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October 9, 2006
GEHRY-RIGGED: Two New York projects show how to use Frank Gehry and how not to.
The New Yorker
PAUL GOLDBERGER presents a must-read look at Gehry's intentions.
In Brooklyn, the task is to create a coherent cityscape that relates comfortably to its surroundings. Gehry tried to do this by grouping some understated towers around a few very elaborate ones. (The six-hundred-and-twenty-foot-high main tower, foolishly named Miss Brooklyn, is full of self-conscious Gehryisms.) Rather than giving a sense of foreground and background, the juxtaposition of plain and fancy just looks like a few Gehrys bought for full price next to several bought at discount.
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Gehry has told me that he sees the project as a kind of homage to the old Manhattan sky line, but the romance of that vista is a happy accident of diverse buildings in a tight web of streets. Atlantic Yards, by contrast, involves eliminating streets, and has the look more of a single structure spanning multiple blocks than of a townscape that has grown organically.
Atlantic Yards Report
New Yorker critic: Gehry's "talents hardly seem suited" to AY challenge
Goldberger likes Gehry's InterActive Corp. building in Chelsea, but he finds the mass and superblocks of Atlantic Yards inappropriate for the site, and he points out what critics charge and even some supporters acknowledge: the arena is the hook for the larger development.
Posted by amy at October 9, 2006 10:14 AM