Starchitects

[ablarc]

STARCHITECTS

There’s always a heavyweight champ, and there’s always the Boss Architect. Who is it this year?

Here’s a selection of ten leading candidates for 2007; some are great and some are terrible. You get to decide who is which. Vote for one (not three):

Frank Gehry, 1989
Santiago Calatrava, ----
Norman Foster, 1999
Renzo Piano, 1998
Richard Rogers, ----
Richard Meier, 1984
Herzog & DeMeuron 2001
Zaha Hadid 2004
Thom Mayne, 2005
Rem Koolhaas, 2000

Dates indicate when each won the Pritzker Prize. Two are still waiting in the wings.

[Citytect]

Assuming this isn't suppose to be a "who's your favorite" poll, I chose Foster. Busy man.

[Jake]

Calatrava seems to be flying right now, I'm going with him.

[sfenn1117]

I chose Gehry, not my favorite from the list, but he's definitely making the most headlines in New York lately, and will continue to do so in 07.

[Luca]

I chose Santi 'cause he's the only one on the list I can stand

[Punzie]

Wouldn't it be nice if the Vbulletin software allowed for more than one question with the same list of options! In this case it would be our Starchitect choice and our actual favorite.:cool:

I think that the 2007 Boss Starchitect is Frank Gehry in NYC and Santiago Calatrava everywhere else. I voted for Gehry because next month he's turning 78 -- a "lifetime achievement" allure. I wonder if the judges of the Pritzker Award are going to think this way... ?

My favorite -- favorite on the list, anyway -- is Herzog & DeMeuron.

[Jasonik]

1. Herzog & DeMeuron (http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~jones/lab_arch/H_and_dM/pic_gallery.html) - Superior typological, stylistic, and material versatility.
2. Norman Foster
3. Frank Gehry


I wish Gehry had the detailing, refinement and green-ness of Foster with the more formal experimentation of Herzog & DeMeuron. Don't get me wrong, I love what he does expressively; I just think he should set more rules for himself.

I love Renzo Piano, not because he pushes the boundaries, but because he is on the leading edge of tradition, a bit fussier than Foster, but more soulful by far. Meier continues to refine his 'white' architecture, (Domino House mannerism).

Zaha and Santiago are a bit heavyhanded and literal in their stuctural-futurist-expressivism.

Mayne and Koolhaus are fearless programatic ciphers, with Thom's preferable due to his wry socal commentary and insight in comparison to Rem's functional-machine-buildings.

*****
I kind of missed the point of the thread, but in my book Piano is the 2007 Boss Starchitect. Prominent (non-WTC) commissions and mastery of construction techniques give him the advantage.

[LeCom]

Where is Cesar Pelli on that list?

[ablarc]

Where is Cesar Pelli on that list?
Twenty years in the past.

[antinimby]

I voted for Sir Norman Foster, my lover. :D

[LeCom]

Twenty years in the past.
But he still churns out gems, many of which beat 90% of the stuff the guys in the poll do.

[jeffpark]

Twenty years in the past.
the Bloomberg Tower is NOT 20 Years old maybe WFC is,
and whats with "David Childs" who did the TWC

[TREPYE]

and whats with "David Childs" who did the TWC

He's leading another list: "Architects that get great projects and produce underwhelming designs"

On that note we should probably have a "scrubtitecht" list.

I voted Calatrava for his ingenuity by the way. Foster and Gehry did not make the decision easy- they are ingenious as well -but they have not made my jaw drop the way Calatrava has.

[ablarc]

... another list: "Architects that get great projects and produce underwhelming designs"

On that note we should probably have a "scrubtitecht" list.
Been there, done that: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9798

[pianoman11686]

May 2007 • Far Corner

Die Another Day

The cycle of codependence between critics and stars does a disservice to both public and profession alike.

By Philip Nobel
Posted May 18, 2007

Here we go again. A celebrated firm, in a cloud of blinding stardust, completes a long anticipated project. In early photos it looks as if it has fallen short of the claims made by the architects and the promises implied by their renderings, both published everywhere years ago to great advance acclaim. The firm has been floating along on the power of such words and images for longer than anyone cares to remember and it hasn’t built much, so it should be no surprise that the building is not perfect. Architecture is hard—they’ll do better next time. Right?

But as the ribbon is cut, the critics report: everyone agrees it is a success, possibly a triumph. Paradigms have been rocked, stasis shaken. For the fortunate city a new day is proclaimed; for its citizens, the building is a gift. At some point I make my way to see the new paragon—keeping my mind, as much as possible, clinically open—and it’s a mess, even an embarrassment. Thoughts turn to naked emperors and their court. Again.

What’s going on here? The short answer, a second question, is: “Who cares?” Architects with skills unworthy of their hype have been stealing the limelight for so long now, and with so little complaint from the press, that we can’t possibly be asked to get exercised over another example of this everyday deception: a glowing critical response to a so-so building. This is our world (we made it with our silence), so suck it up. Stroll down to Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s (DS+R) new building for Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), ignore your qualms, and enjoy your time spent in proximity to—no, surrounded by, exalted by—architectural genius.

The long answer to the question—and I think, as responsible citizens, we should contemplate the long answer—is “business as usual.” Business as usual has transpired again, and that business is the perpetuation of a destructive cycle of codependence between the critical establishment and the architects we’ve all come to think of as stars.

To dispatch with the obvious, the ICA’s new home is disappointing. It has been held up as an icon for the city—first by the clients and the architects, now by the critics—and is intended to anchor with culture a new quarter to be constructed on Boston’s long empty Fan Pier. Where that new zone will eventually be there is a field of parking lots and fences; but even if the city is patched, the direction of approach will remain. The museum sits on the edge of the water, and reaches toward it with a deep cantilever, but to the land it shows only its back—and not a particularly well-groomed one at that. Anthony’s Pier 4, the adjacent eatery famous for its wonderful popovers, mediates better between the city and the harbor. It’s clear from the first glance at that poorly detailed, al*most accidental rear facade that the experience of tourists on tour boats and the views of residents of gentrifying East Boston on the opposite shore have been privileged over those of future neighbors and those actually entering the thing. But the grand gesture to the sea looks great in pictures, and that serves architects and critics (and their photo editors) alike.

A big attention-grabbing move is absolutely necessary in an age when, to succeed in mass-market terms, buildings must be reducible to arresting images that can be sold to clients and resold to the consumers of media. That way stardom lies. But the big move chosen by DS+R (from a series of varied but equally strident early studies) results only in spatial confusion. The cantilever covers a much lauded waterfront plaza with bleacher seating—a stop on a harborside promenade that Elizabeth Diller once referred to as Boston’s only viable civic space—shading it miserably. The same photo-ready overhang necessitates the placement of the galleries, which take no chances in cleaving to the white-walled and black-boxed norm, way up high. DS+R then solved that problem of its own making with the same big-elevator-and-narrow-stair combination that works so badly at the Whitney.

Circulation is correspondingly poor; details are sloppy throughout. One room, the Media Center, is cool and earns its raves: it steps down from the trouble-making cantilever to a truly inspired and well-controlled view of the water. If there were equal and consistent experiential payoffs throughout, I’d be the first to say, To hell with the *mundane—endure the circulatory games, ignore the material realm, and transcend. But early praise notwithstanding, there isn’t. So I won’t. And you can’t. Not in this botched box.

For those willing to look past the myth—and when green architects are given a major museum retrospective (however panned) and a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation (however undeserved), that myth is substantial—the firm has been telegraphing for years, in renderings of un-built and forthcoming work, that its finished buildings would take their cues from things we’ve already seen. The image of a folding plane that becomes floor, wall, and ceiling—only an image, because when built it is always a fake—has been a staple of “edgy” work for more than a decade. At the ICA, one winds its turgid way throughout. Neil Denari, who may have been the first to popularize the motif, called his version a “worldsheet,” but the same empty form has been used by Lindy Roy in a house in the Hamptons and, most famously, by Rem Koolhaas in his Educatorium, in Utrecht. If spades were indeed going to be called spades, the ICA would be dismissed, instantly and wholesale, as a startlingly ham-fisted homage to OMA—one, moreover, nearly bare of the transient joys that Rem regularly works into his buildings.

It’s all in plain sight, standing alone beside Boston Harbor. But consider the pressures to write a positive review. Most American architecture critics have built their careers in part by reflexively championing the new. It’s likely they’ve been promoting just this sort of thing for years against a perception of local inertia. When it’s made real, or close enough: two thumbs up. Critics being people too, there may also be a wish to be on the winning team. I’ve felt that pull; some stars are enchanting. Certainly there’s more power in constructing fame than in questioning it. Or is it that such critics think that star-crafted buildings, even if derivative and poorly realized, are inherently better than the alternative? Do they fear that by challenging these architects they might discourage innovation? Do they imagine that promoting *innovation—even just the look of innovation—is such a pure good that the defense of all other values must be suspended along with our disbelief?

I think they might. Or maybe I’m way off base. But the pattern is real, and its effects are clear. Bad buildings by big names get a regular pass. Favorable coverage ensues for the client. Though no connection between high-glamour architects and high-quality buildings is ever demonstrated, the client class learns anew that it pays to gamble on the stars. Other architects retool their practices to get in the game (first stop: drinks with the local critic). Students take note (fledgling critics too…). Mediocrity goes unchecked. The public gets shafted. The cycle repeats. The planet spins. Architecture lives to die another day.

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2681

[Luca]

A-effing-men!

Surprised to see such a tough critique in Metyropolis, though... they're usually fawning over the latest fold of semi-transparent plastic or plywood furniture...

[newcastle kid]

Rogers. I'm very happy that he won this years Pritzker Prize, he certainly deserves it after some of the schemes he has produced that are starting to get underway, such as his WTC Tower and 122 Leadenhall in London.

[ablarc]

Surprised to see such a tough critique in Metyropolis, though... they're usually fawning over the latest fold of semi-transparent plastic or plywood furniture...
Thing is, Diller and Scofidio are bona fide hacks.

[lofter1]

Ric Scofidio & Elizabeth Diller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Scofidio) ^^^ gave a little talk about their work on the High Line on May 24 at Gehry's IAC building (it was cool to be inside the lobby as the sun was going down).

Diller's comments regarding their work for the re-hab of Lincoln Center (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3547&highlight=lincoln+center) were a bit bizarre -- she kept going on about how radical & subversive their thought process is, but those comments struck me as someone trying to show how cool she is / was. She showed lots of pics of their work for Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11414&highlight=boston+art) -- but none showing how horrendous it looks (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=165845&postcount=13) from the cityside -- only renderings of same that were all dreamy and glossy.

But back to theri work at Lincoln Center: The very fact that this design firm has chosen to install green lawn (http://www.dillerscofidio.com/lincoln-center.html) at both the Columbus Avenue side and on the roof of the new structure which will overlook the reflecting pool strikes me not as radical but simply as stupid. The amount of time that any lawn in NYC has to be shut off from the public makes it a terrible choice for such small areas which are supposed to be used by the public (note Bryant Park and Central Park for examples).

http://www.dillerscofidio.com/works/lincoln-center/4.jpg

http://www.dillerscofidio.com/works/lincoln-center/1.jpg

MAY 24: DESIGN PRESENTATION WITH RICARDO SCOFIDIO AT NEW GEHRY-DESIGNED IAC BUILDING FREE

http://www.thehighline.org/img/newsletter/051407/ICA.jpghttp://www.thehighline.org/img/newsletter/shim.gifhttp://www.thehighline.org/img/newsletter/051407/floating.jpg


Photo by Iwan BaanJoin us on May 24 for the next installment of our continuing lecture series by High Line designers. Ricardo Scofidio, principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will give a presentation on the firm's recent work, including the High Line, Boston's new Institute for Contemporary Art (pictured above left), and the renovation of Lincoln Center. Diller Scofidio + Renfro was profiled in last week's The New Yorker. The lecture will be one of the first public events held in the newly-completed, Frank Gehry-designed IAC building.

[pianoman11686]

The very fact that this design firm has chosen to install green lawn (http://www.dillerscofidio.com/lincoln-center.html) at both the Columbus Avenue side and on the roof of the new structure which will overlook the reflecting pool strikes me not as radical but simply as stupid.

The lawns will doubtless further the suburbanization of the Upper West Side.

Will there be "Keep Dogs Off" signs? :D

[ablarc]

Dopey.

Like most things these folks propose.

[Fabrizio]

Cold, monumental, imposing, aloof... you had to rise to the occasion. That's too much effort now.... not democratic enough.

[TREPYE]

December 16, 2007
Critic’s Notebook
Let the ‘Starchitects’ Work All the Angles

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/nicolai_ouroussoff/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
IT’S hard to pinpoint when the “starchitect” became an object of ridicule. The term is a favorite of churlish commentators, who use it to mock architects whose increasingly flamboyant buildings, in their minds, are more about fashion and money than function.
Often the attacks are a rehash of the old clichés. Cost overruns and leaky roofs are held up as evidence of yet another egomaniacal artist with little concern for the needs of us, the little people. (As a rule, if a roof leaks in a Frank Gehry (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/frank_gehry/index.html?inline=nyt-per) building it’s headline news; if the building was designed by a hack commercial architect, the leak is ignored, at least as news.) John Silber, the former president of Boston University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/boston_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), has gotten into the game with “Architecture of the Absurd,” a glib little book that eviscerates contemporary architects for the extravagance of their designs.
The more serious criticism comes from those inside the profession who see a move into the mainstream as a sellout. The pact between high architects and developers, to them, is a Faustian bargain in which the architect is nothing more than a marketing tool, there to provide a cultural veneer for the big, bad developers whose only interest is in wringing as much profit as possible from their projects.
There’s some truth to this, of course. Santiago Calatrava (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/santiago_calatrava/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s overblown design for a transportation hub at ground zero in Lower Manhattan, for example, is as much a monument to the architect’s ego as a statement of civic pride. And architects don’t always help their own cause. When Mr. Gehry designed a jewelry line for Tiffany’s last year, many of his admirers cringed. How could a man of the people, whose own Santa Monica house — a crude composition of chain link, plywood and galvanized metal that seemed to be a slap in the face of uptight suburban values — ally himself with a status symbol for Connecticut newlyweds?
But in general I find these attacks perplexing. For decades, the public complained about the bland, soul-sapping buildings churned out by anonymous corporate offices. Meanwhile, our greatest architectural talents labored in near obscurity, quietly refining their craft in university studios and competitions that rarely led to real commissions. If their work had any impact, it was in the realm of ideas, where the designs served as a cutting critique of a profession that seemed to have lost its way.
Today these architects, many of them in their 60s and 70s, are finally getting to test those visions in everyday life, often on a grand scale. What followed has been one of the most exhilarating periods in recent architectural history. For every superficial expression of a culture obsessed with novelty, you can point to a work of blazing originality.
Most important, the profession has become more democratic. The age of the manifesto is dead; there is no dominant style. Instead, we live in a time of competing creative voices, the best of which can offer penetrating insights into a culture that is in constant flux.
You may not like Rem Koolhaas (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/rem_koolhaas/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s Seattle Public Library, for example, but only a nitwit would argue that the architect was oblivious to the building’s function. A series of mismatched slabs wrapped inside a taut, weblike skin, the form is a bold expression of the client’s conflicting needs to preserve old books and also to come to terms with emerging information technologies. What’s unusual about the building is that Mr. Koolhaas — like many contemporary architects — chose to express these tensions in his design rather than smooth them over.
To my mind, if these architects are also getting a cut of the pie, why begrudge them? The 17th-century Baroque sculptor and architect Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini was a tireless self-promoter, a celebrity sought by popes and princes, and it didn’t seem to dilute the quality of his work. Why shouldn’t today’s greatest architectural talents also be celebrated for their accomplishments?
The real issue here is not the architects’ egos but a significant shift in the kind of clients they serve. In the United States, the enlightened homeowners and high-minded cultural institutions that made up the bulk of these architects’ commissions a decade ago have now been joined by mainstream developers like Forest City Ratner or Hines — multibillion-dollar corporations who see an alliance with a high-profile architect as both a chance to raise their own profiles and to help push their projects through an often tricky public review process.
At the same time, the handful of architecturally ambitious public works commissions that once existed here — like the federal government’s celebrated Design Excellence program, which produced a string of beautiful courthouses in the late 1990s and early 2000s — has largely dried up. And even in Europe, which traditionally has invested more in the quality of public architecture, the grand cultural commissions of the 1980s and 1990s have been replaced by designs for soaring corporate towers or offices for, say, BMW (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/bayerische_motoren_werke_ag/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and the European Central Bank (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_central_bank/index.html?inline=nyt-org).
In this new world, no hands are clean; there are good guys and bad guys on all sides. There are endless cases of architects’ being reduced to the level of decorator: convenient cultural lubricants whose main function is to help the public digest increasingly cynical developments. (The bigger the project and the more money involved, it seems, the more the architect is treated like a lackey.)
But from the architect’s perspective, working with mainstream developers is also a chance to step out of the narrow confines of high culture and have a more direct impact on centers of everyday life that were once outside their reach, from shopping malls to entire business districts.
This is especially true as the size of the developments continues to grow. New York alone is planning to add at least 35 million square feet of commercial space over the next couple of decades, much of it concentrated at sites like ground zero and the West Side railyards. Cities are being built virtually from scratch in China and the Middle East.
Architects have no control over a development’s scale or density; nor do they control the underlying social and economic realities that shape it. But what serious architect wouldn’t want to take up the challenge? And why should such an immense responsibility be turned over to hacks? Why wouldn’t we welcome the input of our most imaginative talents? The point is to create an environment where they can produce their best work.
As it is, the results are not always what you would expect. Recently, Hines unveiled a stunning proposal for a residential skyscraper designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/jean_nouvel/index.html?inline=nyt-per). When it is built, it will be the most exquisite tower to rise in Midtown Manhattan since the Chrysler (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/chrysler_llc/index.html?inline=nyt-org) Building. By comparison, Mr. Calatrava’s flashy transportation building — the rare commission that is being designed for a supposedly well-meaning government bureaucracy, not a greedy corporate developer — looks like a shameful waste of public funds. With a price of more than $2 billion, it will serve a handful of passengers on the PATH trains and a subway line. In early renderings of the design, the cavernous main hall doesn’t even have a cafe. (Pennsylvania Station, which could use a face-lift, serves nearly 10 times as many passengers.)
In the end, it is the public’s responsibility to do the hard work of parsing the difference between superficial creations designed to cover up a hidden, cynical agenda, and sincere efforts to create a more enlightened vision of a civilization that is evolving at a brutal pace.


Copyright 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[TREPYE]

December 16, 2007
Critic’s Notebook
Let the ‘Starchitects’ Work All the Angles

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/nicolai_ouroussoff/index.html?inline=nyt-per)

There’s some truth to this, of course. Santiago Calatrava (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/santiago_calatrava/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s overblown design for a transportation hub at ground zero in Lower Manhattan, for example, is as much a monument to the architect’s ego as a statement of civic pride....

...As it is, the results are not always what you would expect. Recently, Hines unveiled a stunning proposal for a residential skyscraper designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/jean_nouvel/index.html?inline=nyt-per). When it is built, it will be the most exquisite tower to rise in Midtown Manhattan since the Chrysler (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/chrysler_llc/index.html?inline=nyt-org) Building. By comparison, Mr. Calatrava’s flashy transportation building — the rare commission that is being designed for a supposedly well-meaning government bureaucracy, not a greedy corporate developer — looks like a shameful waste of public funds. With a price of more than $2 billion, it will serve a handful of passengers on the PATH trains and a subway line. In early renderings of the design, the cavernous main hall doesn’t even have a cafe. (Pennsylvania Station, which could use a face-lift, serves nearly 10 times as many passengers.)
Copyright 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)
Hogwash. :rolleyes:

Nick picked the wrong project to criticize cuz he just looks like a complete idiot. Calatrava's hub serves a dual function of sculpture and tansit hub just as Penn Station did and GCS does. What the problem? Passangers? While the amount of passangers that it accomodates is low that # is to rise substanciallywith the increase DT residentals and tourism. So lets hold off on these underestimations. And I find it hard to believe that eventually they will not be able to squeeze in a cafe or 2 into the hall. Dont give us this "shameful" garBAge when just around the corner a corporation with over $6 billion in profits just got tax breaks from the city. Thats shameful give away of public funds. Giving NYC a new treasure for its citizens to enjoy and an etheral gate for those who want to visit the sacred grounds of a tragic event is not.

He would have sounded a little more intelligent had he directed his ire to the Fulton Street Station. That station IMO is not needed and DT could probably do without.

[Luca]

Ouroussof is as close to a complete fool as I can judge any met I've never actually met. :mad:

As a tireless shill and apologists for the worst excesses of anti-human buildings, pseudo-intellectual & pseudo-architectural onanology and empty starchitectural personality-cult in modern construction, there's nary a word that surprises me in his predictable little rant.

Calatrava may not be everyone's plate of churros con chocolate, and several of his projects have utilitas/firmitas issues, but at least they attempt to soar. Ouroussof is the kind of thanatotic onanist who looks at a grimy 1960s cheap-glass-and-beton-brut bunker of a building and, somehow, sees lightness and deftness of touch. :rolleyes:

[pianoman11686]

Thanatotic onanist? Jeez, who are you writing for, Luca? ;)

I'm no fan of Ouroussoff, but he does have occasional strokes of wisdom in his pieces. I think there's something of value in this article, if only it serves as a reminder that the world of (commercial) architecture is far more exciting now than it has been in decades.

With regard to the World Trade Center Transit Hub, I take sides with Ouroussoff. While I love Calatrava, the station is a spectacular sum for the number of passengers it will serve. Certainly not worth the price tag pragmatically, although if one were to look at it as a sort of uber-memorial, it may be acceptable.

On the flip side, the Fulton Street Transit Station is EXACTLY the type of setting where you would have liked a starchitect to be called upon to design something of significance. Remember all the cost-cutting and value-engineering that went into Grimshaw's design, which even at the beginning, wasn't more than somewhat inspiring? I wish the MTA could've afforded to spend the amount the PA committed to Calatrava's design. Fulton was a huge wasted opportunity.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The transit hub includes the underground concourse, and like the original concourse, will serve more than the PATH riders that pass through it.

[TREPYE]

On the flip side, the Fulton Street Transit Station is EXACTLY the type of setting where you would have liked a starchitect to be called upon to design something of significance.

Why?

[Luca]

Thanatotic onanist? Jeez, who are you writing for, Luca? ;)


Why, this eximious forum, of course. :)

On a semi-serious note: It seems to me the convoluted anti-aesthetic of hyper-minimalist architecture has a dark streak of asceticism running through it. "Anything's good as long as it brings no simple, unintermediated joy" (which is the true translation of "epater les bourgeois"). If you do not vote for joy then, axiomatically, you vote for its opposite: misery.

The reference to Onan obviously is meant figuratively, or rather, verbally, not to juvenile proclivities. :D

I don't get the chance to read Ouroussof all the time, so perhaps I judge him too harshly. What I've read (I guess a half-dozen pieces at least), is almost diametrically opposed to everything that makes architecture and urbanism worthwhile to me.

[TREPYE]

From http://dictionary.com/

thanatotic- an ancient Greek personification of death.
onanist- coitus interruptus; auto-erotic activities.
proclivities- natural or habitual inclination or tendency; propensity; predisposition.
axiomatically- pertaining to or of the nature of an axiom; self-evident; obvious.
asceticism- the doctrine that a person can attain a high spiritual and moral state by practicing self-denial, self-mortification, and the like.
eximious- distinguished; eminent; excellent.

What an ostentatious display of vocaulary aptitude.
Thanks for the 6 words of the day luca. ;)

[pianoman11686]

Why?

For starters, Fulton will serve a nexus of 12 subway lines. Calatrava's station serves how many? The PATH + the E?

Let's look at the numbers. Calatrava's projected to serve 80,000 when it opens (most of those, PATH riders). Expected increase by 2025: 250,000 (175,000 of which should be PATH).

Fulton: projected to serve 300,000 when it opens. No estimates given for future use. (We can only surmise it'll grow in proportion to Calatrava's.)

If you argue increased downtown residents and tourism will make Calatrava's station necessary, you almost by default have to argue that a Fulton station is even more necessary.

My verdict is: Calatrava's station is far more symbolic because of its emotional context. Fulton is far more pragmatic because of the hard numbers. If you think symbolism merits a price tag for Calatrava that's almost 3 times higher than Fulton, then we're paying too much for something that's already symbolized by a billion-dollar memorial and a tower named Freedom. I personally would've preferred more of that money diverted towards Fulton, which is why I agree with Ouroussoff, in this case.

[pianoman11686]

What I've read (I guess a half-dozen pieces at least), is almost diametrically opposed to everything that makes architecture and urbanism worthwhile to me.

Then you should read through his critiques of the World Trade Center site plan. (And perhaps the Hudson Yards critique as well, although I found that one to be rather lacking in merit.)

[Luca]

Then you should read through his critiques of the World Trade Center site plan. (And perhaps the Hudson Yards critique as well, although I found that one to be rather lacking in merit.)

Do you have a link?

[infoshare]

When folks - particularly on this forum - use the term "starchitect", I do not take it as a term of derision: seems to me more like a compliment or term of admiration. I guess the word could be taken either way, depending on the context in which it is written. :confused:

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
IT’S hard to pinpoint when the “starchitect” became an object of ridicule. The term is a favorite of churlish commentators, who use it to mock architects whose increasingly flamboyant buildings, in their minds, are more about fashion and money than function.

[lofter1]

"churlish" ^ Indeed!

OUROUSSOFF deserves an infraction or three for that :cool:

[TREPYE]

For starters, Fulton will serve a nexus of 12 subway lines. Calatrava's station serves how many? The PATH + the E?

...and a connection to Fulton station essentially making it one large station.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/nyregion/20070108_FULTON_GRAPHIC.html
While the issue of passageway layout should be resolved at Fulton, there is no need for an ornamental cap- thats a waste of $. If you wanna be such a pragmatist then why would you need 2 elaborately designed train stations so close to each other that are connected anyways? If your answer is that you dont, then which one merits the elaborate cap designed by a world class architect? The station that will simply serve as a connection point to other train lines (albeit to alot of people) or the one that " is far more symbolic because of its emotional context" and location in DT??

[pianoman11686]

...and a connection to Fulton station essentially making it one large station.

Yeah, via a 19 foot-wide passageway. That doesn't make it one large station.

While the issue of passageway layout should be resolved at Fulton, there is no need for an ornamental cap- thats a waste of $. If you wanna be such a pragmatist then why would you need 2 elaborately designed train stations so close to each other that are connected anyways?

Like I said, I have nothing against Calatrava's station per se. I think it's a great addition to an otherwise unexciting World Trade Center site. It may be a better memorial than the Memorial itself.

You make it sound like the pragmatist in me would push for something akin to our current Penn Station: just the bare minimum to move people out of trains and onto the street. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying: we've got some 3.2 billion dollars being spent on two transit centers Downtown. One of them costs nearly 3 times as much as the other, and I don't see how you can, "pragmatically", justify spending so much more on one than the other, given the number of passengers/trains using each.

If your answer is that you dont, then which one merits the elaborate cap designed by a world class architect? The station that will simply serve as a connection point to other train lines (albeit to alot of people) or the one that " is far more symbolic because of its emotional context" and location in DT??

I think I answered this question already.

[pianoman11686]

Do you have a link?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/arts/design/11zero.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/arts/design/24huds.html

[TREPYE]

You make it sound like the pragmatist in me would push for something akin to our current Penn Station: just the bare minimum to move people out of trains and onto the street. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying: we've got some 3.2 billion dollars being spent on two transit centers Downtown. One of them costs nearly 3 times as much as the other, and I don't see how you can, "pragmatically", justify spending so much more on one than the other, given the number of passengers/trains using each.


I never said that you can justify the current Penn Station. I dont think anybody who gives a crap about this city could. But my point is if you got to pick one station to give it an elaborate deisgn would you rather keep the PATH underground and have no Calatrava design at all and just do the Fulton station with its "grand" entrance? or vice-versa? I think Ossouroff is being completely being insensitve to the WTC site by claming that giving it a grand station is a waste of $$ specially when you are getting something so grandiose. I think he is just trying to rag on Calatrava for being so over the top. In all fairness, I do think that he is right about giving a bar or Cafe in the main hall, which is something that I dont think cannot be done at this point, so I dont understand why he goes out of his way to point it out.

The funds used to pay for that entrance building of Fulton should be used for other things, and while they are at it they should sell the air rights above the station for funds instead of raising the fare. One thing that I always though would be a good idea is to develop a line (from an old existing line) that will connect all of the main Trainsit hubs in NYC (without interrruption) that house LIRR (Penn, Atlantic, Jamaica), PATH (DT, MT), Metro-North (GCT) almost like a Brooklyn-Manhattan-Queens express train. It'll improve travel time between the boroughs somewhat, IMO anyways. Thats better than having a grand entrance in an otherwise ordinary part of DT.

[pianoman11686]

To keep this thread from veering too far off-topic...

I don't think you understood Ouroussoff's main point about starchitects. You think he's just trying to "rag on Calatrava," but his article is meant to be a defense of starchitects. His main argument is with the entities who use starchitects to "sell" a project - be it to private consumers, or to the public as a whole.

In this case, I think Calatrava's design was one of perhaps a handful of possible designs that could justify the enormous price tag. Otherwise, given the projected usage by commuters, it would be looked at as pork. And for the last time, it's not about making a choice between "one grand station" and another mediocre one. There's 3.2 billion dollars (probably more) allocated to these two projects.

The funds used to pay for that entrance building of Fulton should be used for other things, and while they are at it they should sell the air rights above the station for funds instead of raising the fare.

I don't think any air rights remained at the site. Even if they did, the MTA can't rely on one-time sales of assets to bolster its operating budgets. They need a stable increase in annual revenues to cover costs. The only way to do that is by increasing fares. (Although I'll be the first to agree that it is an inefficiently-run bureaucracy that could probably save millions a year if it were run as a business entity, and not a quasi governmental agency.)

[TREPYE]

When you use words like "shameful" to describe a project it hardly sounds like a vote of confidence to its creator.

As far as Fulton goes from what I can gather you think that Fulton merits a grand entrance because it will simply have more people in it. And while normally I would be for that the issue for me is that you already have a grand station being built anyways so it was totally unecessary waste of $$ on behalf o the MTA to build this entrance. They should have realized that just down the block a great station is gonna go up and perhaps this Fulton entrance is a bit of an overkill and try to make $$ on the site instead of wasting money on it. So why spend 3.5B for 2 when you can just spend 2B for one. Thats more of a shameful waste of public funds.

[pianoman11686]

I give up.