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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 Read more
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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 Read more
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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: Read more
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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 Read more
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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 Read more
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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 Read more
James S. Russell 