Queens Museum - Sunday Feb 13 - Richard Plunz and Damon Rich in Conversation

In the shadow of the recent-and ongoing-housing crisis in the United States, the Queens Museum of Art will host a conversation between Richard Plunz, urbanist, designer and the Director of Urban Design Program at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, and Damon Rich, designer and founder of Center for Urban Pedagogy .

Both Plunz and Rich, known for their contributions in the larger discourse of urban planning and design, have works featured in exhibition “Structure has a Life with Personality:” Art about Architecture from the QMA collection (November 14-February 13, 2011).

At the Queens Museum, Plunz and Rich will engage in a wide-ranging intergenerational conversation touching on their research on the interplay between society and its living environments, the impacts of contemporary ways of life on the urban sphere, and the use of architectural models within gallery spaces.

Plunz’s New York Paleotectonic 1964 -95 (1995), a unique three-dimensional hanging graph made from building models removed from the Queens Museum’s Panorama of the City of New York, is on view at the QMA for the first time since 1996. In accordance with Plunz’s larger project, the piece suggests how changes in urban infrastructure register deeper social and economic change.

Rich’s solo exhibition Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center was on view at the Queens Museum of Art May 31-September 27, 2009. Two works from this exhibition, recently acquired by the Museum, are on view in the current exhibition: Real Estate Sites consists of photographic documentation of mortgage brokerages, viewed as “buildings that manage the buying and selling of other buildings,” and Mortgage Stakeholders, a 47-minute video staging a fictional conversation between bankers, regulators, architects, investors, and financial justice advocates.

Additional info:

When: Sunday February 13th - 4pm - 6pm

Where: Queens Museum of Art - NYC Bldg, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens NY 11368

Phone: 718-592-9700

Free & Open to the Public, Followed by Light Refreshments

Tour Galore for 1,000-Plus Bicyclists by John Lauinger - NY Daily News

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WHEN ONLINE registration opened for 1,000 free slots in this year's Tour de Queens bike ride, cyclists gobbled them all up in less than 12 hours.

The registration rush for the second annual event, to be held Sunday, blew away the numbers for last year's inaugural spin, in which 600 cyclists rode and 500 people booked slots online.

"It's the hottest ticket in town," said Wiley Norvell of the tour's promoter, Transportation Alternatives. The nonprofit group encourages cycling, walking and mass transit as a more healthy and environmentally friendly way to get around the city.

An additional 500 spots will be available for walk-ins on the morning of the tour, which will start and end at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

The event is intended to help accelerate the growth of the borough's biking community, so the jump in demand was welcome news for organizers.

"That's a great sign," said Eddie Hernandez, 35, a graduate student from Astoria, who chairs the Queens committee for Transportation Alternatives.

He noted the increase validates other stats that show bicycling is on the rise in Queens.

Between 2000 and 2007, the number of bicyclists crossing the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan each day more than doubled, from 546 to 1,292, city figures show.

The tour will begin at 9:30 a.m., with same-day registration starting at 8 a.m.

The inaugural ride focused on western Queens. This year's 19-mile course will explore eastern Queens.

The ride will pass through Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Jamaica, St. Albans, Hollis and Fresh Meadows before turning back for the park. A pit stop will be provided at York College in Jamaica.

Riders on the tour - who will be given green T-shirts - will also cruise down Queens Blvd., the eastbound service lanes of which will be temporarily closed to traffic between 108th St. and Hillside Ave.

Cycling advocates have argued that installing a protected bike lane on Queens Blvd. - a treacherous but convenient east-west thoroughfare - is key to increasing bicycling in Queens.

Having a green wave of cyclists pedaling down Queens Blvd. - the so-called Boulevard of Death - is intended to make a symbolic statement, organizers said.

"It highlights a change that we think needs to take place on Queens' most iconic street - greening it, making it safer to bike and walk on - and bringing it into the 21st century," Norvell said.