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February 28, 2005

I can hardly contain myself. Apparently New York can only take the imposition of overscaled art work when it’s too cold out to properly appreciate it (though considering the two million plus at Central Park, a fall installation may well have broken even the elastic potential of our collective backyard). Just six days after The Gates close (and even as they are coming down), the Nomadic Museum on Pier 54 will open.

Brought to us by the BiAnimale Foundation, an environmental nonprofit based in Switzerland, it is a temporary exhibition space designed by Shigeru Ban (a member of the THINK collective, and one of the architects of the Houses at Sagaponack project), which will display a work by Gregory Colbert through June 6.

The notable, and obvious, element is the use of entirely recycled materials, including paper tubes for structure and shipping containers for side walls. Just as the past two weeks has been a veritable festival of saffron, née orange, it looks like shipping containers are ready for their close-up.

This is not a new idea, at least to the GSD cocktail party set. Holt, Hinshaw, Pfau & Jones published a concept for a house made from shipping containers back in the eighties, and LOT-EK seems to have made an entire industry out of suggesting that other people live in containers and foam tents. Wes Jones is still beating that horse, with a site devoted to the benefits of container construction, though it looks more like a manifesto than a catalog, with no constructed examples.

The recent interest in shipping containers is a useful lesson for architecture students, for it recalls an older generation who had become a little too enamored of the aesthetics of modernism that quickly became detached from both the social and ideological realities that were much of its inspiration. Now, it should be evident from my irregular writings that I have no problem with the much of the ideology (and also recognize that there are still instances of the dream being real, hence the work from firms such as MVRDV), but find the facile appropriation frustrating. So now we get our own disgusting historical moment wherein the material of the ‘masses’ becomes appropriated and celebrated, but also made sufferable with the addition of $3,000 range tops.

Don’t get me wrong: there is a palpable housing crisis in most of the world, and modular construction has great potential to address this. Jones is also a participant in Modern Modular, a collective that is selling prefab housing solutions. And there was, and is, the highly publicized inaugural Dwell Home competition, won by locals Res 4, who did a tremendous amount of research and work developing a prefab solution -- one they admitted was not necessarily as affordable as the competition set out to establish, even as they tried like hell to make it so. They are pretty pragmatic about the potential. Most of the typologies they present would be no more economical than stick-built construction, but prefab is about scale, and the scale must be cultivated. And you do that by making the nice stuff and hoping that it gets disseminated widely when manufacturing costs drop (see: IKEA).

Containers have scale, so the argument for inexpensive startup is ostensibly strong, but after that, it’s pretty much a shitty idea. The numbers are staggering (in terms of available material), with hundreds of thousands of empty containers piled up in ports such as Newark-Port Elizabeth, which see far more importing than exporting. But that makes their use only viable within a narrow radius of initial location. So it would cost as much, if not more, to ship a container to Sudan as it would back to China. Some ideas, such as Fox & Fowle’s proposal to build student housing in Gloucester, Massachusetts -- a port city -- verge on the viable. Add to that the high costs of labor in urban locations, and the numbers begin to make sense.

But anywhere else, they fall apart pretty quickly. Jones estimates it costs $20,000 -- including his fees! -- to convert a container into a house segment, but excludes fancy windows and finishes (which figure prominently in his renderings), and any site acquisition, prep, engineering or permitting, etc. Excepting that, his estimate is a rosy $62.50/sf, which is competitive with stick-built wood frame, but not a substantial improvement.

And now for the fun part, which no one likes to mention in detail: containers are only eight feet wide. There is no way around this. Add insulation and services down both sides, and you have seven feet of livable space. To improve upon this means lots of labor: cutting, custom attachment for reassembly, etc. In short, traditional construction with non-traditional materials, which means costs will spike, since most framers have never faced steel corrugated steel wall systems.

Now, you can see why it’s so popular with the architecture cognoscenti living in Manhattan shoeboxes, but seven feet is appropriate for just about no one else. Sure, students and the downtrodden will deal with it, but there is no reason to when there are cost-competitive alternatives that provide a decent footprint. There are other viable uses, but the prevailing aesthetic is nothing that would serve to uplift or edify. And if you want to play the affordable housing card, spend a semester at the Rural Studio, then get back to me if you still think containers are the end-all and be-all of adaptive reuse or recycling.

None of this really has anything to do with Ban’s design, where the scale of the containers isn’t relevant, but rather, they are used like traditional materials, albeit writ large. Stacked in running bond style and interspersed with fabric panels that run diagonally to mimic the roof slope, it is an impressive, colorful and enticing image. Since the final form may be more enclosed, and I don’t know the hours of operation, seeing it this week might be advisable, since lights are used at the end of the workday, and the interior illumination is striking, especially in late evening. If this will be a constant throughout the exhibit, perhaps waiting for a warm April evening would be advisable. But if you are a suspicious or worrisome sort (and I’m all that), go by now, while it's a definite feature.

And, whatever you do, don’t be sucker for the impending Wallpaper* fetishization of shipping containers as homes. It’s a stupid idea in most executions. Prefab is a viable and compelling alternative. It’s inevitable that the 2050 version of John Pawson will make the 2050 version of a Calvin Klein boutique out of them, but hopefully it won’t come at the expense of a generation living in thousands of government housing program homes made from containers. But who am I kidding? It’s not like the government even builds housing any more.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

EPA: Still confused by that 'Protection' part. Master Dissembler Kevin Rampe did a little lip service duty last week in front of City Council, announcing that the demolition of 130 Liberty Street would not begin until this summer at the earliest, and warned that any timeline speculation on completion would be foolhardy. I could bother to provide the myriad links detailing Rampe's checked history regarding the management of this process, but I feel lazy today, and suffice it to say, this is the kind of man you wouldn't want dating your daughter.

But everyone is mouthing positive feedback to the recent developments, which include revisions to the plan to accomodate concerns about contaminants and remediation, as well as a significant increase in budget (to the point where it will now likely cost more to remove the building than it did to build it).

There are, of course, anti-American cranks out there, so evil that they have compiled a whole list of suspect documents, many authored by lawyers, and insurance companies, and other insults to the American way, all of it an attempt prevent the marking of our tragedy with spec office space (and if it's a penny -- sorry, square foot -- less than seven million, Mr. Rampe will be sure to let you know what kind of terrorist supporter he thinks you are). They even go so far as to use inflammatory quotes:

"Twenty or thirty years from now, when those New Yorkers start falling over dead, some young government bureaucrat will get all choked up apologizing for what the EPA and others didn't do. That's what they did here."
--Asbestos Miner Les Skramstad, of Libby, Montana, whose has four family members with asbestosis [Andrew Schneider in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch 1-13-03]
So I'm not sure whether we should be glad or angry that the EPA is continuing in its stance of not saying exactly what it is they do, or intend to do, about any of this, but I'm sure if you asked them, they'd be happy to tell you there is no threat to your health, past or present. From the safety of their offices in DC.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 26, 2005

The poignancy might have been greater if we still had mimeograph machines. Seen today in the Port Authority: a wire stand that exhorted passengers to peruse a bulletin from the PANY/NJ. It was about as tidy as one can expect of a wire stand with sheets of paper placed in the pathway of one of the busiest entrances in the city, a scattering of leaflets trapped beneath the stand itself and a few visible, discarded or fallen, within a short radius.

The bulletin itself was a single sheet, memo format, run off a dying toner cartridge, and was addressed to all passengers, and serving to remind each of them that today was the 12th anniversary of the first WTC bombing, and to request that they join in a moment of silence to observe the passing. Staring at it somewhat aghast at the perverse admixture of kit memorializing and insensitive bureaucracy, I did not read it closely, but it does seem they neglected which moment, specifically, in which to observe the silence. Perhaps, then, we are all encouraged to take an individual moment and reflect. So, unless you've been reading this aloud, consider your quota filled.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 22, 2005

Westside development made more interesting with malice! Yet who would have thought the old yards to have had so much potential in them? Turns out that the Dolans will spend $600MM to protect a $12MM a year subsidy -- oh, and a monopoly on large event spaces in the city. And even better, it turns out that Adam Victor, the owner of TransGas, a company desperate to bring competition to the city's energy market in the form of a behemoth power plant in Brooklyn that is as certain to bring asthma to the lives of small, non-traditionally complected children as his goofy vents are unlikely to bring a smile to their faces (which could be the posthumous work of PJ -- and we aren't even going to touch the irony that his last masterstroke was an edifice of smokestacks cheek by jowl with a large, traditionally Jewish neighborhood), is willing to pony up $700MM, just because he's pissed.

The city's response to this offer is as dismissive as the Dolans', even though all the conditions Victor is requesting (an everlasting Gobstopper -- er, MetroCard, the first born of Peter Kalikow and a date with the woman who is the computerized voice on the IRT) don't require city or federal approval. Of course, like the Dolans', or RWJ III, he's going to suck the city dry of revenue one way or another, but still, $700MM is a lot of fuck-you money.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Downtown tragedy made fresher with snark! I received this email today from the tone-deaf folks at Project Rebirth. It looks like they are getting a little too envious of the popularity of Denton's Kids:

When the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation called for entries in their open Memorial design competition, they received over 5000 submissions, many of them from amateur -- but earnest -- hopefuls. We combed through all the entries to find the most unusual, unique, and outlandish ideas, choosing our top ten favorites based on originality and heart, regardless of practical concerns. You can see them here, and vote for your favorites!
Granted, it's not as well written as Gawker, since someone probably had the good sense to try and rein it in a bit, but the project they included in the email was from a one Mark Walhberg, whom they do not take pains to qualify as a former teen idol (if it was indeed him). If it was from Gawker, I'm sure a prosthetic penis joke would have been worked in there somewhere. See the whole presentation here.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Gate-d. I've been doing some cursory reading of Gates commentary and heard from a number of friends. Many people and reviews have focused on the visual transformation: the vistas that are changed by the presence of a framing device, and other formal effects. One thing I have noted from the photographs, which isn’t so apparent when there, is the effect of framing people -- and by framing I mean in the narrowest sense. Some longer photos make the people look almost trapped, given the propensity to walk through and not around The Gates. This is the result of a couple of circumstances: more areas are off-limits during this season, and the ground has been damp much of the past week and thus people are not encouraged to break away and find disparate points from which that can observe The Gates from within the park, but outside the boundary of any path.

This is as much an effect of how we understand public space and the intent of English garden planning as the structure of the artwork. Vistas were carefully constructed, and the placement of paths was a subtle way to control the experience of the view. One person had commented to me as they were being raised that it was interesting to see the paths marked in a much more evident way. Now, they not only mark the walks, they become much more restrictive framing devices.

It also reveals the impact of the current preservation strategies. Most of the larger areas that Olmstead created were intended as commons, places for people to congregate under the same ideal of shared space as found in English towns. Now, most of the common spaces in the park are bordered by fencing, and several have been reserved for sporting events. So there is little relief to the path movement, and this is one of the instances where the failure of such policies is starkly in evidence (the typical argument is that the wear and tear of foot travel makes it impossible to remove the fencing).

One friend commented to me that The Gates also make travel more directional, with most crowds moving in a single direction. This also has somewhat to do with framing. On narrower paths, The Gates' structure constricts the walkway by more than ten percent. Such small changes have a magnified impact; add to it perhaps a sense that most art consumption experiences tend to be directional, and many people probably fall into the convention of following the person in front of them as part of how one experiences art.

Both these conditions are unfortunate and not likely an intentional result. The fascination of Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s work is the defamiliarization one experiences from the intervention, and constricting oneself to such a determined path reduces this experience (and limits one’s understanding). So wear some boots and climb some fences (or least some rocks).

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 21, 2005

The rising...costs. The Times does a little op-ed for the sticks, noting that Frederic Schwartz is having a little trouble with the -- um, sorry, this is obvious -- spiraling costs for his proposed memorial for Westchester County.

His initial claim that the project could be built for $200,000 turned out to be off by a factor of four, and then some. The current projection is for $900,000. He can now take a seat at the crowded table of architects who become notorious for misleading and/or bullying the public over costs (the best story of which I know is that of I. M. Pei, who was nicknamed "You Will Pay" by the Dallas press when the city's symphony hall was under construction -- a story I have never been able to verify, at least courtesy of Google, so it may be apocrypha).

I don't really have an opinion on the value aspect (the numbers aren't that large, after all), I only question the potential ethics of the circumstance, since the act of creating a memorial, for artists and architects, is often not one of selfless contribution, but a key step in their own memorializing. It would be very irresponsible to charge Schwartz with any particular misrepresentation, but there is an ethical component of design that mandates balancing concept and cost. One should suggest only what is plausible within the expected parameters (though I don't believe the Westchester competition had a preordained budget), or have a clear enough understanding of what one's recommendations will require, and on this count there a failure that should be acknowledged. Though it won't benefit Schwartz (he's working for free) as often is the case with cost overruns, it still sullies a process that is imaginably raw for supporters of the project -- though I should note I am not one of them. I don't support the welter of monumetalizing that is underway in the region. The closest thing to a reasonable suggestion I know of is Tadao Ando's, and nothing moving past the proposal stage has come close to the intent of a concept such as this.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Practice, practice, practice. On February 18, you can -- oops, so much for service journalism. Anyway, the Van Alen Institute just opened the exhibition showcasing the finalists of their Civic Exchange competition -- the program of which was to develop an information kiosk for Lower Manhattan -- and the winner, Antenna. Single images of the finalists are available here. The on-line presentation is a bit thin (and boy, MESH needs to lay off the watercolor filter in Photoshop). Details in the write-up in this week's Architect's Newspaper (NB: print version only) include this about the winning entry: the info screen is organized around a tabletop map metaphor, segregating uses into distinct layers. The information a given user researches is simultaneously projected on a larger LED screen which, one expects, depicts general information when not in use. For emergencies, the LED changes to orange, and the map will display essential information. It is also partially solar powered (for general duty and emergencies). Hopefully the skewed feet of the base relate to major axes of distant landmarks. Other elements are a little disappointing -- the inclusion of a canopy seems to be an afterthought. Others have complained about the interface design of other projects (particularly that of the MTA vending machine), though I don't share those opinions. The challenge now, though, is not to quibble over design details, but to acquire funding. The competition was privately funded, and no agency has thrown in support. So if you see Kevin Rampe shoveling money at the West Street tunnel or for the 130 Liberty Street deconstruction, ask him for some spare change.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Shhh, don't tell him about Moss and what too much bilious, undulating transparency gets you. These days, you just aren't a playa unless you are renovating. Can anyone name a museum in this town that isn't undergoing, or just completing, an expansion of some kind? Last week, the Museum of the Moving Image got on the bandwagon, presenting initial sketches of their renovation courtesy of Leeser Architects (don't go to Leeser's site with high expectations -- it's under a lot of construction, apparently).

And what did I say about about cool, sexy late modernism? Cuz it's more of the same here -- not that there's anything wrong with that. Clearly, in the burgeoning East Coast/West Coast scene, Cali-style is on the outs. And don't forget they're already making apologies for the Gehry theater ("but it's hard putting two theaters on top of each other! And we haven't even come up with a new metal cladding system that is untested and will require expensive maintenance for decades, yet!"). Can't find the link for that one, but if anyone still has it, I'd welcome the hookup (my recollection is that it was from mid-January, and in the Times).

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 20, 2005

Sweet Childs O' Mine. Feel the burn, Dave-O! We're liking this Ouroussoff fella more every day. First he tells Riley that he's a lazy suckup, and now he gives us the bullet points on the Dean of American Mediocrity, David Childs. Are you ready for your way-too-close-up, Mr. Childs?

This excerpt clearly skirts the edge of 'fair use,' but I would be remiss in not bringing you the rich panoply of digs my namesake fires up. It's like a refreshing slap in the face when making a bad pass at a bar. But I'm weird like that. Enjoy:

The paradox is that Mr. Childs's change of heart coincides with the most politically fraught commission of his career, the Freedom Tower at ground zero, which despite revisions is looking more and more second-rate.

By comparison, Mr. Childs's work in the late 1980's and 90's seemed to testify to the creative void in American corporate architecture during the so-called Postmodern era.

As it turned out, Mr. Childs was never able to recapture the aura that Skidmore had in the 1950's and 60's, when it was a major force in shaping the direction of American architecture.

Ultimately, though, such setbacks have as much to do with the firm's values as with Mr. Childs's talent.

More typical of Mr. Childs's recent output, however, is the watered-down ambitions of the recently completed Time Warner Center.

Mr. Childs reverts to the kind of developer-driven formulas that made his older buildings so soulless.

It is at ground zero that Mr. Childs will clearly leave his most lasting impact on the city, and it is there that the firm's shortcomings seem most evident... Ultimately, what is now a "B" design - to use Mr. Childs's language - could become a "C" building.
Props to the new kid on the block, and keep 'em coming.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 17, 2005

New York: America's Best Mortage Interest Deduction Opportunity. Funny, I thought the new slogan Bloomberg was pushing was a craven acknowledgement of the impossibility of an average wage earner being able to purchase real estate.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 11, 2005

Gates Day unhhh. So getting up at 6:00 AM on four hours sleep for a week both attenuates one's posting schedule and increases one's respect for anyone with both a labor-intensive job and a social-intensive calendar. Just don't say I don't suffer for art.

The remainder of the week doesn't produce any celebrity sightings, just lots of Germans. We manage to get done ahead of schedule, as did just about everyone else. The last snag was poor documentation: only at the very end did inventory catch up with installation enough to determine that several locations were marked incorrectly, leading to a shortage of particular sizes that apparently were manufactured last night. In our end of the park, Gate raising pretty much wrapped up yesterday in the early afternoon, though four pesky locations weren't finished until this morning. Christo and Jeanne-Claude showed up at what was claimed to the be the last raising, and signed our dorky uniforms (this appellation was provided by a team-mate who has worked on the last seven projects, and apparently is a consistent feature of their projects).

Our work done, we got to sightsee and play on the swings (though I was admonished later with the fact that swinging without children is a ticketable offense -- is this true, and is Bloomberg responsible for this too?). I have been asked a number of times the best place to be. Having walking about 70% of the park in its not-quite-finished state, I have basically two ways to respond:

1. Pick your favorite place in the park and go there. Regardless of the number of Gates, that which you know well will result in a better understanding of the transformation. The project was mounted in February because the trees are bare, and even in the areas with the most ground cover, you can still see multitudes.

2. Walk the whole damn thing. They worked on this 26 years. A couple hundred people put in tens of thousands of hours. It's a complete work that is best experienced in its entirety. Give yourself a couple of hours, and explore. That said, there is little point in going to several points that might seem obvious: the Reservoir and the Belvedere Castle do not provide much of a vista.

The patterns of the pathways drive the locations, and thus Olmstead's plan is a major contributor to the process. More Gates are located in the southern end of the park, but in the open areas of the north (the North Meadow and the Harlem Meer) provide more unobstructed views, and in some instances have much longer stretches of Gates. The north also tends to be far less crowded.

It's hard to get a sense of the interest the project is generating because my entire week has been filled with orange (sorry, saffron) vinyl and wet, difficult bolts. The preponderance of press and the internal documentary team created a strange sense of artifice to everything we did, as 70 crews were doing the same thing over and over, using by and large the same process. How many times you can shoot a Gate? Of course, had I waited that long, I too might ask someone to take a lot of pictures, just to prove that it happened. And each member of that team was carefully documenting it over and over. Thankfully, this hyper-awareness of participating in something that was laden with the air of history and significance did not prevent it from simply being fun. Snippets of interesting moments will certainly be uncovered, but at my last encounter with a film crew this week, the most accurate response I had was my strained attempt at ironic humor when my team was asked why we did it, and no one leapt at the chance to respond: "We didn't practice our sound bites". Chirsto said just about every time he spoke that there was no answer to the questions of why or what. And knowing, or assuming, an answer to that isn't a prerequisite of attending. It's a hell of a thing, no matter what. Go take a look (after, roughly, 9:30 AM tomorrow -- Feb 12).

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 8, 2005

Gates Day One. The 'ballroom' at the Boat House is not as grand as I would have assumed. It certainly doesn't hold all 600 of us. There isn't enough coffee, but there is plenty of cocoa and pumpkin loaf. And for once, my last name does not land me in the most egregious line. I celebrate this by snubbing former Texas Governor Ann Richards. It goes like this: a polite, if reserved woman responds to a query from a man next to me about her origins (Austin), and that continues into a discussion with another Texan. I assume the reserve is due to perhaps worry that such an admission will produce a sneer (which it has, in my head). Later, I hear two men talking, one very excited that "Ann Richards is here." Immediately I realize I have just been the shitty, East Coast liberal-elite jerk to my mother's political idol.

You can't top that, especially since most of the rest of the morning is spent standing around. My natural leadership skills, clearly demonstrated in line with Governor Richards, must have made quite an impression, as I have been awarded a crew leader position. This means I get to keep time records and pass out meal tickets.

After taking a very long ride around the park loop, we get to our drop point, and most of our gear is gone. We suspect greedy crews overreached and made off with our nifty cart. After some negotiations and a little misappropriation of our own, we finally mount our first gate at around 11:30 AM (four hours after arriving). This is not a pace that gives anyone confidence, but once we sort out the supply chain, the rest of the day is pretty uneventful -- if building the largest art project in the history of this town can be uneventful in any way. Locals do to their best to be blasé, and I feel like I'm on a film crew. Having been the guy who has charged past innumberable hapless PA's, I try to be humble. It's a beautiful day, with most of us in shirtsleeves by early afternoon. Though it doesn't look like our fortune will extend through the weekend, it does call to mind my father's favorite card playing wisdom "Every little bit hurts."

Found always via this Permanent Link.

We told you someone had to watch Rampe. Kevin Rampe, of whom no one believes his continued postulations that it is made of sugarplums and candy canes, again finds himself on the short end of the stick. Turns out that even the EPA, a toothless patsy for the Bush administration (these are the folks that said repeatedly that the area around the WTC site was safe from day one, and then, after everything was carted away in open air containers, said "Whoops! Maybe not," and managed to drive away that fire-breathing Marxist, Christine Todd Whitman), thinks his plan is all wet.

True to EPA form, they aren't actually doing anything. Their response is more or less an SNL-level parody of Dubya going, "It's Bad! It's Bad!" (or was that Dana Carvey doing 41?) and with some follow-on muttering about the "hard work" required to amend the proposed demolition plan. No one quite understands how any of this will make downtown safer, so maybe we should just take the Rampe approach: believe, yes believe! That it really is clean. And that we really need 7 million square feet of spec office space once we have dispersed all the toxins throughout downtown (how's that renting going at 7 WTC Larry? Looks just peachy from midtown, where people are running down nuns to get space at $75/sf).

Found always via this Permanent Link.

February 7, 2005

Gates Day Zero. By the time this posts, I'll be loose somewhere in Central Park, where, if the suspicions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude are correct, I'll be mobbed by journalists from Chad and the Maldives, wanting to know the terribly interesting story of how I came to be at the center of the most... something -- biggest, important, expensive -- art work in the world. Hopefully, my humble reply -- that I submitted my name to a website and then answered two emails (which, if I remember correctly, asked me if I could lift a gallon of milk and use an box wrench) will suffice for the slice-of-life story they seek. But I'm holding out for the Talk of the Town piece, for which I will claim to be an art nomad who wanders the world, most recently having camped for a year in a tent near Marfa. So, you know, Ben, call me.

The last training session took place this past Saturday in a small warehouse in Maspeth, cheek by jowl with the manufacturing plant of every suspicious pre-baked morning pastry you've never purchased at the bodega (apparently they don't come with the store fixtures and are actually replaced occassionally). Jeanne-Claude, splendid in Gates' coloured-hair (on edit: turns out that her real hair color, an error I repeated to just about everyone I know), spent some time trying to convince us that her son is as important as her husband (hey, you put your mom in front of a hundred people, what is she going to talk about? You, of course). Christo spoke for five minutes and dispelled most of the formal reservations I had about the project. This was further aided by the impact of seeing actual pieces, and one fully assembled Gate.

The logistics, the scale, the execution -- all of it is an impressive feat. A Gate can be assembled in about fifteen minutes, which is good, since there's a bunch. And they will be spaced closer than they are tall, which is inconsistent with most of the artwork Christo has created, in which the perspective has deeper than what will result this week. The couple we put up in the yard behind the shed building were not as close together as they will be in the actual work, and there were only six, but even this sliver was quite a sight.

And not that I was expecting some turgid art school studio atmosphere, but I must admit that the palpable sense of joy was refreshing. No one was fussy about handling the materials (though most everyone treated them like they were made of crystal, anyway), and the amount of optimism and trust Christo and Jeanne Claude are investing in the work crews is both practical and nice to experience in a town where most people don't trust you can make their coffee right.

We got to put one up, see one unfurled, filled out a W-4, were told to be nice to dogs, and that was about it. Mostly a New York crowd, and one understandbly weighted towards those interested in art, it wasn't the most chummy of environments. Without the usual markers one employs at parties or openings, we weren't able to self-select into groups of cool kids and losers. Everyone is biding their time, since work crew assignments have yet to be made. But the clutch of Germans who appeared to have traveled here to work the entire project (assembly, monitoring and breakdown) were having a grand old time. I'm assuming all the "Meatballs"-esque small group interaction conventions will develop over the course of the week. It's not clear if blogging it pre-qualifies me as a loser or a cool kid.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Time to see if R.W. Johnson has the natural benefit his prodigious name implies (well, it worked for Don and LBJ). They’ve got balls. Sticking it to Robert Wood Johnson. A fight to the death between the big swinging dicks of New York. Making Gargano their bitch. Pick your favorite homoerotic symbolism and lube yourself up with it (K-Y would be an appropriate aid), ‘cause we finally have ourselves a fight. We all know the ladies in skimpy outfits are simply distraction and sublimation: the main event will be a bunch of unattractive, ultra-rich New Yorkers getting good and sweaty in the quest to control a hole in the ground, the end result of which will be one massive screw job to Joe Q. Public. But in the latest chapter of the real estate soap opera (As the West Side Turns? Mike's Hope? Subsidies of our Lives?) on the West Side, it looks like we might at least get the benefit of a reach-around.

Late last week, the Dolans, in the form of their minor media fiefdom, Cablevision, offered six times what Robert Wood Johnson is willing to pony up (and a third of what the MTA is asking) for the rights to build over the Hudson Yards site (Johnson apparently wants to build a stadium or something). It’s rumored (in my head at least) that the offer sheet had a little sketch of a Rockette planting her heel in Bloomie’s bloomies. The city was blindsided by this development, perhaps because the Dolans offered to focus on housing, which, even as it is a craven ploy to exploit the superheated Manhattan real estate market, still would provide the nominal benefit of increasing housing stock, which means that somewhere down the line, even though at considerable personal cost, a human being would benefit from the actions of a Dolan, which is probably the most disturbing and unreal aspect of the absurd theater that has developed since the MTA finally showed a little spine when presenting their internal assessment.

The mayor sputtered a response, but given the thematic organization of this post, the best imagery we can conjure would be Bloomberg taking a bat to some unfortunate, random Dolan’s car, screaming, "This is what you get when you fuck a stranger in the ass!"

Even the most cynical critic of the Dolans' ineptitude in managing their various monopolies has to admire the timing of this move. It will take several weeks to sort out how binding their offer is; it will forestall the arbitration the city was about to push for; and it will continue to cast doubt on the city’s Olympic bid (already being spoken of in some quarters as hopeless, particularly since the recent speculation that London was more or less being written off). With the decision only four months off, the Dolans need only keep up their charade for another two months, and after that can count on any number of public figures who are in a position to trade their influence for pet projects to make noises about waiting another month or two -- after all, why act in haste, when a specific answer is only a few weeks hence? They can then let due diligence take its course: when the city realizes the Dolans haven’t done a thing in this city without a handout, the future of this proposal will look understandably dim. Or they can simply withdraw the offer, chortling, and go back to basking in their massive tax deferral subsidy.

But, in the meantime, we can look forward to a good twelve rounds of old-school, hard-knocks New York one-upmanship. If it lasts long enough, people might even be fooled into thinking the ensconced power brokers in this town actually pay for the privilege, and that a real estate development will move forward with an actual risk component. Hopefully the MTA will be able to cash out before they all come to their senses, and reach into our pockets for the funding.

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There's only room for one Moss in this town. No one else seemed to have picked this up (trans: an eight-second Google search turned up nothing), but last week, the Architect’s Newspaper reported that Eric Owen Moss had been dismissed as designer of the Queens Museum expansion. Moss was pretty vituperative in his response, saying, in part, that Tom Finkelpearl, the executive director of the QMA, was a hypocrite. When a high profile architect is dismissed, the tendency to close ranks (particularly in professional journals) is strong, and this is the case in the write-up, though perhaps this is because of the rather tepid statement from Finkelpearl that "things weren't working out." Dude, just tell him you're dating someone else.

The lack of detail makes it difficult to conclude if it was a high-handed rising star being too difficult, or a bitter leader from the poor relations of the museum scene in New York trying to rule with an iron fist. As glib as that might be, it would be instructive to find out exactly why everything soured, since client relations are the real grease upon which any successful design turns. Big-name designers use intimidation and reputation, and those on the rise strive to be conciliatory, albeit tactically. But knowing how to do both with grace makes all the difference, and no one ever teaches that.

Concerns that this might sully the introduction of the city’s Design Excellence program (of which this was the first major project) are likely overstated. After all, the prequalified firms in the program include Arquitectonica, a firm that hasn’t had an original idea since Miami Vice went off the air (and even then, they were questionable ideas), a creative bankruptcy that has saddled the city with the Times Square Westin and Avalon Chrystie Place.

The QMA is cagey about the future of the approved Moss concept. Well, not really -- Finkelpearl thinks keeping the schematic plan of an atrium would be respecting Moss’s contribution. If one was prone to unfounded speculation, and I’m very much about that, I’d say the unveiling of MoMA, as well as the plans being floated for both MAD and the Whitney, make the lil’ QMA a bit jealous of all that hard-edged Late Modernism. And even though Moss presented a veritable zoo of undulating glazing, it would never produce the frisson of Tanaguchi’s braggadocio in demanding even more money so that he could make the architecture disappear (too bad he couldn’t make the drywall contractor disappear, but that’s a story for another day).

I’m perhaps a little bit of a sucker for that too, so I don’t feel so bad they sent Moss packing. Let’s hope that Gluckman Mayner, the town bike for the Whitney board, gets a crack at this.

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February 6, 2005

Because we saw our shadow. Because reviving one's blog is the new black. Because someone has to remind everyone that Kevin Rampe is a mendacious control freak, we are back. Sort of. Whatever that means.

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