From left: Charles Renfro, Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller

Since adding Charles Renfro as a partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architecture firm behind the third phase of the High Line and the Lincoln Center renovation, their work has taken on a “gay” quality.

In a profile of Renfro, Out magazine said he represents a breakthrough for an industry that long “more or less required” its professionals to be straight. For most of the 20th century, gay men were relegated to interior design while their straight counterparts, Out said, “seduce[d] women with phallic edifices.” [more]

Renderings of the third installment of the High Line (credit: Friends of the High Line)

Last June saw the opening of the second of three parts of the High Line, that rusting elevated train track that swings through the Far West Side of Manhattan. When I went to see the results I found myself gravitating toward the northern end, at 30th Street, beyond which the third and final section of the High Line, as yet untouched, could be glimpsed behind an impenetrable fence of chicken wire. [more]

Diller Scafidio + Renfro founders Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scafidio

Related Companies has tapped architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design the first residential building at Hudson Yards and aims for it to be completed by 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The building would rise to 800 feet at the northeast corner of Eleventh Avenue and 30th Street with about 700 units. Related said it hopes to complete the building around the same time the first office structure on the site, which has already sold 600,000 square feet of space to Coach, is finished. [more]

A planned cultural center at Hudson Yards has won a $100,000 grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts, planting a spotlight on an as-yet
little-known project underway as part of the redevelopment of the
26-acre rail yards site on Manhattan’s West Side. The building, slated
for a 22,000-square-foot footprint on 30th Street between 11th and 12th
avenues, would include a five-story museum and rental exhibition space
called Culture Shed, according to the New York Times. The space is
being designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro in partnership with the
Rockwell Group for the city’s Hudson Yards Development Corporation. One
source said that it would act as a time share for partnering cultural
institutions and would primarily focus on visual arts. The Related
Companies, which is developing Hudson Yards, said construction at the
site could begin as early as 2012 but is contingent upon finding anchor
tenants. [NYT]

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