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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