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June 29, 2004
The day the Atlantic Center died.
Tomorrow is a big day. So big that they moved up that CPA ceremony-- okay that joke only runs so far, and we didn't even think it up. So banish that, since yesterday presages only more strife and discontent elsewhere. Here, we have much smaller fish to fry. Before we get to that, let's touch briefly on the state of service journalism in the city. I, like, I am sure, many provinical hopefuls, used to read the Village Voice (even before I got here) as some bellwether of a place we all hoped the world could become. And we looked those who deigned to speak negatively of it as outlanders, all simply frustrated at the margins. I have lived here long enough that I can remember when the release of the Voice was a physical event. The newsstand in front of the Astor Place Starbucks used to be the newsstand in front of an really mediocre diner. Each Tuesday, people would begin to line up in the late afternoon, since the very first editions would be delivered sometime between 7 and 9 to that newsstand, and the phones would begin to light up immediately. I haven't lived here so long that cell phones weren't always first mover advantages, but close. See, before the Internet, getting an apartment hinged getting Voice, as soon as possible. That wasn't online listings updated daily, but physically putting your hands on a copy the moment it was available. Sure, it was a bit of an overrated myth, but it was a good trial by fire for all the recent converts. And it was fun to watch, once you were ensconced in your rent stabilized closet. It made the Voice essential, for those few hours Tuesday night. The other thing that made the Voice required reading was the best two goddamned pages of sports reporting in this city. Allen St. John, Allen Barra, these were folks who loved sports and who had politics that didn't make you wince. Hell, sometimes they did, but they wrote, they wrote like madmen, stuffing everything they could into the slim allotment they had, facing a welter of sex ads (who remembers their fake sex ads delivered as a homage to Marv Albert?). And now they are gone again. And I'm creeping towards middle age and look derisively on the Voice like every other posturing old crank.
In its place we have the New York Sports Express. Led by the able hand of Matt Tiabbi, forget any animosity you might have towards that Russ fella, sent back to Balitmore, where he belongs, the NYSX is the blast of inspired sports writing you seek. The Blotter, a listing of the criminal ways of sports figures, is priceless. And they track the maundering of NY sports owners in The Biz. This week, they point out that the future of Atlantic Yards hinges on the (likely rubber stamp) vote on June 30 by the NBA Board of Governors of Bruce Ratner's purchase of the NJ Nets. If you have any smoldering ill will, and photos of Mark Cuban in compromising positions, you have about 24 hours to make your opposition known. Otherwise, consign yourself to hopeless lefty chanting in front of cyclone fencing on Flatbush Avenue for the next five years.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
We do what we can. The Times reports on a new program announced by the city that provides incentive financing for Mitchell-Lama projects. Mitchell-Lama was one of the most forward-looking housing programs in the twentieth century, enabling a number of large apartment projects to be financed with goal of providing affordable housing for middle income earners. The most notable success was Stuyvesant Town, developed by MetLife in the 40's. The program was so successful that many developers are buying out their mortgages and converting the units to market rate rentals. Stuyvesant Town is already gone, and Independence Plaza, in TriBeCa, is teetering (the city did broker a deal to keep Independence Plaza North tenants in their homes; Independence Plaza South is still awaiting a vote, though there the issue is ownership, not retention of leases). Unfortunately, this program is elective, and the city hopes for the best, but if you've rented an apartment in this town recently, or are a sentient being, you know that there's money in them thar hills, and the carrot might not be juicy enough. Aside from simply paying off landlords directly, this is about as much as the city can be expected to do, and it's good to see a commitment to finding some way out of the dead end road that is affordable housing in New York.
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June 28, 2004
Hey, there's an empty lot! Cover it with a nasty institutional behemoth, stat!
Doing a fine bit of muckracking, The Villager details the ownership on two strips of land that ideally should be controlled by the city, but actually belong to NYU. Ideally, we say, since it's one of those situations where a lot tut-tut-ing goes on about how NYU is really a benevolent land owner, and then you wake up one day and someone is tearing down Edgar Allen Poe's home. Or, as the article points out, building Bobst Library.
The more interesting of the two is the Time Landscape, the strip of inaccessible park on the east side of LaGuardia Place (just north of Houston). For years, this plot has been carefully tended and untended in an attempt to recreate what is thought to be an example of what a 'native' Manhattan landscape would comprise. That it was intended by Robert Moses to be a central element in his Faustian vision for a freeway blighted Manhattan makes it ironic in the simpleton way even an NYU freshman would understand (that's right -- I'll never be welcome at Dojo, a distinction I am completely comfortable with).
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They can call it the East River Pipe(line). Curbed linked up to the Bloomberg interview (reprinted by Architect) with Richard Rogers, who, along with SHoP Architects, won a limited competition to renovate the lower segment of the FDR (one of his ideas is burying the drive itself). For more details, the Lower Manahattan info site has a reasonably in-depth look at the competition, with too-small thumbnails of all the finalists, including the second team-up (the first being the plywood viewing stand overlooking the WTC site) of that most inexplicable collaboration: Rockwell/Diller, Scofidio & Renfro.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Called on the carpet. The Times has a pretty provincial 'gee whiz' piece (used to enter his house through a window! so kooky! ) on an installation by Rudolf Stingel, 'Plan B', opening in the Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal this week (July 1). Lasting throughout July, it consists of 27,000 square feet of carpet, derived from a stock pattern (Stingel refers to his work as painting). A companion 7,500 square feet are being displayed by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Holiday travel will likely obviate our ability to see it firsthand until mid-month, so we'll hold off on the 'I don't know art, but I know what I like' incredulity until we actually see it.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Boreing. While no one is sure what is going to happen on top of the Hudson Rail Yards, and the result is certain to be a sea change for the neighborhood, what's going on underneath it is as important, but far less visible. In the southeast corner (at 31st and Tenth Avenue), there is an anonymous apparatus churning away. It is the outlet of the extraction unit removing rubble from the construction of Tunnel No. 3. Chronicled in The New Yorker a few months back (not archived online, apparently), and popularized by Die Hard III, Tunnel No. 3 is the lifeline for the New York of the 21st century. Planned decades ago, and under construction most of my life (while taking two dozen away), most of us will never see it, and never suspect its importance in our daily life. For the next decade or so, evidence of its making will be in the form of several intrusive sites where access shafts are driven. The exact points will remain under contention, since their apperance will be accompanied by the device currently in view, and blasting. Lots of blasting (there is an understated sign that explicates the signifying marks in the form of whistles and horns). It's likely that very soon one is coming to the meat packing district. It will be about as welcome as a Jean Nouvel building, but if you go in for that kind of thing (most of my friends are resigned to the fact that coming across a hole in the ground will distract my attention for several minutes; once I ended up talking about the Verizon 10-K with an employee of Empire City Subway who was repairing a ruptured phone trunk line at 5AM), it's an interesting diversion for a few minutes. Who knows, maybe Bruce Willis will come shooting out of the ground.
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June 25, 2004
Cars still win. Welcome to the fourteenth century. The Wall Street Journal chronicles the new jargon and design considerations that creep in as more buildings require 'hardening.' Bollards, barriers, clear distances, and the like are the latter-day versions of moats and perimeter walls, all designed to stop the proverbial truck laden with explosives. It's interesting, but not surprising, considering the source, that no one is asked to speculate on methods that don't start with the presumption that vehicles must be allowed in city centers with so little control that bollards become the inevtiable accompaniment to every courthouse in an urban area. None of the strategies discussed minimize the possibility of smaller but more deadly options (nuclear or biological agents), or how to handle threats from compromised systems (if someone packs the Aramark van with C-4). Nope. Entire industries are springing up to counter exactly one threat. One that, in probably 70% of high risk areas (basically, DC and NYC), could be countered by changing policies about vehicle access. So a big lump of granite is a 'creative' solution? How about vehicle-free CBD's? (via The Morning News)
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The new hotness for the Jitney crowd. Architectural Record has a short write-up and few photos of the first completed house, the innocuously named 'Sagaponac House-43' (Lot number 43, obviously) from Hariri & Hariri, at the Houses at Sagaponac. The official site lists the house at 5000sf. According to Record, product placement (!) helped keep construction costs down to a reasonable $250/sf. Allowing for, oh, $750,000 for site acquisition and prep, carrying costs and fees, that means the markup is still a cool $1 million. Now who says architecture doesn't pay?
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Williamsburg really is the new Manhattan. The Daily News does a really shoddy job covering the planned conversion of an industrial builing on Kent street in Williamsburg. The owner of building, which is not fully residential, and is situated in an area that is still overwhelmingly industrial (the recently closed Domino factory is nearby, and you have to get up really early in the morning to work up some sexy industrial chic love for that place; it's the uber-eyesore), wants to convert the entire building to condominiums. The residents are being forced suddenly to stretch their legs and learn the language of socialism -- which isn't so much an anathema, since the state, in the form of their parents, has funded their pseudo artsist lifestyle all along anyway (I've been in this building and they are going to have a hell of time finding the li'l old lady paying $24 rent on a fixed income) -- and are crying foul. Hey, kids, this is what being being at the center of hipness is all about. A local assemblyman is ticked because he expects an 80/20 ratio of affordable housing and the owner is offering $355,000 and a 'renovated waterfront' (the building sits tranverse to the water and there isn't that much frontage to renovate), of which it is not clear how it would do much besides drive prices up. Instead of asking how many units (the building is massive and the conversion requires a variance, including new construction) the owner is proposing, and estimating just how paltry the $355K actually is, the News gets some canned bullshit quote from what I assume is the center for real estate shills at NYU, to the effect of 'whoa, dude, making apartments in New York is hard' and that we shouldn't pressure owners too much. There might be synergy to all this discontent, but I doubt the cadre of angry hipsters realize that they aren't the people anyone has in mind when one says 'affordable housing.' But, you know, it's true. The real estate market is brutal. That's why there aren't any apartments being constructed and it's so hard to sell a place these days. Maybe we need some tax breaks or something, before New York becomes a real estate wasteland.
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June 24, 2004
Where the heart is, if not the funding.
Mayor Bloomberg formally announced the plan to revise the city's strategy for homelessness in a speech yesterday. As an exercise in rhetoric, there are a number of admirable points made. The speech clearly recognizes that distinct issues surrounding the 'chronic homeless' population (mostly men, mostly with sustance abuse and/or mental illness problems), and commits to services exclusive of housing that may prove transformative. He also calls for an immedate increase in the amount of supportive housing (which aids the chronic population and those segments in need of services that go beyond economic hardship), though he is unfortunately vague about funding. With a current shelter population numbering 38,000, being fuzzy on the math (the current target for supporting housing is 5,000, meaning the gap is well over statistically significant) is a crucial issue.
What is clearly lacking from the speech is a strong mandate to address the other chronic need in this city: affordable housing. The Times
quotes a statistic not in the speech, to the effect that is costs the city $25,000 to house a family in a shelter each year. Why this cannot be translated into a direct subsidy an interesting question (though it would be useful to frame the discussion by breaking those numbers down; even marginally homeless populations require services, and any long term transitional housing subsidy should be accompanied by education, job training, etc.). The mayor also dances around the fact that the courts still hold sway of most of the emergency housing services, since successful lawsuits demonstrated that the previous administration was none too enlightened on how to deal with the largest homeless population in decades. The simple answer is that the city needs to develop affordable housing (which is mentioned in the speech, but I haven't seen 65,000 apartments under development, have you?) for a core segment of its population, and it needs to be done outside of federal funding (unless some miracle happens, one that exceeds even the election of a Democratic president) so we can have a humane way of dealing with the most extraordinary income and housing cost gaps in the country. This may rankle the aspiring professionals and creative industry wage slaves that flock to the city each year, willing to live in ridiculous conditions at outrageous rates. But their overall economic and social circumstances and outlook are radically different, and their penury is elective (and at times, embarassingly self-aggrandizing). Compared to any other 'world class' city, New York has the least effective (as a matter of design or social programming) affordable housing policy. If we embrace the need to spend (privately or publicly) a half a billion dollars on a single musuem renovation, or a billion and a half on a stadium, we can squeeze out a billion or two for a 21st century Stuyvesant Town, can't we?
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June 23, 2004
No clay feet here. The Observer serves up an incisive retrospective the reign of Prince Herbert.
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FAR away, so close-minded.
The upside to this blog thing is the ability to immediately declaim error. And we are the kind of people who find our feet fit best in our mouths. So a short mea cupla regarding the potential 'qualities' of the Hudson Yards plan released yesterday. This is not to promise that yet another opinion won't be offered another day hence, but this one feels pretty right, situated in the comfortable zone indoctrinated by study, practice and living, one that takes the simplistic position that a plan on this scale is a surrender to big real estate interests, lacking any understanding or respect for the successes of Manhattan neighborhoods, and even a pound foolish surrender of public resources. And with a little analysis, it doesn't seem all that off the mark. It's a big plan, and still (yes, we couldn't read 6,000 pages overnight) being digested, so we will deassemble this fiasco in comestible chunks. Today's segment will be on FAR, the Floor Area Ratio.
FAR is, as seems obvious, the amount of floor space that can be constructed on a lot. Expressed as a multplier, a lot's zoning determines its use and FAR. A building is constructed 'as of right' if the use conforms to the zoning designation and the FAR is within allowable range. Developers will argue that adjustments (variances) are often needed to make a project feasible, and claim that the zoning rules are therefore antiquated. But what is actually happending is that market values on land skew because of the ease with with variances are granted, because of the perceived value should the owner be able to earn a variance. Variances are received the old fashioned way: favors, bribes, influence-peddling, etc., so some calculus can even be applied to determine what premium one can place on land based on the difficulty of a variance. When big zoning revisions are recommended, FAR is attacked like it were the bubonic plague, cutting down a potentially vibrant city in its prime. Thankfully, it's proved relatively hard to get massive zoning revisions effected. As interim strategies, there have been concepts such as selling 'air rights,' 'public' space development, and other 'bonus' systems all designed to do only one thing: increase FAR. If someone has a spare moment while steam-rollering the civic experience in pursuit of speculative office space, you might hear some blather about invigorating public life, creative building envelopes or protecting a district (much of the Times Square area high-rise development was enabled by theaters selling air rights), but it's all bullshit.
So what is Hudson Yards about? FAR and away, it's about the largest reclassification of of zoning since the development of Battery Park City (and, in fact, likely eclipses it, given the relative density of the area). It may even be that the stadium plan is simply a distraction from the gutting of Hell's Kitchen it attempts.
Why the harsh words? Because the entire plan is basically taking the existing zoning, reclassifying it all as residential and commercial, and multiplying the FAR by about 40%. We get some set back diagrams that attempt to mitigate the plan, but mostly, they just put jacks under the entire neighborhood. The 'park' that Doctoroff touts in New York is about 20% of the eastern rail yard, and is surrounded by large, mostly commercial lots. If you want an idea of what they are striving for, take a walk up 6th Avenue in the 20's. Those ungainly, overscaled behemoths they call 'luxury apartments'? Yeah, imagine a lot of that. A lot. And for relief, a big avenue that attempts to ape Third Avenue in the 40s and 50s.
If why this is so unfortunate isn't clear, try to name a great and/or successful neighborhood in this town that has this texture. Battery Park? Battery Park is a victory for married Financial Services middle managers. It is not, not a destination that figures large in our cultural history. And there is no evidence it will ever become this. When was the last time you heard anyone get excited about moving to Kips Bay? They city has a responbility to understand and cultivate what makes it unique; what draws and compels people to stay. And it ain't the Hudson Yards plan. Instead, mandate a lower cornice line throughout. Work with existing stock and interesting infill that won't require such massive development money. Find manufacturing to residential conversions that mirror what was done in TriBeCa and SoHo. Affordable housing might be nice, but given the failure of Battery Park City to deliver on this (excess revenue was supposed to fund housing elsewhere in the city), we shouldn't be trading ten or twenty of those shitty tower blocks that look a nightmare of Corbusian proportion for a handful of affordable units.
Revenue is not a viable argument. The number of tax breaks that are handed out to attract and retain the companies that can rent these monsters mean the net tax revenue from the site (once the city gets done handing out PILOTs and abatements to the developers) is nominal, and probably not much more that allowing more organic rezoning that doesn't have to give away the store to get customers to walk in. So the Dursts and Resnicks can't fleece the city one more time. Fuck 'em. They can move to Houston.
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June 22, 2004
A rail line here. A stadium there. Pretty soon, we are talking about real money. Roll up your sleeves and get out your Anti-Westway tee-shirts, for the 'Hudson Yards' gauntlet has been thrown down, the form of a 6,000 page environmental impact statement. Now, the foes are varied, and, currently, not unified. So I'm not representing some consensus vision of why the 'Hudson Yards' plan is flawed, or hopeless on its face. I'm just looking to stick a knife into this goofball stadium plan. Let's see a unifed cost benefit analysis, broken out by segement (housing, train line, etc.). Because though I am sure some groups opposed the renovation plan in toto, maybe the overall vision isn't entirely foolhardy, only the stadium. And I suspect that is the position of many of the detractors. One of the justifications is that the covering of the rail yards adjoining Grand Central Station made Park Avenue what it is today. That's a somewhat specious and simplistic claim, but we'll accept it for the point of this discussion. I don't know if you have been there recently, but Shea Stadium is not sitting at the foot of Park Avenue. The boulevard they are proposing is not achored in any way by the stadium. Visually is not an argument. We can have that trampy Thomas Krens build a museum there. Programmatically, economically and socially, the stadium does nothing for a new business/residential district in that area. The only evidence that exists indicates that stadiums actually serve as detriments to this type of development. There are other problematic elements to the plan (scale, scale, scale; distribution of housing, perhaps too much a public subsidy for the eventual return, if one looks at Battery Park City -- where we are still waiting for that windfall that will supply all that housing Bloomberg needs for the homeless now that he will be charging rent for shelters -- as a comparator), but I'm going to make a good faith effort to digest the plan (if I can even get my hands on it) before addressing them. In mean time, remember, that stadium is snake oil, no matter how you mix it.
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Sambo.
One cannot say enough about Sam Mockbee. Mockbee, who founded the Rural Studio while teaching at Auburn in 1993, a year-long studio where students would meet low-income clients, and then design and construct homes for them on budgets that rivaled what some Manhattan apartments cost for a month. The transformative impact of their work, for both clients and anyone who is inspired to think that design and creative labor can improve lives without outscaled investement, can not be understated.
While a student, I had the good fortune to meet Sam. A friend and I hijacked him during a lecture visit and took him to dinner. I've met only a limited number of luminaries in the architecture world, and seen a larger number speak. Mockbee stood out for years in my mind as the kindest person I've ever met who called architecture a passion. And his life, as he presented it, was a continual challenge to my own frustrations (at one point, we was living in his office because he couldn't afford an apartment). That he continued to find ways to bring meaning and a better quality of life to more people as he continued to grow his practice is humbling, proof that carping only the rich can afford to buy or practice architecture is sometimes simply self-serving rationalization.
If you are anywhere near Washington DC over the summer, the National Building Museum is featuring a show (through September 6th) on the work of the Rural Studio. It is beautiful, and not simply because of the quiet grace of the intentions of the program's social goals, but also because the of rigor with which the practioners engaged the belief that a client is deserving of the highest order of design, regardless of means. The Architect's Newspaper (print only), offers a review in their current issue.
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June 21, 2004
All Family Court Buildings are unhappy in their own way. Even though it seems like public facilities construction takes forever in Manhattan (I swear that Public Service Administration building on Avenue C and 8th Street was under construction for six years), the renovation of the Family Court Building at 60 Lafayette (just north of Foley Square) is at a unique stage worth taking in. The renovation, which comprises some interior renovations and a new exterior, is at the point where all the existing cladding has been removed, leaving a not smooth, but compelling poured concrete substructure, with tie backs sticking out like a fine fur. I can't remember the last time I saw this building without some temprorary repair or patch applied, and it always had the dingy air of poorly maintained public facility. Now, its unapologetic brutalist roots are on striking display. It even looks a little like the Diller, Scofidio & Renfro reworking of Alice Tully Hall. Let's hope that whatever new materials Mitchell/Giurgola specify will have greater longevity, and not work against what is a decent, but not spectacular, form.
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But I hear that plaza is real nice. They haven't passed a budget, or done much else apparently, but the New York State Assembly is holding hearings regardling the West Side Stadium proposal. NY1 says it will give supporters and opponents a chance to make their voice heard, but I think it should read "shills for supporters and opponents" since we're all going to have to yell awful loud to be heard all the way up in Albany.
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It wasn't because of his diminutive stature, right? You've all seen it, now prepare for the welter of meta-analysis. Since there are folks out there that do this better, I'm not going to delve too much into the reportage (except to say that even though this might be presumed to be another example of the reputed skills of Nina Libeskind, on balance, it is not the most flattering item, and there seems to have been little co-operation from the Libeskind camp). The one point where I think the piece could have really added to the dialog would have been providing a thorough recounting of how Libeskind was picked over the THINK team. The reason being is that Libeskind is given a great deal of credit for his 'visionary' approach, though the article notes (and is confirmed by an Port Authority mouthpiece) that his plan was formally the most consistent by the Beyer Blinder Belle concepts (which were presented as massing and site planning concepts only). I was not fan of the THINK proposal, but, after all the hand-wringing about dialog and the will of the people, the most popular design was cast aside (I have heard the Vinoly is even publishing a book of their entry to remind people of this slight). Perhaps we should look more critically at Libeskind's intentions and actions. Given that most of his lamentedly discarded 'visionary' elements were either fabrications (the Wedge of Light) or near impossible (keeping the slurry wall exposed), it seems he provided little more than the charismatic sheen for a plan that was fait accompli. And he collected over $2 million dollars in the process. Given his propensity for speaking, if not bluntly, then at least with some rhetorical flourish, it is interesting how tempered his behavior is now. He has a large book of business elsewhere (indeed, after three decades, his economic propects are positively rosy), and it is the kind of work that wouldn't be damaged by his going straight at the con job being run downtown right now. And really, it's unlikely he would find much work in this town anyway (our best local talent hasn't completed a project in Manhattan in twenty years). Though the Times stops well short of "Little Danny, unhappy at last" we should still be careful about painting him as the victim here.
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But where's the bread?
No one said we don't do things big here in the biggest of everything, etc. The Times takes a dull pencil to the Ernst & Young numbers regarding the 'economic impact' of the proposed Jets stadium. Since, unlike the Nets development, they don't have any angle to play (the new Times Tower is being developed by Bruce Ratner, who is currently papering Brooklyn with glossy brochures touting the benefits of the new Gehry-copia of arena, housing and general whiteness), they take a tempered, albeit negative view of the projected benefits.
Turns out E&Y and Doctoroff expect economic benefits on the order of five times what has been measured by any comparable facility in the country. A total of 50 new trade shows are expected to flock to the billion dollar stadium, which currently only has a total guaranteed booking slate of eight events a year (if you are into numbers, that means it they city will spend $6.5 million each Sunday a Jets game is played for the next twenty years).
Why a dull pencil? Well, the economic analysis is a retread of the usual routine, in which canned numbers are projected using assumptions which are not grounded in any analytic reseach; that is, no data is supplied, either systemic or anecdotal, to indicate whether there are even the mythical 50 events looking for a home in the oversaturated exhibition market. It's not quite that simple (you have to earn those consultant dollars somehow), but that's the top line, and its an approach that has been neatly debunked a number of times. And even though they do a decent job of exposing some of the weak logic, there is a larger body of analysis that should bolster a harder line against the 'economic benefit' front. That is not to say that no benefits are realized. There is a thin slice of data indicating that cities that win Super Bowls realized a net gain of rental income, even though personal income drops. But this correlation is about a winning team, not a new stadium.
New York gave a bit more of platform to Dan Doctoroff last week to explain his vision, which includes a big park and a branch of the Guggenheim (which is the easy lay you ask to every party these days; can someone please tell Thomas Krens to keep it his pants once in a while? You would think he would show a little discretion considering the recent self-funded survey that indicated that the majority of visitors show up for the Wright building and not the art. Learning from Las Vegas, indeed). The cornerstone of his argument is that you have spend the $600 million to develop the site no matter what, so why not a stadium? His point about public investment is fine, but since his numbers project that if the stadium hits a home run (or, to make the metaphor sports appropriate, connects on a Hail Mary) right out of the gate, the most the city can expect is a net gain of $30 million yearly in tax revenue, maybe some research on what revenue benefits accrue from any other types of development are in order first. Fairly put, $600 million is only 1.2% of the annual budget, and thus a sum that the city can manage, but if the benefit to New Yorkers consists of a facility they have access to (but don't own) only eight days a year, and with an entry fee in the neighborhood of $50, perhaps we should be rethinking what an the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development should actually be doing on our dime.
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June 18, 2004
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
The folks over at Eyebeam (you remember them; they held a high profile competition for a new facility just as the air was being let out of the internet bubble) have launched a new project that tracks street 'memes' (via Kottke). The most interesting (and useful) aspect of it is being able to upload photos from phones, vastly increasing its utility and immediacy. But some context would be nice. For instance, the Toynbee stencil is listed as 'pending', though any aficinado of street art would look at it as one of the masters. Using the 'meme' trope (how's that for PoMo self-referential hell?) maybe even undermines how many of the listed items work, or have worked, as a message, and imply perhaps a shorter life-cycle than they deserve or have (are Revs and Cost irrelevant because they are no longer actively tagging, even if they still have a large number of extant samples?). Internet meme tracing is fine, since the time cycles are short (which is an affect and basis for their success; a nonsense idea that holds one's attention for a very brief moment), and the data mining tools can give some fairly objective metrics. But the 'pending' Toynbee, which is down to a handful of locations, is still seen by probably millions of people a year (a large number of which are finding it for the first time). And one doesn't need to go back any further than Keith Haring (or less recently than De La Vega) to see that a wide range of intended (or incidental) messages exist. By flattening them under the rubric of 'memes', is a negative practice of co-optation (I can imagine Y&R junior account execs mining the site for new images to steal for Sprite ads; so much easier than actually walking to the LES or Williamsburg). Plus, the folks at the Wooster Collective already do a pretty good job of reporting and tracking with some sense of historical analysis.
But neither of them are likely to address 'Phone Block Escort Service,' an inexplicable piece of seeming graffiti that is pervasive on construction sheds. I couldn't determine if it was an ad for a very odd outcall service, or anti-prostitution slogan. A more enterprising friend accosted a worker one day and determined the simple, though not obvious, truth: it is a marker for the location where phone service should enter the site (and is there to alert the phone company when they send their people to run lines). The explosion of new construction in the 90's made it regular and prominent enough to create the sense that it intentional art. Or it may also be that I am simply stupid. Case in point: Back in the mid 90's, the local band Lotion made blue stickers of their name using the same face as the old AT&T signs that marked a phone booth and placed them over the word 'Phone.' Since I only saw them in the East Village, for the longest time I thought it was a local Spanglish venacular for phone and was afraid to ask anyone, lest I look like some rube. At least I was right about that part (the worst thing is, I even knew Lotion was a band).
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But, we digress.
This is clearly way outside what we normally discuss, but an exception will be made based on some tortured logic that there was a stadium/sports post (making it sort of a 'sports' day) as well being really fucking annoying.
Hampton Roads is now in the running for a MLB franchise because the folks at Smithfiled (the Ham people), put up $1,000 as a deposit for a luxury box at an unfunded stadium. That's right. A check for about what an ounce of decent pot will in fetch in New York gets you a wire service story touting your status as yet another sucker in the Bud Selig pyramid scheme. And so you are asking two things: 1. Where is hell is Hamptons Roads? and 2. Why exactly is this so annoying? Well, the answers are: 1. Who cares? and 2. That's not the annoying part.
The annoying part is that one of the points made to legitimate their bid is that they are the largest pseudo-city to not have a major league sports franchise. And, again, a journalist regurgitates this meaningless fact without an consideration for its implicit logic: namely, there will always be a largest city without a sports franchise. It's fast becoming the equivalent of box office results promotion. You know: Columbus is the largest capital city that is not located on a water feature that doesn't have a major sports franchise. The intersection of 78/287 is the densest arrangement of malls and gated residential communities that no once can find a decent name for as a town even though it is larger than most state capitals that doesn't have a major sports franchise. Because, in the future, everyone will have a major sports franchise for fifteen minutes.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Dolans threaten to hire foreigners. Hilarty ensures.
Respecting the middling quality of their existing facility, and perhaps a belief that Midtown is not Canadian enough, Cablevision has apparently contracted Brisbin Brook Beynon, regional specialists in "entertainment architecture," to spruce up the Garden. Perhaps I'm being unfair those particular Canadians, but, boy, isn't that the worst web site you have ever seen? They must save it all for the boards.
The Dolans are promising to do all with private funds (which is interesting accounting; continuance of a 22-year tax exemption is considered 'private' money?), and they want nothing in return. Of course that nothing could be expressed tangibly, in the form of nixing the flashy new stadium a few blocks west. You have to feel badly for the Dolans, though: a slice of monopoly on television in the New York region market and a near monopoly on large event spaces in Manhattan, and they still manage to lose money. Oh, well. I guess this is what you get when you complain about the hiring of Renzo Piano.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 17, 2004
A flash of green.
A few months late, the renovation of Tribeca Park is very nearing completion. Though some paving still needs to be installed, they removed the barriers sometime yesterday afternoon, so I guess it is 'open.' Tribeca Park (now fairly named) is the double triangle formed when Beach Street splits and interrupts West Broadway. Previously, it was a mean, mean place, paved entirely in cobblestones, meaning it was at best still and warm in the summer and completely exposed to the brutal wintertime winds (though this is unlikely to change). The renovation consists of a traditional paving system oriented around an oval that sits in the wide corner where the triangles meet. Surmounting the oval is low-lying planting. It's not a big space, but given the previous desolation, it doesn't even appear that the reduction in paved space has resulted in a net decrease of seating, which is now qualitatively far superior, benches arrayed on the perimeter of the oval. The fencing, standard parks iron post and rail style, is a knee wall, rather than full height, as is seen in the park locations that are more planting zones than parks (such as the bands of green on the north side of Houston in the East Village). It provides a nice visual delimiter while making the park very inviting. And the addition of undergrowth has clearly added to amount of fresh air one senses when walking by. Given its location, straddled by exit lanes from the Holland Tunnel, and facing the Avenue of the Americas, which serves as a entry lane during rush hour, this no mean feat.
If you wanted to be a little ingracious (as I am wont to do), you could observe that some of the details in the park renovations throughout the city tend to be a little heavy-handed on the historicist side. This tends to creep up only when something other than benches or fences are being installed. Good antidotes to this tendency can be found in the renovated piers opened in Hudson River Park last year, and many of the public spaces found throughout Battery Park City. But, overall, the work stands as a pretty satisfying coutnerpoint to the oft heard complaint (oft heard coming from my mouth) that of all the cities in this country, can't we be allowed to expect a little more? In Tribeca Park, at least, it turns out we can.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 16, 2004
Run out on rails. It turns out that Pataki's threat to hijack the last billion dollars of LMDC money to finance the JFK rail link may be an empty threat. A Downtown Express recap of a talk by Kevin Rampe, president of the LMDC, though, curiously, not a voting member ("I think at the end of the day, my point of view will be irrelevant"), gives a few hints of where the remaining funds might be disbursed. He alluded mostly to the impact of community opinion, which expresses a near majority interest in the link, even though the commitment to fund it is far lower (46 percent support the plan, though only 13 percent rank it first as a funding priority). As a result, the LMDC will seek seperate funding in the form of federal funds for the rail tunnel. But apparently not much in the way of concrete alternatives were offered for the billion dollars in available grant money. Likewise, no timeline for announcing the decision was provided, though the next few weeks will likely prove pivotal. Even though a number of seemingly fixed decisions have been recently presented, the equivocations of LMDC take on the air of a routine, allowing for some skepticism. But the fixity of breaking ground on the Freedom Tower, and other political acts (presidential and gubernatorial elections) will prompt more decisive action, even if it is not the most prudent. Look for a flurry of 'final' plans to be hyped in the run up to the July 4 ceremony.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Bloomberg to homeless: Drop Dead. After years of dumping unused properties to private developers, the city has announced it is damn tired of putting up homeless people who just won't get an apartment already. A new plan, which the Times has an advance copy of, recommends charging shelter residents. I don't know if anyone has told the sharp tacks who wrote this one, but if the homeless could pay rent, they would have an apartment already. This gem is built with the presumptive logic that proper programming would involve "moving resources away from emergency spending to the real solutions, which are prevention and housing." That's fine, but they aren't offering numbers, plans or financing to do this. A subsequent plan is promised, but considering the big outlay, and biggest impact, will be the production of housing, rather than the collection of rent from people who don't have a place to sleep, allow us a moment of incredulity on the likelihood of quality follow up. We'll hold our breath for a short moment to see if the city can follow through, but given the spirit of current issuance, we'll reserve the right to call 'bullshit' and offer a hearty 'Fuck you, Mike.' Let's hope there is good cause to retract this comment, but the past twenty years of publicly funding housing solutions don't provide much in the way of hope.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Whitney procures services of big name architect. Hilarty ensues. The Whitney is ready to give it another go, this time hiring Renzo Piano to take a crack at developing an expansion plan. It certainly seems to be a good time to be a name architect with a fading, repetitive oeuvre, but aren't there, oh, a hundred or so firms out there that maybe are deserving of this commission? I remember remarking to friend, quite cyncially, about ten years ago, that architecture would continue to calcify until the old guard finally started to die off, and that it was even hard to figure out who would rise, since so much work is siphoned off by such a narrow slice of firms. Sure, they waited their turn as well, but Piano did the Pompidou 27 years ago. That's plenty of time to bask in fame and glory. I mean, don't you think Smith-Miller Hawinkson are a little bitter? By the time their turn comes, they'll be dead. Anyway, Piano, lots of experience, blah, blah, blah, former attempts to renovate withered in the face of costs and community opposition, blah, blah, blah. The Times does it by the numbers. They should just use that Graves rendering for every subsequent article, cause what Piano actually does won't matter than much.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 15, 2004
At least everyone has passed on the fat lady jokes. Terry Teachout offers a response to the short list for Cultural venues announced for the WTC site. His main point is that the selected finalists are relatively small potatoes. Given the short list, this isn't the hardest charge to level. Working with available materials, he observes that the decision is somewhat a slap in the face of the City Opera. Given its relative stature, this is true, though I don't agree that it replacing one of the finalists would then elevate the process to "making the boldest possible declaration of faith in the power and glory of Western culture." It would at best cement the notion that collective expressions of arts are at the behest of whatever passes as aristocracy in a given cultural moment. Much better would have been a library. Given the small footprint of the site, it would not have to supplant the main branch, and could host any number of specific collections that could celebrate the development of democracy, promote religious tolerance, or study the interrelationships between western and non-western culture and history. And it could do so by trying to embrace what a library looks like as we evolve information systems that are as comprehensive as they are delicate. There's no doubt that what is now proposed is disappointing, but adding regular performances of Wagner isn't going to rectify the error.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
It's big, it's a little confusing. It must be public art. I came across the Victor Matthews installation in Battery Park last night. It consists of a field of umbrellas painted with Monarch butterflies. It was a 'surprise' and therefore an interesting diversion as I simultaneously tried to determine what snarky comments I could make (minor league Christo warm-up?) while also applying my ill-gotten art education to form a critical interpretation (always a fun challenge, given the range of work one can find). They are arranged to point in a particular direction, which makes for a nice shift in perspective (and a little disconcerting, as if something is being worshipped) as you move past them, but otherwise, they are interesting solely for the repetition and vaguely absurd concept. Their number is significant enough (3,000) that I began to wonder if perhaps there were a symbolic signifcance to the number. I thought, with some dread, that it was commemorating how the victims of the World Trade Center would never be able to stand in a rainstorm adorned by insect images ever again, or something like that. It's not that I think any piece of sculpture of repetitive forms is inextricably bound to the WTC, but the specificity of the context, adjacent to The Sphere, makes such conclusions reasonable. And then I thought might be in response to impending extinction, though promoting a potential scarcity with visual excess is an odd contradiction. But neither is the case. Instead, a poorly hung sign outlines the concept, and heralds the work as 'hand-painted.' Word to those playing at home: beware of art that bills itself as hand-painted. It still isn't clear to me why, or better, how, but the artist tells us:
Whether viewed from near or afar, the umbrellas will create a stunning and vibrant impression of a migrating flutter of flame-colored butterflies.Granted, my scholarship is weak when it comes to literary or artistic allusions involving butterflies (something Greek perhaps?), so then some part of the work lacks richness for me. Given how obsessive some work can be, this seems a little slipshod. But it's still an interesting thing to see, though not so much that is is worth a pilgrimage downtown (unless, of course, you were planning to watch television instead).
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 14, 2004
Tree Falls, etc.
A colophon is a tedious, self-aggrandizing exercise. Oh, but wait, so is a blog. So one will be provided eventually, which will outline some reasonable facts, such as editorial mission, some notion of frequency, etc., for all you who are newsreader deficient. Two days does not constitute a hiatus, and there still isn't a procedural attitude about them. A list of where to fill the void is silly. A perfectly adequate link list is provided at right. One thing for certain is self-referential commentary is frowned upon. A short interlude provided frequent sampling of what is likely the best burger in the country and the sign of an abandoned midwestern steak house chain that had been damaged enough to read only 'Ponder.'
Locally, in case you missed it, Muschamp may be on the way out (which makes sense, since he can't be bothered to, you know, think), the Drawing Center is on the way in, and the virus that is the team to recreate the Trade Towers claims another victim.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 9, 2004
Glenn Lowry to the young philistines of Manhattan: Drop Dead. In case no one told you, MoMA is a damn important place, and those who work there are pretty damn important too. And serious. And worthy of endless hagiography. If you try really hard, you might be good enough for them someday. In case you were wondering just what particular path of improvement would be best, Mr. Lowry lays it right out for you:
We're talking to a younger and in many ways better-educated audience but one that is not necessarily more sophisticated.Meanwhile, the blessed are busy playing with dolls (but are very, very serious about it), using a scale model of the galleries to determine what will be shown and where. If you were wondering how they can tell who is sophisticated, well, here's a sample of the shimmering erudition of the anointed:
"I felt strongly that each gallery should have a subject," Mr. Elderfield said. "I want each gallery to have a kind of integrity so that if it were taken out of the museum and plunked into the middle of Central Park, it would be a viable show on its own."Whoa, dude. I need to go read some Rosalind Krauss and figure that shit out. I guess they're too sophisticated to use, you know, CAD renderings of the spaces, which would allow them walk-throughs at eye level, variable light conditions, and near photographic-quality representations of the works in situ. But that's where they are different from the rest of us. I just hope they'll take my money when they reopen.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
But what do you do when you take the kitchen to work?
Yesterday was officially the first day of Riding the Subway Sucks. The condition does not merit a more clever appellation. I christen the day when I first note the absurdity of the way the subterranean work spaces are cooled: namely, with wall units that exhuast into the public spaces. I never cease being amazed at how few people understand how air conditioning actually functions. The short version is, you need heat to make cool. You need more heat. So in order to cool the (relatively small) workspaces in a subway station that have wall units, you generate (incidentally) a larger amount of excess heat that must be shed (which is why half your air conditioner sticks outside the building). In this case, it all goes into larger public spaces of the station, quickly adding to the heat given off by people and the trains. Now, everyone should have a comfortable workspace, but given the large number of people negatively burdened, couldn't they find another way (perhaps to vent the exhaust, or require buildings in the vicinity to support air handlers)? Just something to muse on while you are thinking positive thoughts, perhaps that the next train is so late, someone better have died to cause the delay (that's a hell of a thing isn't it? We all think that sooner or later, except for some people, that was actually the case). Otherwise, you can try these tepid suggestions:
1. Know where the vents are, and stand as close to them as you can. All stations have some connection to the outside world, to allow for passive ventilation. When a train exits the station it creates a vacuum that will pull air in, provided the air outside is cooler (mostly in the mornings). Conversely, arriving trains will push air around, but it won't feel as much like a breeze.
2. If you are in a station near the end of a line, or where a connection forces a one train to wait regularly (Chambers Street or 2nd Ave, for instance), don't forget that you can hang out in the delayed train.
3. This is a minor point, but once you are on the train, on the IRT, (1/2/3/4/5/6/7/9), the older models (the R-62's; all the 'Redbirds' have been taken out of service) are much cooler in the center of the car. There are two vents that run the most of the length of the car, but stop well short of the ends.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 8, 2004
Capitalism: now safe, and attractive. There is now visible progress of renovation underway on Broad Street. Undertaken to make permanent the security put in place after 9/11, the City and the LMDC commissioned Rogers Marvel (forgive their website -- you can find the project in the 'On the Boards' section) to develop less intrusive security (right now it's pickups and Jersey Barriers). The result will be retractable bollards, a likely unpleasant security gate, and a least one block (just south of Wall) will be covered by Eurocobble (which doesn't look as bad as it sounds, though the problem isn't the city's ability to pave a street, but rather ensuring contractors do a decent job of repair when they cut and cover). The Rogers Marvel renderings don't do such a good job of explicating the change. Their appeal derives from the effect of having unfettered pedestrian access to that intersection. I'll hope for a nice fence (being somewhat of a fetishist for that sort of thing; draw whatever conclusion you will about my neighborliness), but barring even that, if those drawing are anything close to the end state, it will have been a laudable effort.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Lordy. All my yammering about what a piece of shit Scott Rednick is like to foist on to TriBeCa, and it turns out to be Foster. Yes folks, that there are the stylings of Lord Foster his bad self. You woulda thunk Rednick pimped this fact a little more when greasing the Community Board (except they got dinged for presenting a model, touting its careful massing and proportion, and they left out P.S. 234, so there wouldn't be any relative scale for the casual observer). This detail via the Architect's Newspaper. I've mentioned you should subscribe. You did, right? Cause you should.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Move over Clock Tower.
That should tell you how cool I am: I have to reference DUMBO developments from five years ago. Anyway, if I was cooler, and had a better memory, I could link you up to the best opportunity to come your way (especially if your name is Ratner, Resnick, Rudin, Rose, or any other ares I'm forgetting) since, oh, whatever old building you bought yesterday and then announced a bunch of unfinished spaces that will sell for about a grand a square foot. This week (again, don't hold me to this; Google's no help about now, so don't try it) marks the close of an auction to sell the Williamsburg Savings Bank building. You know it: the tallest building in Brooklyn, just across the street from the putative Nets arena. Up for grabs. For another day or so. So get an R in your name and plunk down $50 mil or so. The smart money says: condos!
UPDATE: Okay, the trusty 'History' command has rescued me. Cushman & Wakefield is handling the sale (no listing on their site), and the auction closes on Thursday (you really needed that info, didn't you?). Info via the Times.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 7, 2004
The only thing missing from downtown: downtown chic.
Just as many of the critics in the Times are arguing that force-fitting a cultural district on downtown will be a bigger and badder version of the Lincoln Center, Alan Gerson is stumping hard for that very effort. This week, he
released a map to accompany a report issued earlier in the year that outlines a proposal for cohering the major existing nodes of arts activity into an over-arching 'cultural district' that will also encourage relocation of many organizations and artists much further downtown.
His thesis is that 'The Arts' are a significant contributor to the economic well being of the New York area, and, as such, should receive public investment and assistance. Declaring them the last remaining smokestack industry in New York seems to be a strategy intended to prompt massive reinvestment. This reflects a poor understanding of the city's economic history, and offers no leverage for adapting existing or historical development schemes. The city did next to nothing to discourage the dismantling of manufacturing in the city, but, more so, what is the corollary? Relocation of Julliard to Taiwan? If anything, the 'arts community' is highly fractured (and fractious), not 'vertically-integrated.' They do make the point that many artists are relocating to cities that are more 'artist-friendly,' such as Portland, Oregon. My limited experience is anyone interested in the arts who moves to a smaller metropolitan area is already established and seeking alternatives New York cannot offer (geography, a differing attitude about regional cultural production, etc.), or simply failing to make a dent in their respective career and looking for a lower threshold of accomplishment.
And even in the cases where the city actively supports industry, it is mostly in the form of tax abatement and PILOT (Payments In Lieu of Taxes) agreements. Very little direct subsidy occurs. Arts organizations already receive tax breaks that exceed those offered to private enterprise (though they do offer some interesting ideas, such as abatement pass-thrus to landlords that rent to arts organizations), so the city has little developmental ammunition to deliver, excepting direct grants.
By declaring downtown as a viable arts district worthy of direct and indirect subsidy immediately after providing a succinct synopsis of the arts district to gentrification cycle ("Again and again we see the cycle -- artists move into a blighted or under-utilized neighborhood. Eventually, the neighborhood becomes a 'destination.' The real estate booms. The artists and arts organizations, including the ones that had been there for decades, are driven out by the new market rents. Some organizations go under. The others limp to a new blighted neighborhood and begin again, diminished. The newly revitalized neighborhood they left behind somehow 'loses its luster,' leaving perfectly serviceable luxury residential areas with no discernible character.") colors the entire program as real estate subsidy for the black sheep of middle-class families everywhere. You know the profile: Child One inherits the business, Child Two becomes a high-earning professional, and Child Three becomes a… filmmaker.
Promoting ownership of facilities for arts organizations is fine idea. Encouraging artists to own their space is good advice. But when even the most underdeveloped section of Manhattan south of 125th Street will still fetch north of $400/sq ft, it will be near impossible to structure a program that acquires property outright or encourages owners to participate in discount or stabilized rent relationships. And no one who has come of age as an artist in the past generation is ignorant of this cycle. Deciding where to be an artist is as much an act of real estate speculation as it is an expressive act.
Gerson's map is a step towards codifying planning development that could have a beneficial effect on arts organizations, and should be embraced enthusiastically, but not for the benefit of downtown, but as the first step of building an infrastructure that supports the arts on the order of Paris or Berlin.
As for the artists, they should go live in the South Bronx. For the city to be visionary about where the army of cultural producers can perch, it has to be off Manhattan: Long Island City, Astoria, the Bronx, and beyond. This is where housing/zoning programs need to be focused. They need to be combined with programs that encourage home ownership by the existing population, and to integrate disparate cultures, not simply displace them. Everyone applies the veneer of SoHo and TriBeCa as they exist today to what any 'artist housing' program should look like. But the genesis was much different (a friend who was pioneer was fascinated to read that Gordon Matta-Clark’s Food held various art happenings late in the evening; she used to go there because it was the only restaurant around). There are a number of neighborhoods that are viable for creative and equitable reinvestment. An artists enclave has never arisen in a mature real estate district, and the cost to force one on downtown will lead to an even faster dissolution of non-mainstream arts organizations.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Critical Art Ensemble grand jury and protest. You may have heard a bit about this story (also here) last month. Steve Kurtz, SUNY Buffalo associate professor of art, and noted member of the Critical Art Ensemble, awoke a couple weeks ago to discover his wife had died of cardiac arrest during the night. He called 911, and upon arrival, the police noted the presence of several pieces of laboratory equipment, part of an exhibit slated to open at MassMOCA (and previously shown in Frankfurt). He was subsequently barred him from his home, the FBI confiscated the equipment (and his wife's corpse, temporarily) and now a Federal Grand Jury will convene on June 15, to investigate charges that he "possess[ed] 'any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system' without the justification of 'prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose.'" To aid in his defense, a fund has been established, and protest is scheduled for the 15th. Details here (via Archinect).
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 6, 2004
Muschamp phones it in.
I'm sure there are any number of days one could say this, but I would hazard this one will be hard to beat: today, Herbert Muschamp opines to the obvious effect that he finds critical thinking has no place in his job. The Times, with a strange neurotic glee, has asked its critics for programming ideas for the WTC site, as the LMDC drags it heels over the final winnowing of candidates for cultural development at the site.
Almost off-handedly, Muschamp announces he's tired of thinking about it, given the dearth of good ideas, but instead of the rational conclusion of simply giving everyone more time to think, insteads admits he finds the 'cop-out' position of rebuilding the towers as they were is now the best solution:
Certainly, I'm prepared to defend reconstruction as a cultural act. It would be an offering to Mnemosyne, mother of the muses, from whom all culture flows.There's some classic Muschamp: a (very) little Greek erudition, the threat of real critical thinking that goes unacted on, and call it a day. The rebuilding folks, of whom there are a couple, having been gaining traction recently, including small mention in Time Out this week. In true Muschampian style (hey, if it's good enough for the Times it certainly passes muster round these parts), I am not going to detail why this is such a phenomenally bad idea. I don't even think it raises itself to the level of idea, but that sort of dismissive logic has bedeviled liberals in all sorts of areas for decades (you know the process; you think, do I have actually explain why racism is bad again?), and so I'm a little guilty of perpetuating poor tactics. All I'll say is that if he thinks it's such a good idea, maybe he should be symbolic Tenant One. It has a nice roundness to the gesture, and I'm sure that Silverstein will give him a discount for being a team player.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 4, 2004
421 E 6th Street
A typical lament of aging is the observation that the hallowed places are being uprooted by less authentic interlopers. One sad effect of modernity is that many of our landmarks are merely places of commerce from which spring material transactions that are the process of sanctification and meaning in a captial driven society. But, what then, are the amulets of days past? Temples to discarded belief systems. The evolution of postmodernity will inevitably be the erections of monuments to the process of nostalgia itself.
That I find fewer places each year to marvel at is an indictment of my own passing through youth, but also a real measuring of the continued development of lower Manhattan that will mandate the eventual elision of the spaces which resonate most with me, the forgetten, the interstitial. It sounds like bad hipster parody, and likely it is.
But the ones I cling to are in fact a far sight more interesting mystery than the lastest residential 'enclave'. For instance, for years, I have wondered about the theater building the East Village Farm inhabits. The Farm, located on the east side of Avenue A between 7th and 6th streets, was clearly once an auditorium (the emergency exit mezzanine is still on the Avenue A facade). Why hasn't anything be done with this? Are they storing inventory in the rows? There is another, mid-block, auditorium in the East Village, the location of which escapes me now, that is similarly unused. An auditorium is hard to redevelop, but given the dearth of film theaters for so long, I'm surprised no one made an attempt to create an alternative space of some kind.
The space that was always the alluring to me was the hulking monolith on 6th Street between 1st and Avenue A. It is the kind of building that when I asked others if they had any insight, not only could they not help, they typically could not even recall its presence. About the same size of the adjoining buildings, it has far fewer windows, and perhaps fewer floors as well. It looks like it may have been a fire house, the large entry of which had been replaced with some aluminum storefront and a smaller set of doors with dense, abstract metallic graffiti neatly covering the bottom half. Regardless of the hour, it remained implacable and unchanged. One light, high up and in the rear, and some emergency stair lighting. Never a change or indication who, why, or what this building was about. It mostly became a landmark of obtuse importance, the hipster development fantasy: if no one else noticed it, perhaps I could swoop in, compensate for innumerable missed opportunities that weren't, but only seemed so in retrospect. I figured it to be city owned, or some similarly intractable bureaucracy. It occurred to me only recently that a quick search tax records could turn up the owner. And what I found amazed me: artist Walter DeMaria has owned the site for over twenty years. So much for my longings for gentrification, even as my keen eye was validated by such a storied artist (and now developer). Of course, this entire mystery could have been resolved had I bothered to consult the incomparable work of Jim Naureckas. Maybe it is the most obscure of his long-term installations, an artwork for one, or revealed only to those who make the effort. It seems unlikely, given it's rough state. Maybe it's a sketch. The truth is probably far more pedestrian. I'll wait for New York's most dilligent real estate fetishist to clue me in. In the meantime, does anyone know of any large, underutilized and cheap properties I can shift my unfulfilled longing to?
Found always via this Permanent Link.
In light of current events. The city is currently in the process of developing a new streetlights to replace the current 'Cobra Head,' designed by Donald Desky in 1958. Stage II finalists include Imrey Culbert, the Chicago office of SOM, and Thomas Phifer. Unfortunately, none of the initial submissions (accepted or rejected) are available for viewing. But the competition documents include such goodies as detailed construction diagrams of the push buttons (used to activate walk signals) and a nifty, to-scale flash movie of the New York streetlights through the ages.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 3, 2004
They do it over there, but they don't do it here. It's not just the east side that can feature vaporware the in the $2 million plus category, even though we might not feature such plush Kohler fixtures (but, really, Kohler? Remember when they were 'The Bold Look of Kohler?' Please. I'm sure TriBeCa is all about Grohe). Over here, we have the numerically similar 116 Hudson, which is sporting a new banner with an indistinct rendering, but the website is woefully underdeveloped (considering they are well into construction, and 115 Allen hasn't broken ground yet), and you can blame the folks at Stribling for that (this might be an indication of the relative marketability of the two projects: namely, that one doesn't need to try real hard around here, net-wise). I had read that DeNiro owns the extant building (it will be a retrofit of an existing building and new construction), though the tax filings don't reveal this explicitly. (I mentioned it previously, I still haven't found hard fact). Why this matters is opaque to me, but people get a charge out of celebrity, and I do find it perversely fascinating just how much of this neighborhood he might actually own. Anyway, we'll sit tight until the Stribling folks get us a site and a decent rendering, and we will launch some $4 million catfight with those poseurs over on the East Side [insert finger snapping here].
Found always via this Permanent Link.
Pay me? Pay you! The Observer has the best dirt on the Libeskind/Silverstein brouhaha. Via Lock. And Felix weighs in as well. We think it's sort of redundant to make these notes (since it't highly likely you read them first anyway), but in case you missed it, here you go.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
June 2, 2004
More on 2 Columbus Circle.
The Washington Post does a nice round up on the redevelopment of 2 Columbus Circle. It adds a little to the conversation from last week, mostly in the form of a some better quotes. And there's a little bit of its interesting history, though they failed to note that in the late 90s the Dahesh Museum made serious inquires into relocating there, perhaps because they needed to make room for Tom Wolfe to try and reclaim some of his former gadfly glories of the early 80's. They come down slightly, but definitely, on the side of "it's broke, and needs to be fixed." Given it's somewhat a positive piece, architect Brad Cloepfil gets a bit of slight, being referrred to as an 'emerging talent' -- perhaps implying that he spirited away the commission from the apparently hottest architect on the palent, Zaha Hadid, who is referred to as the 'Pritzker Prize winner,' a useless distinction considering that she was not when the competition was held, and that when he was selected, he had completed a minor, but noted, musuem (Hadid's CAC was still under construction), a major corporate commission and several other arts-related commissions. Cloepfil had demonstrated skill at realizing difficult projects, an approach that corresponded well to the program needs, and the museum's mission, and was probably considered the best 'regional' architect in the country, but he still's just emerging. That's what you get for living in Portland, and not having a good press agent.
UPDATE: The Times's Joyce Purnick takes a more direct jab at the preservationists today. She also adds a potentially interesting nugget: MAD doesn't yet own the building, which in principle give the opposition some hope, some of whom even suggest leaving the eyesore sit a while longer until a better developer comes along. But it's also a bit of a red herring. The city is cutting MAD a deal, but one of the conditions is that construction commence withing a particular timeframe of the sale, so the museum is likely putting off executing the agreement until they have made adequate progress in their captial campaign. So if you are a wealthy individual with a desire to stick it to Tom Wolfe and Bob Stern, there's a naming opportunity built just for you. Rather, about to be built. Just for you.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
NYC market too rich for everyone's blood. Crain's reports in this week's (print) edition that Amec, a large British construction/ engineering services concern, is selling its New York office as the last step in withdrawing from the U.S. market, due to concerns about "risk and low margins." Though Crain's cites a press release from Amec, none was turned up in a cursory review of their site. With high-profile (and presumably lucrative) projects such as the MoMA expansion and the new Times Building, this is notable defection. They were one of the four firms involved with cleanup at the WTC, have an active role in the Iraq rebuilding, and presumably operate in the London market, where development and construction is even more tortured than it is here, which leads me to wonder what 'risks' they perceived. And, given that the WTC cleanup was done as a cost-plus contract (meaning they got to bill every hour earned with an agreed upon profit markup), what kind of margins are they demanding?