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...]
The Struggle for Architecture’s Soul
In 2014, Frank Gehry’s upraised middle finger went round the world. So did Zaha Hadid’s apparent dismissal of horrific construction working conditions in Qatar, where her design for a World Cup stadium will be built. Prominent architects have become whipping boys and girls in anger about concentrated global wealth. Architects are drawn into the battles because they are seen as serving wealth that’s sometimes ill-gotten, while ignoring those who need to be housed, educated, and … [Read more...]
Five Cheap Oil Myths
Clap your hands for cheap gas. Everyone else is. Allow me to prick the happy oil-price balloon. Prices have declined rather quickly from well over $4 a gallon last summer to—supposedly—$2 somewhere. (I am never where super cheap gas is.) But don’t cheer too hard. The “good” news is hype. Myth 1: Lower oil prices boost the economy Dropping oil prices are described as a “windfall” and a “stimulus package” for American consumers in stories like this one. This is exactly the language that oil and … [Read more...]
Sometimes You Don’t Know Where a Story Will Take You
Occasionally I embark on a project that sends me straight down the rabbit hole. That turned out to be the case with my story just-published in the New York Times, “On Elite Campuses, An Arts Race.” For a “trend” piece, this one is fairly short (not all readers agree…) , but I ended up interviewing people in seven states ranging across most of the country. And though most of the projects I had in mind initially made it into the story, I found out just how big the trend is—I didn’t understand the … [Read more...]
Kaci Hickox’s Heroism v. 1 World Trade’s Architecture of Fear
I admire the guts of Kaci Hickox, the Maine nurse who put herself at risk to help stop the Ebola scourge in Africa. Her idealism and that of others who do this work is so inspiring at a time when we seem to be surrounded by cynicism and lack of leadership. On her return to the US, she resisted a quarantine and stood up to fear-mongering media and politicians who panic rather than lead. I don’t hear her saying it, but clearly this is a crusade against bogus science: Creationism, climate-change … [Read more...]
Model Sugar Hill Project: How Not to Fund “Affordable” Housing
If you asked a reasonably well-informed New Yorker what the chief problem of housing for low income people is, they would probably answer “the poor door.” In projects that mix market-rate apartments with so-called affordable ones, some segregate units serving lower incomes and give them a separate entrance. That entrance no doubt lacks the doorman and high-end finishes of the market-rate lobby, and affluent tenants won't have their sense of entitlement ruffled by people of other income classes, … [Read more...]
In 3rd Phase, High Line Park Confronts Crowds, High Buildings
The High Line Park transformed Manhattan's Meatpacking district in its first two phases. Now as its last stretch wraps the massive Hudson Yards megadevelopment, the city around the High Line is transforming the park. Compare the image above to the current state below: The High Line was the first American park to go viral. The romance of a wild garden perched big above the streets and slicing through city blocks caught the world's imagination, and it can seem that the world is trudging … [Read more...]
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