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...]
Chipperfield is Game Changing Architect for Met Museum
An extraordinary transformation of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art could happen now that the museum has selected the London architect David Chipperfield to redesign its massive Modern art wing. It’s a dramatic new direction for the museum, which I wrote about in The Economist. The Met has worked with a single architecture firm over 40 years: Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates. That in itself is extraordinary. It built out the firm's 1970 master plan over 20 years in beefy ranges … [Read more...]
Rudolph’s Government Center Matters. Save It
Looking straight at architect Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center, in Goshen, N. Y., you may fear that its herd of concrete boxes atop concrete-brick piers are ready to stampede. It’s no longer obvious, but Rudolph designed his strangely aggressive exterior in service to a humanist idea. Buildings aren’t simply containers, those jostling boxes argue, they house civic life: executive functions, legislating, adjudicating. In his idiosyncratic way, Rudolph built a living … [Read more...]
Why Did Nouvel Whine While Paris Mourned?
In photos from opening night last week, the exterior of the Philharmonie de Paris looked truly terrible, with construction debris littering the plazas and trusswork poking through unfinished outside walls. Reviewers spoke of traipsing through an unfinished lobby across chipboard temporary floors. The orchestra prepared to play in an auditorium they had barely set foot in, designed with a radically new acoustical concept. Jean Nouvel, France’s most celebrated architect, was justifiably furious … [Read more...]
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