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December 1, 2005
New York Magazine, Letters to the Editor
New York Magazine published two letters in reponse to Kurt Andersen's worshipful essay on Frank Gehry and the architect's design of a "sui generis Brooklyn skyline."
One of the letter writers posted the published versions of the letters in the Daily Heights Forum in a discussion about the Andersen article and the Gehry effect.
The usually astute Kurt Andersen was woefully off target regarding the enormous Bruce Ratner development in Brooklyn [“The Imperial City: Delirious New York,” November 28]. It’s horribly out of scale with the character of Brooklyn (we’ve long since ceased to view Manhattan as an urban role model), and it will destroy the continuity of three thriving neighborhoods, absorb hundreds of millions of tax dollars with little or no real return, and give Downtown Brooklyn permanent traffic gridlock. Given the truly awful aesthetics and construction quality of his other developments in Brooklyn, Ratner had little choice but to attach the Frank Gehry carrot. Anyone who chases that carrot must also still be looking forward to Daniel Libeskind’s World Trade Center.
— Michael Rogers, BrooklynLike Bruce Ratner’s previous developments in Brooklyn, the Atlantic Yards stadium complex is not going to seamlessly merge a new development with an existing and vital cityscape. It seems totally appropriate, then, that Bruce Ratner would choose an architect whose buildings are rootless, equally out of place wherever they are erected, always supplanting on-the-ground urban realities with whimsical promises of a future that never quite arrives. Does Brooklyn need Gehry’s spectacular, megalomaniacal brand?
— Stuart Schrader, Brooklyn
Posted by lumi at December 1, 2005 7:21 AM