sottsass

Beautiful.

lost city

[Staff House, North Brother Island. image: Christopher Payne]

[Tuberculosis Hospital, North Brother Island. image: Christopher Payne]

Via Architect's Newspaper: Christopher Payne's photos of the abandoned buildings of NYC's North Brother Island. Very cool.

Also check out Payne's website for lots more photos of waterfront scenes, asylums, power substations, and other fine industrial detritus.

hudson yards: a critique

From Metropolis: Stephen Zacks offers a critique of the recent bid contest for the development rights to the West Side rail yards in Manhattan. Without going into too much detail: in the wake of several failed attempts to develop this mega-site with public funding (Olympic stadium, Jets stadium, Javits Center expansion, etc. etc.), the MTA, owner of the site, solicited bids from developer-bank teams for the air rights to the railroad yards. Teams included, among others, architects Steven Holl, a KPF-Stern partnership, and a super-st.architecture lineup of Di-Sco-Fro/SANAA/SOM/Field Operations/Thomas Phifer/SHoP/Gary Handel. In the end, a Helmut Jahn / Peter Walker scheme for developers Tishman Speyer / Morgan Stanley took the cake. Needless to say, the winner's a real doozy.

[image: Tishman Speyer's scheme for Hudson Yards, from Metropolis]

I had some reservations with Zacks' piece on Dubai a few months back, and his positioning with regard to the role of corporate capitalism in architectural patronage is still a tad too accommodating for my tastes (for example: "I don’t have that much of a problem with corporations per se"). But I can agree to disagree: this is a fine piece, full of bite and wit, and it deserves a close read.

link: "Follow the Money" by Stephen Zacks, in Metropolis

"a nation worth defending"

Came across this speech that critic Jim Kunstler gave back in 2004:



In true form, he's a bit all over the place, but I must confess a certain affinity for Kunstler's ranting and raving. At times. There's something interesting about his simultaneous progressive posturing (sustainable living in the face of "peak oil") and his reactionary leanings (an apparent partiality for New Urbanist planning strategies). Plus, he's deniably an entertaining and captivating speaker. I could do with a little less of the apocalyptic doomsday scenarios, though. I think a small dose of utopian optimism is in order—this might add a bit more bite to his bark, if you know what I mean.

foot in mouth

[image: Inhabitat]

Just when I go ahead and put myself out on the line for Frank Gehry with an adamant defense of not only his ugly Serpentine Pavilion but also his entire career, he goes ahead and does this.

And to top it off, it took me half the day to realize that it's all a big April Fools gag. Nicely done, Inhabitat...

nouvel nabs the pritzker

Looks like it goes to Nouvel this year. Yawn.

Update: Looks like the Times was, as they say, in on the fix... they've already linked to a profile on Nouvel by Arthur Lubow, which will appear in next week's Magazine. Double yawn.

home delivery @ moma

Just got word that MoMA has launched their website for this summer's exhibition on prefabrication titled Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Looks like it will be an online journal recording the progress of the five mega-prototypes that will be constructed in the empty lot next to the museum in time for the exhibition opening. As reported by RoPog in the Times back in January, MoMA has commissioned these projects to accompany the exhibition upstairs as a way to showcase contemporary approaches to prefab. It's Barry Bergdoll's debut as his new position as chief curator of architecture & design... so expectations are high.

List of the outdoor prototypes:

• "Cellophane House" by prefab vets Kieran Timberlake
• BURST*008 by Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston, the duo formerly known as System Architects
• System3 by Austrians Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf
• Housing for New Orleans by MIT's Lawrence Sass
• Micro-Compact Home by Richard Horden of Horden Cherry Lee in London

There's also word that the museum has commissioned a few smaller-scale prototypes to be located within the main exhibition inside the museum...

a welcome mess

[Gehry's Serpentine Pavilion 2008. Image: Serpentine Gallery]

Via Archinect... The Serpentine Gallery has released images of its newest pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry and scheduled to be installed in Kensington Gardens this summer. A jumble of wood and glass, the pavilion is most striking for its departure from the Gehry aesthetic that has been popularized and globalized over the last fifteen years or so. There's no wavy, shiny metal panels here, folks. No fish scales, no ship sails, not a hint of Bilbao, not even a dash of Disney. Indeed, the only resemblance to concurrent work coming out of Gehry's office that I can recognize is the haphazard (and trademark) method by which the presentation model seems to be thrown together.

Upon inspecting the handful of model photographs, I can deduce the following: The pavilion consists of an armature of four oversized posts—echoes of Gehry's early postmodern scalar awkwardness—supporting a trellis of what looks to be oversized railroad ties. This entire assemblage floats precariously over what is described in the Serpentine's accompanying text as an amphitheater space, surrounded by some sort of criss-crossed glass fence.

The whole thing is a mess, really. There's just no two ways about it. But it's a welcome mess, and I daresay I am not the only one who appreciates something new and different from Frank Gehry, something other than the standard panelized, gestural blobs that are multiplying across the globe.

Judging by initial reactions across the blogosphere, there seems to be a general consensus that the Gehry Serpentine blows. The Archinect discussion is particularly entertaining, as well as this morning's posting on Curbed this morning titled "Gehry Finally Loses It." All respect to my comrades out there, but this Progressive Reactionary disagrees. I would venture so far as to say that this project has the potential to be Gehry's finest work in almost two decades.

[Gehry House in Santa Monica. Image: progressive reactionary]

Why? Because it represents a return to the excitement, verve, and ad-hoc-ness of Gehry's earliest projects. The Serpentine model immediately brings to mind Gehry's own self-designed house in Santa Monica, which is, in my book, a masterpiece that validates his entire career. The jumble of everyday materials might look like a mess, but it's a mess with a lot of thought and consideration behind it. It's a mastery not only of such traditional architectural notions as composition, structure, transparency, and scale, but also of how to subvert and creatively reposition these notions. It's playful. Maybe Uncle Frank, in his 79th year and jaded with the expectations of all his conventional clients for his brand of iconography, feels like he wants to stir things up a bit have some fun?

Two footnotes to this commentary: First, many will say that the Serpentine represents a return not only to Gehry's roots, but also to the "Deconstructivist" oeuvre in which he solidified his st.architect status. Bull. I always found the connections between 1980s avant-garde architecture and Decon theory to be tenuous at best, especially in Gehry's case. Say what you will, but the man has always worked more in the mode of a conceptual artist than that of an architect-theorist.

Second, some might say that this project represents a retreat from Gehry's digital-centric practice of recent years. But I would argue that the "digital" was never central to Gehry's modus operandi. Digital fabrication for Gehry was, and continues to be, simply a means to an end—a technique certainly necessary in order to realize his extravagant forms, but completely irrelevant to the production of those forms. In other words, digital fabrication serves a post-design role in the Gehry processl; it comes into play after the fact. (Although, one could argue that the IAC project in New York is an exception—but that's a discussion for another time.) To me, it was always a matter of the right guy being in the right place at the right time (with the right clients and the right projects and the right employees and the right software). So the fact that the Serpentine design seems to have no connection to any kind of digital process really has little bearing on how it should be judged in the context of Gehry's career.

* * *

On another note: I just read recently that Barack Obama, when asked if he had to choose a different career, responded that he always wanted to be an architect. Yet another reason to bring this circus to an end...

good news for brooklyn

If there's any silver lining to the credit crunch and the ensuing tumult in the markets, I suppose this would qualify.
According to today's Times, the slowing economy threatens to stall the infamous Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. As far as I'm concerned, as upsetting as this must be for the Ratner-Gehry contingent behind the mega-project, this is fantastic news. As an architect partial to the Mega as a means of enacting major urban and, potentially, social changes (that ever-elusive Progress), I must admit some measure of excitement about such the opportunities afforded by such a large project. And as a realist, I can't deny that something must, will -- and should! -- happen on this site, at this bustling yet oddly vacant junction of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. The real-estate is just too valuable to let it sit unused, and the City and the Borough desperately need the housing (if not the sports arena...). But as a resident of a neighborhood directly adjacent to the Atlantic Yards site, I can't help but rejoice at this particular side-effect of the market's downward spiral. Yes, something will happen at Atlantic Yards. But it doesn't have to be that. If nothing else, it looks as if the credit crunch has bought us all a little more time.

link: "Slow Economy Likely to Stall Atlantic Yards" by Charles V. Bagli, in the New York Times


Update: Nicolai voices his thoughts on the matter. It's difficult to understand exactly what point he is trying to get across.

earth's future, deep in the arctic.

[Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Image credit: NY Times/AP -John McConnico]

A harbinger of a darkly dystopian yet also—somehow—an impossibly beautiful utopian future: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Norwegian Arctic. Can't wait to see more images of the project.

link: "Buried Seed Vault Opens in Arctic" by Andrew C. Revkin, in the New York Times

save robin hood gardens.

A different—but no less urgent—political campaign across the pond catches my eye.

link: "Building Design Launches Campaign to Save Robin Hood Gardens"

Update: Check out this photoset on Flickr with some heroic images for your enjoyment.