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April 30, 2004
Bklyn Designs Events.
Events at St. Ann's Warehouse.
4 PM Living with Lightness: The Creation of a Pure Aesthetic Michael Gabellini, Gabellini Associates (apparently this aesthetic includes a lot of Jil Sander stores).
6:30 PM Enrique Norten in Brooklyn. Enrique Norten, Principal, TEN Arquitectos, will speak about his recent work and his firm’s winning entry in the Brooklyn Public Library’s Visual and Performing Arts Library Competition (can't find decent link to competition results).
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Creating Cranbrook. A two day symposium, sponsored by the Cooper-Hewitt and the Architectural League, that
investigates the role of campus planning and architecture in the creation and reinforcement of identity, mission, and a sense of place. In particular, we will look at Cranbrook's comprehensive building plan and hear from the architects that realized it.Speakers inclued Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, Steven Holl, and Rafael Moneo, fresh from last night's lecture. Begins this evening (6:30) and continues all day (9:00 AM) tomorrow. Cooper Union, The Great Hall.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Buy You, For You. More proof that Brooklyn is the real deal and Manhattan is all fugazy (see, we even use tired slurs like those has-beens, The Knicks, who got their hats handed to them by a team... moving to Brooklyn. What symmetry.) is the appearance of -- get ready for it -- a furniture show. Since you have outgrown IKEA (but not if they have their way), and that guy you know from RISD still hasn't gotten his shit together to start that furniture shop, go here and look at homegrown furniture that costs as much as a decent used Motoguzzi. All weekend long in DUMBO (obvs).
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 29, 2004
One Event, One Payout.
A partial verdict was returned today in the insurance case filed by Larry Silverstein against the major insurers of the World Trade Center. Though deliberations continue in the case against Swiss Re, the largest insurer of the complex, in every other instance, the attacks were deemed a 'single event.' The result likely will be a settlement of $3.5 billion for Silverman, instead of the $7 billion he sought. With 7WTC going up without an anchor/name tenant, given the $12 billion estimate for rebuilding, much of which still is uncommitted, saying that this may have a dramatic impact on the ownership and development structure going forward would be an understatement. Silverman doesn't have the cash, there are no tenants beside the Port Authority (and it's not clear they are even committed). Hopefully this will lead to a new discussion on the value of the plans as they stand, and it certainly will lead to a lot of ugly manipulation of public funds to insure Dubya gets to cast the first stone come convention time.
UPDATE: The Money/CNN story cited was a little vague the details. NY1 has a better explanation. 12 companies were named in the suit and eight were "bound by a WilProp form, which classifies the attacks as one event." Three will have to pay for two events, though they are the smallest firms named in the suit. The Swiss Re portion, being the largest, may still change the final award amount in the billions, but there aren't any details I can find the specify the coverage fow which Swiss Re is liable.
UPDATE REDUX: I should always check the Times first. They lay out the numbers best: Silverstein has collected $1.9 billion ($1.3 billion net, less fees and carrying costs), stands to collect another $1.5 billion after the verdict yesterday, with between $2 billion and $4 billion pending the last verdict. Worst case scenario is $4.8 billion in net funds available. Some preimlimary budget numbers were listed, but it is not clear if these are allocations or driven by actual construction documents. Much is, of course, missing, including the following: the budget as outlined, includes the structures that will cover most of the site, but number is listed for site work (which will be substantial, particular security infrastructure). Excepting transit costs, it would seem that the primary leasholder would be responsible for most of the site improvement costs, and, if the future of the additional towers is in doubt (financially), should the site work include logisitics (parking, utilities, security) to accomodate the (eventual) expansion? Also, if Silverstein can't build the full amount of space, will his lease be renegotiated? Will he be due back rent, or will that be a speculative cost to him? If it becomes clear that office space is highly untenable, how will the remaining slice of the slice be developed, and who designs it? Given the $200 million the city will be spending to demolish the Bankers Trust building and do site improvement for the bus garage, should this use be revisited with the possibility of more utilizing the (now) undeveloped portion?
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Architectural Immanence. The Architectural League presents a lecture by Rafael Moneo. At The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 6:30.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 28, 2004
CHARASodora House.
Development doesn't get any better than this. Lockhart Steele noted a couple days ago a recent Villager article about a proposed residential building on East 8th, on the former site of P.S. 64/CHARAS/El Bohio. Today, Gawker adds an update that includes the pro-dorm site as well as the opposition . Dig into LS's links if you aren't familiar with the history of the site. I'm betting we will see some interesting alliances when the neighbors take up arms, and find themselves on the same side of the barricade as the people who tried to stop them from moving in. Or maybe we won't, seeing how effective they were at stopping Christadora House. I was going to spend some time on the claim that the building is 'UN-like,' which is sort of like saying Trump Tower is 'Lever House-like' because they both are sheathed in glass, but it appears that this is only a ham-fisted observation on the part of the Villager.
One thing I found interesting was the claim (by someone interviewed in the Villager) students are not considered to be part of the community. With the proliferation of places like Casmir, Guernica and that trinket store across from Vazac's, I really doubt the CHARAS/El Bohio crowd gets much sympathy from anyone but students (excluding their own dwindling numbers). The stroller-pushing set might pay lip service to community centers and artist's spaces but their vision of Loisaida is an 'authentic' but low carb Neuvo Latino restaurant with sexy photos of junkies from Ave. C on the walls.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 27, 2004
What, they have that many different topics to cover? Apparently, so much is going on at Argest Gandelsonas that Diane Argest is lecturing all of five days after partner Mario Gandelsonas. Wollman Auditorium, Cooper Union. 6:30.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Two Projects.
Not that anyone is interested in what the other project is. Christo and Jeanne-Claude lecture at the Met (which is featuring an ongoing exhibit). But that damn internet fails again. No info on the Met site to confirm. 212-535-7710 if yer really interested. 6:00, if my source is to be believed.
And if you want to work on the Gates, get on the stick. I received a follow up notice two weeks ago, so they are moving forward; I have no idea when they will close applications.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 26, 2004
Road to Nowhere.
The Downtown Express reports that the remaining $1 billion of post-9/11 aid money has been earmarked for a Downtown to JFK rail link (additional details on the scope of funds and community reaction can be found here).
One curious aspect to this allocation is the among the available LMDC documents, even though regional commuter transit is listed as a priority item, with several options being considered, not one of them is a airport connector - four of the eight involve subway ugrades, two are LIRR/MetroNorth improvements, one is PATH development and the last is for improving pedestrian interconnections between the above (PDF here). Pataki's office has promised an update to the LMDC plans this month, but it is probably wishful thinking that it will feature some explication from where this major shift in priorities arose. Previous LMDC boondoggles have include the a proposal to bury a portion of West Street (which has never garnered community support). If you are interested in connecting the dots, it would be helpful to point out that the LMDC board includes John Zucotti (who, as chair of Brookfield Financial Properties, developer of the World Financial Center, would profit from either the West Street tunnel or the JFK connector), Jack Rudin, whose son is busy trying to wrest a sweetheart deal for a downtown residential development, and Carl Weisbrod, head of the downtown BID, and who has made his ardent support for the link well known.
From a regional planning standpoint, creating a one seat link from Manhattan to JFK is strong one, except the plans as outlined do not guarantee this, and were this city to invest heavily to connect the major business district to regional airports, it would make far more sense to connect Midtown, which is a larger and growing district, and would not create havoc on existing train lines. No matter how they work it, unless someone is willing to pony up $8 billion, there would be service disruptions or reductions involving two subway lines from Atlantic Avenue to downtown. For $8 billion, we could get the Brooklyn-NY freight link, a development investment that would have an exponentially greater benefit to the region.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 25, 2004
WTC PATH Station.
In November, a temporary PATH station was opened to replace what was destroyed in 2001. In approximately two years, a new station (which is also expected to be a full transit hub, though typically the only aspect touted is the entry hall), designed by Santiago Calatrava, is to open. There seems to be more of consensus this aspect of the reconstruction that the remaining elements.
I recently visited the temporary structure, of which I cannot find a 'formal' review online. What I did find covered the speed of construction (just over two years, including the massive site work, renovation of the full length of the tunnels under the Hudson River, improvements to the Exchange Place stations, and new construction at the WTC site, all at a cost of half a billion dollars), what we can look forward to (Calatrava), and the relatively spartan conditions in place now. (though John Young took a tour recently and provides some insightful commentary and images).
And that's a shame, since it seems likely that this will be the only expression in the aftermath that does service to the entirety of the event and the conflicted opinions now at work. Rational, effective, even elegant at times, what nonetheless is most striking is the pragmatic humility. Though I count myself in the apparently dwindling number that think that nothing was, and is, the most appropriate response, the intercession manages to be respectful of that belief. Nothing, in it’s most absolute form, was impossible. And so one moves forward with the least pretense and attempting to ameliorate only the most obvious and acute need: to knit back together the transit system that is one of the few remaining democratic institutions in a city that becomes more economically stratified every day. The totality of the gesture is summarized by two events: the blunt sign over the entrance that reads ‘World Trade Center PATH Station’ and the recreation of the escalator bank. The Times noted the symbolism of the latter, rebuilt in almost its exact location (though this was somewhat dictated by the fact the station is in the exact same spot, due to track runs), and the power of the former is both a shock and an almost an afterthought. With all the discussion and the relentless use of acronym or jargon (WTC, Ground Zero, et al), the name simply and defiantly asserts what had been, and hopefully does not do as an act of futility, as I fear the boundless ego of Libeskind & Co. will lead to self serving exercises of justifying the renaming of what ever new structure is created. For now, it states simply, ‘This was here, and still is.’ It seems more than enough, but we cannot live without smothering our collective conscious in over-determined kitsch, patriotism and angst. Gird yourself for sundry uses of ‘soaring,’ ‘grand,’ ‘phoenix-like’ and the rest as the concrete skeleton of Calatrava descends on a graveyard.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 23, 2004
Rheumy. Slate's Christopher Hawthorne offers a so-so slide show and commentary on Rem Koolhaas. (Via Maud). His sharpest point is that the deft economy that provided compelling and original solutions (or at least the impression of deft economy, since there is not an example of any truly modest projects in his portfolio; there may be small ones, but they aren't cheap) in the early work is now superceded by untrammeled spectacle. The publication of S,M,L,XL presaged this, and, depending on your predisposition towards the work, you likely argue that this was either the best possible evolution of thinking that was becoming untenable in the face of growing celebrity, or a craven manipulation to foster said celebrity. As one who generally would say positive things about his work, I find myself growing skeptical. The Seattle library calls to mind the Tokyo Prada store, by Herzog and de Meuron (of whom I have fewer reservations about their ability to respond with formal inventiveness), and they partnered on the Astor Place Hotel. IIT has some of the formal economy that was evident in his earlier work, but this could arguably be a tempering driven by budget and the dogmatic mandates of Mies' campus plan. The CCTV project is compelling (in sketch form), but then again, every time a totalitarian regime seeks legitmacy, they manage to cough up a decent building or two, useful trinkets to occupy our time analyzing the usefulness of art in providing a visual language for oppression.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 22, 2004
Coughing Up the Moon. Eric Owen Moss, who is currently working on an addition to the Queens Museum in Flushing Park (his drawings here) lectures tonight, sponsored by the Architectural League. I will admit upfront I am no fan of Moss, and even as I don't know his position on the matter, I could not but think 'What ever happened to Critical Regionalism?' I attened a workshop earlier in the year on the efficacy of museum expansion, and heard some interesting arguments (moreso against, but that may only have been due to the superior erudition of the anti-expansion crowd, in the form of Max Anderson). So each time I see a new portfolio piece being foisted upon unsuspecting communities under the guise of cultural well-being, I think about how the only context for the effort tends to be a monograph of the architect. Moss has built few structures outside of SoCal, and it's not so much that one could justify, oh, anything in that location, given its history, but if we are going to use the expansion as an opportunity to showcase new work, couldn't they have found a local firm? Especially considering that of the last, what, five, major museum jobs in the city, only one went to a local? Play a game: go to the lecture tonite (The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 6:30pm) with a friend and, afterwards, see how many local firms you can name that you think would have been a better candidate. The over/under should be no less than 25.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Gandelsonas lecture, maybe. The Pratt Calendar System denies it, but Mario Gandelsonas lectures today. Somewhere in Brooklyn, likely this evening.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 21, 2004
Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Renzo Piano, who is currently working on two high profile New York projects: the New York Times tower (photos here) near Times Square, and the Morgan Library expansion, lectures tonight. Wood Auditorium, Columbia, 6:30.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 16, 2004
The coolest $60 million house ever. Once again, we are minded how great an architect Gehry is: if you give him $10 million dollars, he will design you a really great house. Jeff Kipnis is screening and lecturing on his film on the Peter Lewis House. Wood Auditorium, Columbia, 6:30.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 12, 2004
Maybe looking at all the photos of Asia inspired him. The Loft Cube is what happens when you take a designer that does a lot of showrooms and slather him in DuPont money: A rooftop experiment made of a lot of Corian. It's a nice idea, mostly in the execution of a small space. But, lacking manufacturing costs (the 'estimated' 55,000 Euros doesn't mention if that includes 'site' work, transportation, labor for assembly, untility hook up, etc.), it's hard to say there is anything revolutionary here ($170/sq foot is about a 50% premium on high end of homebuilding costs in the Northeast US, though I suspect low for the NYC region). And, last I checked, New Yorkers well aware of the value of rooftop dwelling. The main detriments have to do with zoning (height restrictions), site work (a roof is not a structural system intend to carry a large dead load, particularly one that lands on four dainty feet), and less than spectular views, depending on the neighbors. Maybe the rooftops in Berlin are nice, smooth, virgin surfaces ready for the urbane Wallpaper* reader. But wouldn't they be there already if they were?
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Boy, those Asians! Such small apartments. And so many of them! Apparently there hasn't been a mundane (as a matter of design) but specatular (as a matter of dystopian excess) locale in SE Asia that hasn't been mined by one German photographer or another. The Times does the write up and Laurence Miller Gallery does the show. Through May 15.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 11, 2004
The Mall- er, Shops, at TW Center.
A few weeks back, The New Yorker interviewed real estate magnate cum convicted felon Alfred Taubman. The topic was what makes a successful shopping center. He repeated a number of oft cited maxims, one of which is that you can't get people to go more than two stories vertically. And that you need to create a circuit. I stopped in The Shops at Time Warner Center, and it seems they don't have a subscription to The New Yorker.
Back in school a professor gave a short presentation of his professional work. It consisted mostly of the canopy at the Credit Lyonnais building (1301 Avenue of the Americas). It is an exemplary sample of the work SOM does: well detailed, solid, a little vainglorious and expensive. The professor marvelled at the fact that he worked there a year, and it was his only project. He estimated it was north of $2 million to construct (this was the late 80's). When you see it, you can believe it. It's a lot of stainless. And for you fussy formalists, he admitted sheepishly that even though they spent much of their time trying to express the relationship between the center spine (it is an vee shape, that also rises slightly along the perpendicular axis to the spine of the vee) and the two wings, in fact, it was cantilevered uniformly along the transverse axis, making all the careful detailing only overdone decoration. It's an instructive thing to visit before the TW Center.
What one is stuck without throughout is the incredible detailing and attention to material use. Stores are clearly delineated by distinct materials, every surface has been considered and slathered in stainless, stone, marble, polished wood and lord knows what else. The undersides of the upper walkways have been treated with more care than entire suburbs of Houston. It reeks of desperation, of trying to make you forget some aspiring Virginny boy (Reston, no less) came to the big city, convinced some rich girl's daddy to marry off his dowdy but well-mannered daughter, and then the carpetbagger decided to build the biggest apartment on the Upper West Side in hopes of buying some respect. If I tried a little harder, I'm sure I could paste an Gatsby analogy on here somewhere.
But we're getting distracted. There is a mall in here somehwere. And that's not so easy to determine, since the country mouse was afraid to consort with the shady classes, even those with sage words about how to seperate the gullible and their money. The main entrance has been raved about because of it has the largest something-something glass wall in the world. I'd give more props to it, but it's basiscally a big window that looks into a relatively small lobby that delivers two crucial pieces of information to the new New Yorker: Whole Foods downstairs, and Williams & Sonoma straight ahead. If successful retailing is about location, then these folks went down to the crossroads and came back with a plan that resulted in a convincing the average pedestrian that this 700-foot monolith only contains two things: foodstuffs and precious earthenware in which to serve said food.
The entry hall intersects with a transverse hall that runs in a arc that mirrors Columbus Circle, and is anchored by Coach, Pink, and Hugo Boss. Above, several bridges indicate some activity on an upper level (how many is not made clear by any means). There are two (three, if you count the elevator bank to the Food Court- oh, I'm sorry, the Collection, which is what you name a food court inhabited by Thomas Kellner) paths to other levels: a gap (that reads a much larger than it actually is) in the entry floor that seems destined to suck all shoppers down into the inferno of the monopoly hippie-food purveyor, Whole Foods. Williams & Sonoma, which is directly behind, is straddled by escalators, but they are hardly inviting, and there is no visual connector to where they land. The front of W&S is broad and inviting, and it certainly seems if you managed to make it past Whole Foods, then this is where one ends up.
The net effect is that of an airport shopping complex: retail has been included is this behemoth, but only to make you feel like you aren't in a complete loser venue. Traffic belies this. Even though the above stores are joined by Tumi, Godiva, Crabtree & Evelyn, Cole Haan, Morgenthal Fredericks, Stuart Weitzman, Face, and several others (18 in total), on a holiday Friday (not the best Friday for shopping), I counted about 65 patrons total, exclusive of Whole Foods and W&S.
I could wonder about what was upstairs, but I doubt it matters. I could speculate on whether those ground floor spaces are dog properties (I doubt it), but, in the end, there are two considerations: is it successful, 'architecturally' or as a business? I don't particularly worry about the business prospects of purveyors of thousand dollar clutches, but since we already have two major, and several minor, shopping districts in this city that are only slighly less compact and feature more variety and exclusivity, why I, or one, wouldn't simply go to SoHo or Madison Avenue, is beyond me. As for the architectural: there was no chance. The place has been detailed beyond belief by armies of Yale and GSD grads like my professor. But the parts don't make a whole. How could they? There are four competing programs for ground floor space (and the Jazz at Someplace complex hasn't been added yet). It's dank due to the siting (the big window faces east, insuring the most stunning vistas will be available only to the morning maintenance crew, and the tiny footprint of the stores undermines the generous double and triple height hallways they face). There very notion of mixed use is a shaky concept created by developers. A city, by definition, is mixed use. Why someone needed to to prove (or try to) that Tyson's Corner could be plunked down into Manhattan and work is beyond me. Take this bit of service journalism to heart: the is no reason to go there. Ever. Unless you just have to eat at Per Se. Then, use the side door.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 10, 2004
Record Houses. Architectural Record posts their yearly survey of house design. Sorry, make that, house design for the affluent. Record didn't create this problem, they just report on it. It is rare for modest projects (the link is to a student's 3D renderings; offline you can find a monograph and some decent documentation elsewhere) to be realized, and even less so for them to be published, but the purist can wade through the entries properly blinkered. If the measure of great work is that which makes you forget issues like these, then Ando, as usual, wins hands down. For the locals, they also have selections from an admirable, but unrealized project, to bring a modicum of restraint to eastern Long Island.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
The Gates. The Met is sponsoring a exhibtion of the pending Christo and Jeanne-Claude project The Gates, which is to mounted in Central Park next winter. Apply to be on the paid work crew here. Calvin Trillin had an excellent peice in The New Yorker (couldn't find a story link, sorry) a couple weeks ago about the project and their work in general. I had a vaguely negative opinion of them until reading it. That shows what the hegemony of art community can do. That, and my laziness in not doing my own research. Exhibition runs through July 25.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 9, 2004
Not a boys club anymore. Zaha Hadid (it's nice how modest the landing page is) wins the Pritzker Prize (a little stale, yes, but architecture is a slow moving profression). The site is pathetic, but informative. James Russell has a good round up of the response. My only question is: does this mean we finally won't have to look at the Peak competition drawings every time someone wants to do a survery of who's hot in archtiecture these days?
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Their interest is purely civic, not to fund TriBeCa Lofts. There has been a formal RFP (Request for Proposals) issued for associate architects for the WTC Memorial, reports the Times (via Gothamist). If you want the cattier version of the story, try the Observer.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
'Lil Danny, Happy at Last!
Given how carefully he (well, she) manages his image most of time, this appalling peice of loft porn, which includes a photo gallery that, of the six photos, two are of the architect and client(s). But, it's "not grand", really, "only 2,100 sq ft". That's meant to make all you folks living in living rooms and basement apartments feel like you almost rub elbows with the best and brightest. Cause you aren't that different. Really.
Presented as part of the trechant Home Guide.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 8, 2004
MoMENTUM! The Times reports on the progress at MoMA. What we should clearly take from this is, "whoa, ain't it grand?" Big numbers: $858 million, 630,000 sq ft (that's $1,361/sq ft, if you are scoring at home!), a whole block, a big lobby (expanded coat check!). Kudos to the Times for sounding like the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Get Yer CAD out. Those of us who learned how to make building with a pencil (which makes me sound like a hopeless Luddite, but I just crossed the threshhold from punk to adult, at least in the eyes of the League, who demand a steeper duty to be a 'sustaining' member at the ripe old age of 35) will find this lecture presumptive and steeped in the 'it's too late to go back' sensibility that justifies innumerable renderings cast in a black, ethereal field that make me just wonder: do they all have issues with their Mother? Tonight, the Lighthouse, 6:30.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Christ, What's With That? Ya gotta love Joe Holtzman. I wish I had a painting to sell to fund the best (American) 'Fuck You' magazine since Spy. You go, Joe. I still hate him, of course.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 7, 2004
Koenig Passes. Pierre Koenig (project images here, and decent article here), a noted Case Study architect, died today. A brief obit at Record, and a slightly better one from the Times.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
More Resonating Freaks. This one features Philip Glass and Thom Mayne. At The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 8PM. I'll craft my disdain at this interdisciplinary star-fucking (Rem does a magazine! Eggers does art!) into something pithy for the Moby installment.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Dal Co on Soriano. Francesco Dal Co presents a lecture "Architecture and the Economy of Means: the Lesson of Raphael Soriano" this evening. Soriano is a 'Case Study' architect of whom I confess complete ignorance. But my unmitigated admiration of anything and all case study (even the glib appropriation of it, wrought well) should count for something. Wood Auditorium, Columbia, 6:30.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
5C Update Downtown Express has reports on the rather heated Community Board 1 meeting from last week, regarding the tower Scott Resnick is proposing for '5C,' a city lot adjacent to PS 234 on Chambers Street. Some of the interesting details include: even though a lapse of a 40 year-old development plan allowed the develop to resubmit plans for a tower over twice its previous height, and is eligible for more attractive financing due to available Liberty Bonds, the (as of yet unpublished) sale price on the lot has dropped. Whereas I think the claims to excessive shadow issues (the park across the street will be in shadow for most of the afternoon in the summer; that park is a lot of tree cover already, and given the relative proximity of Rockefeller Park, which gets plenty of sun all day long, and a river breeze, I don't know that a shady park in the summer is a bad thing) are specious as a complaint, I do think that giving away the store at the edge of the most expensive residential district in the country is abhorrent. The neighborhood gets a paltry 18,000sp ft. community center, and, by the looks of the model submitted, more of the mediocre design that the Resnick family has shown such great proclivity for in the past. Given the recent West Side developments, including 497 Greenwich, and Perry West (I didn't realize they have such an unfortunate name) have demonstrated that residential development in the city can evince some design quality, instead of simply lining the pockets of a short-sighted developer. The city deserves the full value of its land, and should likewise demand the resulting project respond to all the constituents needs.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 5, 2004
Bring me your duplicitous, your obfuscatory. If I have a category for 'Deplorable' this would be filed as such. If you haven't heard, the Times broke a story over the weekend, after the rather abrupt re-opening of the Statue of Liberty, with the implication that the appeals over the last year for money were perhaps unnecessary and unreasonably vague. To whit, the ugly symbolism of nearly undressing (belts and shoes, last time I went) to gain access to the island will now we paired with being able to look through a glass ceiling to see the statue proper, rather than restore full access, the implicit benefit of giving that I thought was promised in all those ads. Maybe only white men are allowed up.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 3, 2004
It's not the Cyclone, but it is Solar. The Architect's Newspaper (permanent link at right) is a new publication, the focus of which should be self-evident. The diversity of their editorial board, and their (or so they claimed to me) independent status means for some lively and unbiased wrinting (read: it doesn't sound like they are in hock to the building materials industry). Though brief, the gossip column alone is worth the price of admission (well, to cranky fans of architecture anyway). They only offer a limited amount of online content. Current issue has an article on the renovation of the Stillwell Avenue complex, which serves the the terminus for several BMT lines (B/D/F/N), as well as a large repair yard and shop complex. Not to mention being the gateway to Coney Island. I was fond of the general air of disrepair of the old terminal in that occassional visitor/voyuer way, partially because it coincided so well with my prejudice of Coney as a seedy, aging icon. And because, even as a dirty and underused facility, I happen to find the design of much of the NYC subway to be a fine example of civic architecture. Rational, but not sterile, it exhibits a nice restraint, but also is varigated enough to reflect the diversity of neighborhoods. Some of the recent renovations (72nd Street IRT, Union Square, and much of Times Square) are marvels, updating the style (the stainless steel railing system at the north end of the N/R platform at Times Square is a festishists dream) without abandoning it, restoring or creating the tile work that is the best signifier of the system. The plans for Stillwell seem to promise the same approach here, with a restoration of most of the puclic areas and the inclusion of a large scale peice by Robert Wilson. The renovated platforms open in May, and the building is project to be completed in the next year.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 2, 2004
Fab. The Times (via the The Old Hag, who provides better linkage) gives an abbreviated round up on the state of prefab modernism. It's springs from a recent publication (though the article isn't a review), so their elision of The Dwell Home isn't unforgivable (and Dwell, being a nominal competitior, somewhat understandable). Though I wonder how the author missed the guys at Res 4, the winners of the Dwell competition, who have been developing a whole business model around prefab work. And though I believe they mentioned it last month, the article also skips the chance to note that there is recently closed show at Deitch Projects featuring the QuikHouse.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
A New Home on the Range is an AIA sponsored competition intended to
...challenge architects and students of architecture to design the 21st century seminal house... for an unbuilt, single-family house. Entrants are encouraged to explore the impact of their proposals relative to economic and social issues associated with housing, and the principles of sustainable design.Site is near Denver Airport. And don't feel left out: in addition to registered architects and students, the competition is open to 'allied design professionals.' Register by April 23, deadline of May 14.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
April 1, 2004
Detail and Desire. Lecture, and opening of an exhibition by 1100 Architect (who have a nice, newish site from Base) at Parsons. 25 East 13th, 2nd Floor, 6PM.