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April 16, 2007
The glass menagerie
Frank Gehry's first New York structure is merely a gimmick molded into an office building
NY Newsday
By Justin Davidson
An underwhelming review of Frank Gehry's IAC building:
Frank Gehry's first New York City building is a minor mood piece, not the sort of rhapsodic extravaganza his adorers are used to. At one time, he had hoped to debut with a bent-metal Guggenheim Museum on the East River; he still plans to stage a full-scale invasion of Brooklyn with an all-Gehry district at Atlantic Yards. Meanwhile, there is this milky hulk on the Hudson, the headquarters of Barry Diller's Internet empire, IAC.
...
When the white glass went on, some took it for a temporary protective film. Surely, they thought, it's not always going to look that way?But it will, and its shape has finally resolved into a disappointment. Instead of being a marvelous mirage, it's only an office building wrapped in a gimmick.
NoLandGrab: When Gehry's IAC building is chracterized as a "gimmick" and "milky hulk," it doesn't give Brooklynites confidence that the incredible-hulking 16-tower Atlantic Yards will materialize into anything but a historically dense Gehry-palooza. If Gehry gets it wrong on a small-ish project in Manhattan, it's a "minor mood piece;" if he gets it wrong in Brooklyn, it could be more like a "major tantrum."
The myth is that it wasn't Gehry's idea that he should design the entire Atlantic Yards project, but the aging starchitect didn't have to accept.
Posted by lumi at April 16, 2007 7:22 AM