For Thursday, please read and write a summary of Michael Graves’s “Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing”
Please post your summary on the blog and comment on at least one other classmate’s summary. In your comment, try to point out what the summary did well and what it left out.
This op-ed can be used for Paper #1 if you’d prefer to use it instead of “Wave Effect” or the other piece mentioned in the assignment.
This is a picture I did not take of a woman with a sign saying “I lost my things in a fire”. She only had a luggage which was supposed to be the last thing she could retrieve from the fire. The lady was crying and looked hopeless. A few people helped her and somehow she did not seem completely hopeless.
This is a picture I did not take of a drunken man disturbing a train from operating. He was laid on the subway floor. A staff arrived and tried to solve this problem. However, the staff did not want to have any physical contact with the man. After a while, two passengers picked up the drunken man and placed him on the subway platform.
This is a picture I did not take of a mother waiting for her son arrival in the JFK airport. As soon as the mother noticed her beloved son, she cried tears of joy. They gave each other a warm huge and started to talk about their pasts.
New York has some of the best architecture in the world. There are Skyscrapers that cover the city from left to right. even the smaller buildings between those giants add something special to the feel of the big city. A building that comes to mind to most when you say New York happens to be my favorite building in the city. That building is the Empire state building.
Lets go back a couple of years and see what the building has gone through over the years. The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world between 1931 and 1972. No other building has held the record for such a long period of time since the Strasbourg Cathedral lost the title of “World’s Tallest Building” in 1874. This next fact is actually one that surprised me at first. The top of the Empire State Building was originally designed for mooring zeppelins (airships).One of my favorite parts of the Empire State building happens to be the flood lights at the top of the building. The color of those lights change due to the current events. For example when a New York team plays in a important game the colors change to that of the teams colors. When the New York Giants play the building will be lit in blue and red. The Empire State Building has its own zip code to accommodate its 1,000 businesses and 21,000 employees. The Empire State Building Run-up is an annual race up 1,576 steps to the 86th floor of the building. The world record time for the race is held by Australian Paul Crake at 9 minutes and 33 seconds.
Here are the construction statistics:
New York is a great place to study architecture you can look out of your window and see just how far the human race has come from building stone hedge to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai but when I thought of New York as a kid for some reason one building stood out to me the most and that building is the Flat Iron building or (the fuller building)is located at 175 Fifth Avenue  in the borough of Manhattan. Since it employed a steel skeleton with the steel coming from the American Bridge Company in Pennsylvania it could be built to 22 stories (285 feet) relatively easily, which would have been difficult using other construction methods of that time. It was a technique familiar to the Fuller Company, a contracting firm with considerable expertise in building such tall structures. At the vertex, the triangular tower is only 6.5 feet (2 m) wide; viewed from above, this “pointy” end of the structure describes an acute angle of about 25 degrees.This building always made me feel like it took the street you were driving on and cut it in 2 almost splitting ways it was simple and at the same time so unorthodox compared to everything else in the city and i think that’s why i like it its because its different and made me feel something for a building.
New York City is filled up with many fascinating buildings that are constructed in their own personal way. My two favorite buildings are visually opposites from each other, but demonstrates the beauty of the building and complements the area where it was built. The two buildings I deeply love would be the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Bank of America Tower.
New York City, being full of sky scrapers, lets you appreciate other types of different buildings out there. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the United States. After being negotiated in 1871, they decided to place it between East Park Drie, Fifth Ave and 78th and 85 Street Transverse Roads in Central Park. With its Gothic style in the front of the building, you can surely expect so much from the outside to what’s on the inside. I am also engaged my the huge columns and longs stairs that show the appearance of Greek Colosseums.
The Bank of America Tower is another building that amazes me. It’s completely magnificent and establishes the buildings of the future. Several buildings had to be demolished to make way for the 55 story 2,100,000 square feet of office space tower. What’s so fascinating about this structure is it’s environmental features. Its environmentally friendly with it’s insulating glass from the top of the building to the bottom. It contains natural light and has it’s own daylight dimming system. In addition it has a system that captures rainwater and reuses it. It just makes you think, this building is not only beautiful, but it is eco-friendly.
New York City is full of skyscrapers and there is so many to chose from. My architectural building I chosen is the Hearst Tower that is located at 300 west 57th street 959 8th avenue in midtown manhattan new york. Hearts tower is a 46 story building of geometric brilliants. The Hearst Tower is the first tower in North America to use a diagonal grid construction. Structurally the tower has a triangulated form of four story tall diagram beams with its corners peeled back between the diagonals it has the effect to show emphasizing the tower’s vertical proportions and creating a distinctive flat smooth surface with dark shape and outline of something visible against a lighter background. It is a green building it try to be a apart of new york with a balance act to show its own personality with its past and future. With glass and steal that shots out the original building arch deco base. This ideal of construction reduces the total steel required by 20% making the building’s sustainability credentials. Where this design looks to use low energy and water conservation by collecting water when it rains from the rooftop to a tank in the basement. Where the Rainwater is used to replace water lost to evaporation in the office air conditioning system and the Icefall where it is to cool off the lobby as necessary. The best part of the building is the Hearst tower is built on top of the original Hearst head quarters building from 1928 call Art Deco. It is also New York’s first green building made to the “Gold LEED” they quoted. “may be the most muscular symbol of corporate self confidence to rise in New York since the 1960s.”  Â
New York City is such a wondrous, monumental and lively place. There is always one building in New York City that I found that stands seperates from the other buildings. My favorite building is the United Nations located at 706 United Nations Plaza. What truly makes this building unique is its history this building holds. Itwas first constructed in 1947 and completed in October 9, 1952. The omniscient people responsible for the extraordinary building were William K. Harrison who was the chief architect and a bunch of architects such as Oscar Niemeyer and Ernest Cormier. The people who provided the funds for this building are Nelson Rockfeller and his father John D. Rockfeller Jr.. What also seperates this bulding from others is its size, the United Nation is 17 acres long and 509 feet tall. Most importantly the reason why the United Nations is my favorite building is that it brings peace to the world, different countries throughout the world can come together and settle their issues 
and differences without pointing guns at each others heads.
New York City is full of tall skyscrapers that tower over the streets and residents. One skyscraper that I admire is the Beekman Tower by Frank Gehry. This building is one of the tallest residential buildings in the world. This tower is 870 feet tall and is located just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The building was completed in 2011 and is the 2nd building by Frank Gehry in New York City.  My favorite thing of this building is the façade. It is a shiny silver colored stainless steel that reflects the light of the sun as it hits the building. The surface of the façade also has a very unique aspect, it look as if the building is blowing in the wind. I love this because it breaks away from what traditional skyscrapers look like.
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