Every day digest: New York is the deadliest state for building, Comfortable-Agency drops a efficiency pavilion in Brooklyn, and extra

Good afternoon and welcome back to another work week after a long holiday weekend for most.

Here’s what’s going on today:

New York (city and state) ranks highest in the country for construction fatalities

New data from labor group the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health points to New York as being the most dangerous state for construction workers, with one-in-four workplace fatalities taking place on a construction site. Nearly 80 percent of the deaths were on non-union job sites, and the number of incidents continues to rise despite a slowdown (and shutdown) of projects due to COVID.

H/t to Construction Dive

Soft Firm’s pop-up Drive-Thru brings a flexible outdoor theater to Brooklyn

Now installed in Downtown Brooklyn through April 14, the latest addition to the Van Alen Institute’s Public Realm R&D program (in collaboration with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership) draws on the classic drive-in movie experience to create a flexible venue for outdoor performances. Designed by local interdisciplinary studio Soft Firm, Drive-Thru is comprised of two screens mounted on construction scaffolding and will play host to film screenings focused on life in Brooklyn throughout its run. A full list of upcoming programming can be found here, and the screenings will begin on February 23 with a Black History Month celebration.

Timber prices are still rising

Timber prices have been on a wild up-and-down seesaw ride throughout the pandemic owing to supply chain snarls, labor shortages caused by illness or resignations, lumber shortages, and mill shutdowns, and things aren’t looking much better. After prices fell from all-time highs last June, the demand for housing and tariffs on Canadian lumber is pushing them back up—and climate change is only tightening the supply to mills.

H/t to Archinect

Paul Willen, the influential NYC architect who remade the Riverside waterfront, dies at 93

Paul Willen, the architect who helped mediate between developer Donald Trump and civic groups to realize the towers and waterfront park that line West 59th Street to West 72nd Street, has died of heart failure at the age of 93. A fierce advocate of public space, Willen ushered forth a community-oriented plan that saw the further development of Riverside Park along what would become Riverside Boulevard, putting public space front and center in a project signified by a wall of tall towers.

H/t to the New York Times

A memorial to interned Japanese Americans will open next month in San Bruno

Eighty years after President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 mandating the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor, scars still run deep. For landscape architect Harold Nob Kobayashi, who was detained for three years as a child, that holds especially true—and it’s part of the reason he volunteered to help realize the forthcoming Tanforan Memorial in San Bruno, California. Scheduled to open next month, the 2,500-square-foot memorial will honor the approximately 8,000 citizens imprisoned at what was once a racetrack at the site before they were transferred to a larger facility in Utah.

H/t to Landscape Architecture Magazine

A historic California post office is being lifted and relocated

The historic post office in Burlingame, California, is on the move, as Page & Turnbull is coordinating with KSH Architects and Garden City Construction to temporarily move the 1,010-ton building. The 1940s-era post office is being temporarily relocated 120 feet from its current site to accommodate construction of an underground parking garage and office tower; once the project is finished, the building will be moved back and serve as a restaurant at the new tower’s base.