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May 10, 2010
In Safdie's New Satire, Architecture Has Tragic Consequences
Architectural Record
by Rachel Somerstein
Not much rankles like large-scale urban development. Take, for instance, some of the more extreme claims regarding the plan for a sports arena at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards: ill-conceived, a waste of taxpayer money, a circumvention of the democratic process. But would anyone go so far as to indict it, or any other development, as a cause of death?
"More extreme claims?" Those seem pretty straightforward to us.
That’s the central accusation in Los Angeles writer Oren Safdie’s play, The Bilbao Effect. The new work is a tragicomic satire in which a Staten Island resident takes an architect to a court of sorts—a hearing in front of fellow American Institute of Architects members—because he blames the aggressive form and metallic skin of a project by the designer for the circumstances leading up to his wife’s suicide.
...Despite parallels between Safdie’s play and the real Atlantic Yards—it contains explicit references to Frank Gehry, the project’s original architect (he stepped down in 2009)—the writer says he doesn’t intend to mirror a specific situation or designer.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Are criticisms of Atlantic Yards "extreme claims"? Only to a reviewer uninformed of some rather mainstream critiques
As I commented, why exactly are "ill-conceived, a waste of taxpayer money, a circumvention of the democratic process" deemed "some of the more extreme claims regarding the plan for a sports arena at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards"?
After all, the New York City Independent Budget Office called the arena a money-loser for the city and Municipal Art Society then-President Kent Barwick, not exactly a radical, suggested, “Maybe the absurdity with which that proceeded will awaken the desire for a more rational process.”
Posted by eric at May 10, 2010 11:20 PM