I am thrilled to announce a major career change. I have been appointed to a new position with the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC). As its Director of Design Strategic Initiatives, I—and my team in formation—will be helping the agency to build its already impressive capacity in environmental sustainability and resiliency. We’re engaging issues of equity—by just about any definition—in the design of facilities, consulting with agency clients and outside experts. All of … [Read more...]
Splendor in the Glass
One of the most exquisite works of recent architecture seeks to fade into its bucolic surroundings. From a ridge at the high point of an 80-acre former horse farm in New Canaan, Connecticut, a pathway protected by a breathtakingly thin roof hairpins around mature trees as it glides down a slope. The roof broadens to cover five pavilions, each one a curved-wall bubble of floor-to-ceiling glass. Grace Farms, hunkering amid forested exurban splendor, is a spare-no-expense destination for … [Read more...]
You Can Save Journalism!
Ad-blocking software: what a great idea! Ad-blocking software: what a terrible idea—if you are a media company. The handwringing about ad blocking happened largely behind closed doors until Apple announced the enhancement as part of its new mobile-platform operating system. Don't worry. This post is not to announce a Kickstarter or other hustle for cash. Why do I care? Apps, software—none of this is my usual journalistic bailiwick. I can’t argue if you say I have no business writing about … [Read more...]
Ferguson and Failing Suburbs
It is distressing to see Ferguson, Mo., making headlines again for demonstrations that turn violent. To outsiders, especially those who have not followed every detail of the injustices revealed by the shooting of unarmed Michael Brown by policeman Darren Wilson (who sought to question Brown in the theft of some cigarillos), the enduring protests seem senseless, even destructive. Certainly no community wants to fear its police, and no police force wants to work where they’re not wanted and feel … [Read more...]
Fortified Island: New Orleans Changes, Yet Remains True to Itself
Drivers in New Orleans who make a wrong turn may confront the high concrete walls that line drainage canals and top levees. They, and enormous flood gates and pumping stations, are the product of some $14 billion in flood-protection, funded largely by federal taxpayers, that has been built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina left the city stewing in fetid flood waters for weeks. The Corps is the same agency that under-engineered the levee walls that failed … [Read more...]
Architectural Record Sale: Wane or Gain of Architects’ Influence?
It’s hard to see the sale of Architectural Record magazine (and its sister publication ENR) to BNP Media as anything but a shift downmarket, since it joins a portfolio that includes Stone World and Floor Trends. It is Record's second sale in less than a year, having been already spun off from its longtime corporate parent, the McGraw-Hill Companies. Record and other publications aimed at architects are not immune from the struggle of condescendingly termed “legacy” publications that teeter in … [Read more...]
Historic Preservation: Fighting the Wrong Battles?
The Frick Collection’s formality is as astringent as a dry martini. We marvel at the works of great art hung within rooms of impersonal splendor. Yet the Frick is rather contrived, an elegant knockoff of a French country seat, by Thomas Hastings, of Carrère and Hastings, carefully re-proportioned to fit on a New York City block. Its horizontality and stiff front garden set it defiantly in contrast to the much larger buildings that surround it. Does it lose its relevance if it can’t evolve and … [Read more...]
Sprawling Atlanta Tries to Be a City
Along Atlanta’s potholed Howell Mill road, sagging sheds of metal salvagers, brake liners, and security-gate fabricators are rapidly giving way to Texas donuts: faux-loft apartment buildings wrapping parking structures. Amid the light-industrial detritus can be found a contemporary-art incubator and the White Provisions development, a huge residential/commercial loft complex that anchors a wildly popular restaurant and retail scene. It’s a real-estate wild west, as Atlanta tries on the idea of … [Read more...]
Facebook, Whitney Museum, Eli Broad, Merging Architects
I would like to think I am a writer adept enough to tie together the assorted items in the headline. I'm not. These are simply several writing projects that have stretched over months but which coincidentally appeared almost at the same time. They are collected here for your convenience. I have had a long fascination with architecture that helps organizations reach their aspirations. This would seem like a no-brainer except that architecture that deeply explores and expresses work culture … [Read more...]
Enough of Bogus “Placemaking”
Is this placemaking? The Campbell Fitness Center at Columbia University's sports complex at the northern tip of Manhattan looks strange to a lot of people. But the more you know the context--an elevated train rattles past it; industrial uses collide with with residential and institutional ones—the more you appreciate why its unconventional form is so right for its place. The building, on paper, could have been a windowless box, walling off Columbia's athletic complex from the residential … [Read more...]
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