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November 26, 2004
For which we are truly not thankful. This will be poorly written, in one of those juvenile, petulant and self-aggrandizing rationalizations about theoretical consistency. You know how it goes: why should I strive for pellucid and trenchant prose when I do nothing but chronicle the filth that runs like a river from developer greed to homeowner indifference (or grasping desperation, should you wish to be more charitable)? I’m just trying to be in touch with the impossibly low standards with which we prop up our real estate bubble.
It’s an ugly, ugly town, walking from the Mediocre Mile that is lower Sixth Avenue, to the tripe lining the Bowery. And I don’t even get to the Kips Bay or the Upper East Side that often. Whereas I used to lament the dearth of places where it even seemed possible to insert a well made structure, now I am horrified at the apparently limitless opportunity for the very opposite.I didn’t think that the regular notice of design atrocities (and wrong-headed planning) would change anything, nor I was looking for some personal edification that doing so was exceptional. In part, it was an exercise in writing (and a poor one at times), and the press of time -- committed to the banal trade of labor for capital -- and a decision to refocus the residual space in my head to other things means it’s time for an indefinite hiatus. So thanks for reading, there are no promises of a return here.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
November 11, 2004
Robber Barons give back to the community -- at $20 per. So I get to talk about museums and apartments, musuems and apartments. MAD and MoMA, Meier and, well, someone else. Everyone loves to quote the numbers, dizzying in their largness. This many millions, that many square feet, or floors, or doo dads. Big sales for a Rothko and a Jasper Johns drawing this week, another record per square foot loft, a discussion that centers almost exclusively on the three quarters of a billion dollars raised for MoMA capital campaign, with absolutely no discussion on the impact on the collection (and very little recap on the dust up over the attempt to jettison some of the more 'frustrating' elements of the museum due to -- get this -- a lack of space in the new facility). Oh, and it will get more expesive for us to see.
And of course, you are going to have to pay for the privilege, since all this beauty has yet to be captured and released by Timothy Hursley or Paul Warchol (hell, they won't even print a plan -- or is that rights-managed too?). The New Yorker runs two reviews this week, by Updike and what-his-name but only one photo (none online). Over in the Times, Ouroussoff gives us some details on the Whitney with a sketch and real rough form model.The text of both reviews hold far more detail, the usual amount of insidery superiority ('I am now telling you about something you cannot see, peon'), with no real documentation. The Updike piece is accompanied by one extravagant shot of the atrium, which was provided to finally to validate what every breathless art work suck-ass has been panting about for months. Big, big, BIG!! Well, yes, looks pretty big, that lobby. Bigger than the Tate Modern? Maybe not, so let's stop talking about size as the only marker of value in design. Unless of course, its continued presence in reviews is akin to what you go through when a bad photographer shows you work, and you stuggle to find something to praise, and you end up with 'Well, the mattes look great'.I can't add anything about quality, since I'm not one of the art elite -- and really, it's great, I'm sure. Was that ever in doubt? Eventually, I'll get around to seeing a really big room next time I'm good and stoned and in midtown. What did they hang in that commanding atrium? Water Lilies. And Barnett Newman. Yep.
Over at the Whitney, they really must have put the screws to Piano. Or he simply demonstrated that he is the artsy version of David Childs (sans stealing bad student work from crits). The form model we are presented is so mundane, it's hard to determine what he actually did. And I'd be curious to see how his solution, in massing, differs from what Richard Gluckman (who is the go-to guy when you want really fussy, well-executed museum/gallery modernism that is threatening to absolutely no one -- and he is a good architect to boot) proposed, before he was summarily canned.What's interesting is the form model presents what one might think to be a minor intervention, compared to the OMA model (or the Graves abomination from the 80's), with the 'Guggenheim solution': make a blank tall tower with similar coloration and a slightly different material and stick it as far back on the site as you can. But it's actually rather drastic, since a new entry is being proposed as well. Given how compact the Whitney is, relocating the entry to the south will have a dramatic impact on internal circulation, resulting in what looks to be a narrow hotel-like atrium with wings springing from each side clad in restrained, tasteful materials. But who can tell? The review is unclear, there aren't photos, and it isn't our business anyway, as long as the color of the cladding doesn't upset the biddy preservationist crowd.But get ready: MoMA is going to clean up next week. You'll all be talking about it. Dust off your thesari for the cleverest synonym for big, and practice your best arch faux intellectualism. It must be good -- it was really expensive. (Thanks to Curbed for the linkage)
Found always via this Permanent Link.
November 7, 2004
If you stand very still, you can hear the crickets. Sometimes it seems that the urban experience in New York is not the physical manifestation of grand ideas, but the battles that preceded, and often defeated, them. Westway. Any number of Robert Moses' highway projects. Hopefully the Jets stadium. It is an oft repeated canard that the intransigence of New Yorkers, usually couched in some vaguely negative socialist language, stops us from becoming even grander.
What is overlooked is that they aren’t striving for, say, London or Paris, since great, to many of them, implies something more like Houston (which has no zoning laws whatsoever) or Tysons Corner (which has no soul whatsoever). Basically, those who gripe most about our lack of vision is usually someone telling us to look up in the sky when they are reaching in our pockets.But rarely do we sing praises to what such a difficult environment has protected us from, since, like water on a rock, eventually every part of the city succumbs. It’s not that an officious office tower usurps a museum, just that one bad idea gets done a little later than the developer hoped. There aren’t many stable models to measure the impact of development and jobs, but those that exist do point to the some correlation between expanding available space in advance of job creation. One problem with the models is that the lifespan of a building exceeds the cycles observed, so the buildings need to have some value beyond one economic cycle, as an adaptable office locale, or for other uses. But the bland requirements and scale of commercial office development is boxing us into an ugly corner (no pun intended). The fortuitous appeal of converting manufacturing facilities of the 19th century into the most expensive residential real estate in the world cannot be applied to blindly to outmoded office blocks. Or, if it is inevitable, perhaps we should exert more control when the necessity for new office space arises.If this sounds like another screed against the plans for the WTC site, it is. Last week, Crain's did one of their commercial real estate round ups (I hesitate to say yearly or quarterly, because sometime it seems weekly over there), detailing two significant trends: the clear superiority of the Times Square/42nd corridor as hottest rental market for financial services firms, and the reappearance of flat out spec office space for the first time in over a decade.I'm not going to quote numbers and get all breathless about the details, which might excite anyone who thinks rent increases somehow benefit their immediate financial prospects or get all hott for bland, column-free contract interiors with lots of high-speed wiring, since neither does anything for me.What I am going to point out, however, is that the midtown district is doing so well that firms are climbing over each other to take space that is drifting towards $100/sf in places like 1 Bryant Park (new BOA building -- let's hope it's not as red as their branches), and prompting two spec buildings (one at the NE corner of Fifth and 42nd, and, technically, the new Times Tower, the non-Times portion of which -- some 850,000sf -- is still unrented). The other two major spec projects going on are 7WTC and the so-called Freedom Tower, together which are bringing over 3 million square feet of space on-line.7WTC recently topped out, and it still lacks tenants -- any. There were noises about the SEC -- which ended up across the street in one of the WFC buildings -- a while back, and now Silverstein's people are trotting out some law firm. The key point is that, with the government programs and other incentives, the final going rate for space there may be likely less than half of what is being asked as some locations midtown. To put real numbers on it, that means a new tower in midtown commands a $200,000,000 premium over 7WTC (500,000sf over ten years).One reason Silverstein isn’t holding a fire sale is that, unlike the other spec sites, 7WTC is paid for. So props to him for holding out for a good deal in a good market. Except he might be reaching for a deal that isn’t there, nor ever will be. The Hudson Yards proposal, which isn’t showing any signs of slowing, may bring the equivalent of 20 7WTC’s over the next two decades. And there is no evidence that downtown will ever be the commanding commercial zone it once was (a fact that was becoming evident before the attacks). Kevin Rampe gets apoplectic anytime someone questions his plan for 10 million square feet of spec space, even as no one, including him, can tell us who actually wants it. We deride the French for their putative profligacy when it comes to public building, but it looks like our memorial to the WTC attacks might be five empty office towers. That is perverse and sad, and demands a reconsideration of the site development. Something easy to do, since most of it still hasn’t begun construction. But instead we press ahead as if it were all engraved in the same granite as the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower -- which itself hasn’t finished design.
Found always via this Permanent Link.
November 4, 2004
Get ready to lose every vote this week. Well, Schumer won at least. Really, all our folks won, Glick, Nadler, a bunch of Supreme Court justices that are selling divorces in Brooklyn. All well and good here in Very Blue Land. Unfortunately, even here, where our godless liberalism is supposed to hold sway, that won't protect us from the evangelicals. And you know who I mean: that firefighter on the pro-West Side Stadium commerical who is going to show up when your house is on fire, stride in, and kick your ass for not supporting the Jets, fucker!
What's with that guy, really? And I thought paid public employees weren't allowed to do advertising. Maybe those guys are retired and they're, you know, lying (which would be consistent with much of their message), which is a hell of a thing to mortgage -- trust of life-saving public servants -- for a football stadium. Oh, and the Olympics. But Paris is turning out to be the clear favorite there, in part because they are crazy (and have the good sense to be so only temporarily), and because they don't yell at people.
But you shouldn't get worried -- well, you should, but in principal, not practice -- about today's vote, since this is the one that has always been least in doubt, coming as it is from the state development authority, also known as Charles A. Gargano's Bitch, and consequently, Dan Doctoroff's. The real fun begins after that, not that you can actually intervene and make your opinion known, but will have to rely on that well-funded proxy of public interest, the Dolan family. Look, we don't like these creeps anymore than your average head case 'real' person paid by a New Jerseyite to slag them, but when the pissing contest is a roomful of billionaries all putting a hand in your pocket, you don't get to be choosy.
In the meantime, RWJ III is playing to his base by announcing that much of 'his' funding will be coming from, yep, you guessed it, your pocket again. Well, 'you' being the small segment of folks who buy season tickets. Yesterday the Jets' announced that some portion of their funding (the part not secured by tax exempt bonds) would come from seat licenses, that clever idea developed in the 90's, where you first have to buy the right to buy tickets before you actually get to buy the tickets. Maybe that's why that firefighter is so pissed.