning an arc of 35 years until the present, will provide base material for reinterpretation.
The National Museum of the Arts of 21st Century in Rome (MAXXI) is promoting such conversation about contemporary architecture and the city, by inviting 12 Italian universities and 12 foreign ones to study different areas of a larger scale territory surrounding Rome. The GSAPP is one of the 24 participating institutions. The challenge posited by “ROMA 20 – 25. New cycles of life for the metropolis” is to elaborate research topics that hold together the clarity of a manifesto and parameters for a design project, engaging a territory that extends more than 25 km from the historical city center, also adopting a temporal projection of 10 years ahead.
Sandro is directing the GSAPP team which will participate in the workshop, “New cycles of life in the metropolis,” which will result in an international exhibition at the MAXXI/Rome in September 2015.
The video is the presentation of the GSAPP – Columbia University approach.
This work is a collaboration between Sandro Marpillero and a group of students of the Master of Interactive Arts at the Università Iuav di Venezia, coordinated by Cristina Barbiani.
The project is about activating the Swiss Pavilion at the 2014 Biennale, with an interactive installation in relation to Cedric Price’s project for the Fun Palace (1961-64).
Sandro initiated this project as a parallel activity to his role of design instructor (with Angela Vettese, Valeria Burgio, Renato Bocchi) at the Biennale-related post-graduate level Iuav/Workshop If Clause – Archiving the Impossible, which was connected to the Swiss Pavilion’s “School of Tomorrow” directed by Lorenza Baroncelli.
MPA’s model of the Elmhurst Public Library (Queens, NYC), to be completed in six months, is on display at Columbia University in the 400 Level Gallery of Avery Hall, as part of an exhibition of faculty projects and publications. The new 30,000 sf building addresses the complex urban situation created by a 15-story apartment building that had obscured the site’s historical park, by re-establishing the institution’s visibility on Broadway. The project is the largest building realized by a small firm within the DDC’s Design and Construction Design Excellence Program.
MPA is participating in the 12th Annual Open House New York Weekend on October 12, 2014. For two days every October, OHNY Weekend unlocks the doors to New York’s most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York. Through the unparalleled access that it enables, OHNY Weekend deepens our understanding of the importance of architecture and urban design to foster a more vibrant civic life and helps catalyze a citywide conversation about how to build a better New York.
So happy to celebrate MPA’s 20th birthday yesterday evening with this beautiful and delicious cake by Duane Park Patisserie decorated with..
Celebrating MPA 20th Anniversary with our significant clients, supportive colleagues and dearest friends at Duane Street Loft. MPA birthday cake..
West Water View Terrace Lighting work session 08 09 2018. Arrived a few minutes early; rewarded with glorious sunset. #MarpilleroPollakArchitects..
