After months and months of delays, the BAM Cultural District may be moving forward. The NY Times is reporting that city officials have chosen Harlem-based developer and Brooklyn resident Carlton Brown to create what the Times' Terry Pristin calls the "cultural district's centerpiece." This is the first Brooklyn project for Brown, who developed the Kalahari and 1400 on Fifth in Harlem and the Solaire, the city's first residential green building, in Battery Park City. The......

NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews Jean Nouvel's future 75-story tower at 53 West 53rd Street, describing it as "the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation." He compares Nouvel's latest to the Woolworth, Chrysler and Seagram buildings. Filling a 17,000 square-foot vacant lot next to MoMA, the structure will be the future site of a developer Hines' 100-room hotel and 120 "highest-end" (Hines' words) luxury apartments. MoMA, which sold the lot......

New York City was amply represented during last night's National Design Awards at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Landscape Design award went to PWP Landscape Architecture, the firm that won the World Trade Center Memorial design competition (with Michael Arad). PWP Principal Peter Walker thanked Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki and described the last four years as "difficult," presumably for the number of redesigns and challenges with moving the project forward, but he......

A story in this week's Crain's suggests that the Visual and Performing Arts Library planned for the BAM Cultural District in Fort Greene may never materialize due to lack of funding. The story ("Library Project in Doubt," p6) is based on an anonymous source, described as "an insider at the Brooklyn Public Library." Unfortunately we cannot post the link because Crain's requires a subscription. According to Crain's, "The source says that library executives have given......

The finalists for the WTC Memorial competition will be announced today at 10:30AM. Families of September 11 victims viewed the finalists privately last night; one said, "I'm emotionally overwhelmed by what I've seen. The ideas are incredible." Some design elements, as reported by the Post and Daily News: * Some designs put big portions of the Ground Zero pit at street level. * Proposals vary for displaying victims' names - grouping them by age, by......