New York City has broken ground on its new Office of Emergency Management headquarters, designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects of New York for the city's Department of Design and Construction. Upon its completion in February 2006, the 65,000-sq.-ft. building in downtown Brooklyn will replace the former emergency management office at the original 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The new facility involves an addition, a new exterior, and a gut renovation for the former American Red Cross building at Walt Whitman Park. It will feature limestone, zinc, and glass cladding. The center will house 100 employees and is aiming for U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification.

Hillier Tapped For Multiple Commissions

Hillier Architecture of Princeton, N.J., recently announced a series of major corporate, residential, and institutional commissions. In January, Xerox Corp. selected the firm to develop a master plan for 7.9 million sq. ft. of office, manufacturing, production, special purpose, and research and engineering space in Rochester, N.Y.

Hillier is also designing a campus center and cafeteria building in Franklin Lakes, N.J., for Becton Dickinson & Co. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless tapped Hillier to design a 225,000-sq.-ft. network operations facility at a site not yet determined.

On the academic side, Hillier is designing New York University's first new science building in more than 30 years, a 50,000-sq.-ft. facility. And the firm is designing a 27-story, 250-unit apartment building in Jersey City for the Athens Group of New York.

Brooklyn Theater Design Ready

Frank Gehry and Hugh Hardy collaborated on the recently unveiled design of the $35.8 million future home of Theatre for a New Audience, a Brooklyn troupe that champions Shakespeare and other classic playwrights. The project is the latest in an emerging cultural district near the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The four-story, boxlike building will depart strikingly from Gehry's trademark undulating designs. The exterior will be clad in patterned, rectangular stainless-steel shingles with angled planes of glass. A glass curtainwall will provide sight lines into the lobby and two curvilinear levels and stairs. The flexible 299-seat auditorium will be adaptable to several formats, including a thrust stage, proscenium, theater in the round, and runway.

Theater for a New Audience, which previously had been using rented space, is mounting a campaign to raise $29.6 million, supplemented by $6.2 million in city funds through the BAM Local Development Corp. The project is part of the Bloomberg Administration's plans to develop 500,000 sq. ft. of new arts facilities in the BAM Cultural District. For a site next door to the theater, Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos of Mexico City and New York is designing a 110,000-sq.-ft. visual and performing arts branch for the Brooklyn Public Library.

Fuller Snags Three Awards

Fuller and D'Angelo Architects and Planners, based in Elmsford, N.Y., received three design awards for its recent education work. The firm earned a pair of Educational Design Excellence Awards from American School and University Magazine, the first for the renovation and expansion of the new Windward School at the former Berkeley University campus in Harrison, N.Y., and the second for the Staples High School expansion and renovation in Westport, Conn.

The firm has also received a National Design Award with Special Recognition from the Society of American Registered Architects for the renovation of Townsend Harris Hall at the City College of New York.