July 23, 2008
Credit crunch threatens Gehry's Hove scheme
Frank Gehry's controversial scheme for the Hove sea front has been thrown into doubt because of the credit crunch.
BD Online
by Marguerite Lazell
Looks like starchitect Frank Gehry's controversial design for an English waterfront development is going the way of the global credit crunch.
On Tuesday, Gehry confirmed his involvement with the project was over. In an interview in the Guardian with BD columnist Jonathan Glancey, he said: "Don’t go there. It was a painful experience. I guess I never did understand your planning system and all those interfering government design advisers."
Aghiros commented that the King Alfred project was not the sort of scheme Gehry was used to working on.
"The major projects that Frank Gehry has done have been funded by philanthropists, or institutions," he said. “This is a commercial proposition that needs to stand on its own feet. If it’s viable we’ll proceed.”
NoLandGrab: Since the "scheme" Gehry is working on in Brooklyn is being funded in large part by the taxpayers, he may still be able to put that where-have-I-seen-that-before" design to work. Much in the same way that Ratner's hired sports economist Andy Zimbalist allegedly changed the name "Los Angeles Angels" to "Seattle Supersonics" to produce a report on the economic impact of the latter, it appears that Frank Gehry may be recycling ideas, perhaps with a twist, literally, of the building now known as "B1."
Separated at death?
Posted by eric at 6:51 PM
July 10, 2008
Of Bard, and The Bard
Culturist [WNYC blog]
by Claudia La Rocco
This feeling was reinforced by the setting, Frank Gehry’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Gehry, though Canadian born, has been based in Los Angeles for decades, and his extravagant buildings have always seemed, to me, to represent a particularly American vision of the world - one that, depending on my frame of mind, can come off as wonderfully hopeful and expansive, or terribly wasteful and vulgar:
This was my first trip to Bard, and I was expecting to find the Gehry building utterly out of place on the gorgeous, verdant campus, like a gaudy spaceship that has crumpled to earth in a remote forest. But this one, unlike many Gehry buildings, won me over, prompting the first nice thoughts I’ve had about the architect since he clambered into bed with the Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner. The photo doesn’t really do justice to the odd delicacy of the building’s shimmery skin, which reflected the changing light as day shifted into night. The image, instead of alien machines, was of an alien itself, pulsing with strange life against a backdrop of plush evergreens.
NoLandGrab: "Verdant campus?" You mean, like this?
Posted by eric at 3:22 PM
June 25, 2008
Frank Gehry: Super-Genius or Blundering Artiste? You Decide!
List of Top 10’s of Everything, Top 10 Smartest (Intelligent) People on Earth
Frank Owen Gehry
He is one of the world’s most influential architects. His designs for the likes of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA are bold statements that have imposed a new aesthetic of architecture on the world at large, enlivening streetscapes and creating new destinations. Mr Gehry has extended his vision beyond brick-and-mortar too, collaborating with artists such as Claes Oldenberg and Richard Serra, and designing watches, teapots and a line of jewelry for Tiffany & Co.
Now in his 70s, Mr Gehry refuses to slow down or compromise his fierce vision: He and his team at Gehry Partners are working on a $4 billion development of the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and a spectacular Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, which interprets local architecture traditions into a language all his own. Incorporating local architectural motifs without simply paying lip service to Middle Eastern culture, the building bears all the hallmarks of a classic Gehry design.
NoLandGrab: "All the hallmarks?" Like, it will roast people and leak?
Business Standard, The folly of modern architecture
Take the example of the iconic Frank Gehry and two of his projects, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Stata Center at MIT. The Disney Concert Hall has vertically-curved layers of shiny stainless steel sheets at different angles, which amplify and reflect abundant California sunlight in all directions, blinding residents and heating up their neighbouring apartments by several degrees. After many complaints, the Los Angeles Philharmonic had to solve the reflection problem by covering up the steel facade with unglamorous matte cloth. Had Gehry taken into consideration the impact of the building on its surroundings, he would not have used mirror-like panels in the first place. It seems Gehry did not learn his lesson, as his subsequent work on the Stata Center exemplifies.
MIT had sought a new large building to house several science departments and research labs, in a harmonious and collaborative environment. Gehry took the latter part of agenda a bit too seriously, at the expense of function, low maintenance, and cost savings. Outside, the centre looked like the crooked house from Mother Goose, as Silber aptly puts it, with flat glass roofs that wilted under Massachusetts rains and snow, subjecting expensive computer and lab equipment to damage from frequent leakage. Inside, it was equally chaotic. Gehry had wanted to do away with walls between offices, but after the faculty insisted on their privacy, he compromised with glass walls that failed to block sound or visual distractions. Ironically, there are glass walls in the cryptography departments and other centres that conduct secret military and industrial information. For this building that was completed four years behind schedule, MIT paid nearly twice the original estimate of $100 million. In late 2007, MIT would sue Gehry for providing designs with major structural deficiencies leading to high maintenance and repair costs.
Posted by eric at 4:29 PM
June 11, 2008
CONTROVERSY SURROUNDS YET ANOTHER FRANK GEHRY PROJECT
LA Daily
by Matthew Fleischer
What would you call an expensive, widely opposed Frank Gehry project with a lavish budget that comes partly at the expense of education funding? Atlantic Yards? Think again.
First there was the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, then Grand Avenue, now yet another proposed Frank Gehry building has come under intense public scrutiny -- this time at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Hundreds of students and alumni gathered in the auditorium of the prestigious design school yesterday to question Art Center president Richard Koshalek about a proposed $50 million Gehry-made design research center and library.
During the course of the contentious two-hour meeting, several students made it clear they thought Koshalek was spending too much time and money plotting a signature building and not enough on their education. Art Center students have seen their tuition jump 5% to 6% annually for the past five years. They now pay roughly $15,000 per trimester in tuition.
...Opposition to the Gehry building, which had been simmering unspoken for quite some time, found public voice last month when Nathan Cook, a 26-year old Industrial Design major, wrote a post on his blog questioning the Koshalek administration's priorities. Cook was upset that though Art Center goes out of its way to brand itself a leader in sustainability, the campus has no recycling bins and its cafeteria continues to use Styrofoam plates and cups. After being told for more than a year that the school couldn't afford such amenities, Cook wondered openly on his blog how a school that paid $385,068 to Gehry Partners to design a new building, a figure he culled from 2005 public tax records, couldn't afford recycling bins and environmentally friendly kitchenware.
Sign the petition "calling for a moratorium on all new Gehry-related building expenses" by the Art Center College of Design.
Posted by eric at 2:00 PM
June 9, 2008
Pritzker Prize Winners Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Renzo Piano
The Charlie Rose Show
During a panel discussion among Pritzker Prize Winners, Atlantic Yards designer Frank Gehry reveals why he probably shouldn't be talking to the media about the 16-highrise superblock megaproject.
A short discussion of Atlantic Yards starts around 24:15 on the video broadcast (link):
Despite four generations of renderings and models released to the public, Gehry claimed that "nobody has seen it until a few weeks ago, for the first time."
NoLandGrab: The Charlie Rose Show used drawings from the third-generation design of Atlantic Yards, released in May, 2006. Frank Gehry may recall that he was present at the unveiling.
In a moment of clarity, Gehry admits "It went through a fairly creative, but a legal and business and city-planning process. I think in the end it was going in the right way. It's smaller because we always knew it probably would be smaller."
NLG: "Fairly creative, but... legal," is a "fairly creative, but legal" standard for any city-planning or approval process, but that's what makes Atlantic Yards special.
Atlantic Yards Report, On Charlie Rose, Gehry claims that old AY designs were never legit
Norman Oder posted play-by-play commentary on Frank Gehry's segment on Atlantic Yards and analysis of relevant remarks from the same discussion by Zaha Hadid.
Posted by lumi at 4:19 AM
June 8, 2008
Antonovich questions plan to again delay Grand Avenue project's start
LA Times
Cara Mia DiMassa
The developer says the postponement is necessary because of the tight credit market. County supervisor calls for the Frank Gehry-designed project across from Disney Hall to be put out to bid again.
...
Supervisor Mike Antonovich issued a statement late Friday calling on the Grand Avenue Authority, made up of city and county officials, to put the project out to bid again."If other developers knew that they could delay the start date for 16 months, they would have bid the project differently," the statement said.
...
Grand Avenue is one of several major developments around the nation that have been delayed because of the credit crunch. In Seattle, developers recently shelved plans for a $7-billion development downtown, citing the poor economy. Huge projects in Las Vegas, Phoenix and New York City have also been scaled back or delayed, including part of the Gehry-designed Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and a $14-billion development of the area around Penn Station in Manhattan.
article
NoLandGrab: Although it sounds like this project is suffering a similar fate to Atlantic Yards, it's important to remember that with AY, FCR was outbid from the start.
Posted by amy at 11:12 AM
June 5, 2008
Gehry Designs NYC's Tallest Residential Tower
Architectural Record
Starchitect condos? Old news. Now real estate companies are tapping high-profile architects to design rental apartment buildings. In Lower Manhattan, Forest City Ratner Companies and Frank Gehry, FAIA—the team behind the controversial and recently downsized Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn—are erecting what will become New York City’s tallest residential dwelling, Beekman Tower. Tenants will start taking occupancy in fall 2010, distinguishing the project as Gehry’s first completed residential tower.
Wonder why most people head for the exits when they see an architect coming? Check it out:
While speaking at the construction site in late May, Gehry told reporters architectural pluralism is “chaotic, but should be treated as a virtue instead of a negative.” In that spirit, he has designed an exuberant skyscraper that will add flair to the respected downtown landscape.
At the foot of the tower is a highly contextual, 100-foot-tall podium clad in terracotta-colored brick that Gehry describes as “laidback, quiet, simple”; this base will be punctuated by a more sculptural porte-cochere canopy that also forms the ceiling of the building’s lobby.
NoLandGrab: The article misses the point about condo-vs-rentals. The reason that the Beekman tower will be rental is that Ratner knows that the market won't support another round of luxury starchitect condos.
Additionally, calling Atlantic Yards "downsized" proves that Forest City Ratner's cynical pr campaign worked. [Ratner increased the size of the project before later reducing it in "response to criticism."]
Posted by lumi at 4:34 AM
June 2, 2008
Building Hype
On the Media
Ever notice that sophisticated architectural renderings make construction projects look impossibly attractive. Exactly, says Dwell senior editor Geoff Manaugh, who blogs at bldgblog.blogspot.com. That's precisely the point.
Atlantic Yards watchdogs have been well schooled by Frank Gehry's rendering team in the art of making folks believe that the controversial megaproject:
- will hardly be noticed,
- isn't really very big at all, or
- is so magnificent that who cares what it looks like in the context of its surroundings.
Posted by lumi at 4:58 AM
May 31, 2008
Gehry's Beekman Tower Gets Presented, Goes Street
Curbed
The gang from developer Forest City Ratner met last night with folks living near their new Frank Gehry- designed luxury rental tower—the crinkled steel colossus at 8 Spruce Street also known as the Beekman Tower—and they brought along a nifty PowerPoint presentation to share more info about the underway project. Lower Manhattan's wavy wonder has already picked up a major endorsement, so it was nice to get the full scoop. But before getting into the nitty-gritty of the construction and the community benefits and the move-ins and all that fun stuff, can we take a moment to reflect on that Beekman/Gehry logo seen above? It was strange enough when Ian Schrager unveiled his high-brow interpretation of graffiti at the trés chic 40 Bond, but now Bruce Ratner and Frank Gehry want street cred? Guys, at least save it for Brooklyn!
Posted by amy at 9:52 AM
Looking Skyward in Lower Manhattan
NY Times
NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF thinks that it's a hard knocks life for Frank Gehry in New York, as project after project is dumped or "disfigured by an enormous logo."
His plan for the colossal Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn remains a pet target of grass-roots activists.
But all is not lost from cute little protests! The Beekman Tower forges on!
The design has evolved through an unusual public-private partnership. In an agreement with New York education officials, the tower’s developer, Forest City Ratner, agreed to incorporate a public elementary school into the project. Forest City was responsible for the construction of the school; the Department of Education then bought the building from the developer. (Forest City was also a development partner in the new Midtown headquarters of The New York Times Company.)The Beekman Tower is thus a curious fusion of public and private zones.
All of FCR's dealings with the government seem to be curious...it would have been nice if the Times had started out being a little more curious about Atlantic Yards.
Posted by amy at 9:18 AM
May 29, 2008
It came from the Blogosphere...
Here's what they're saying in the blogosphere:
My Slice of Pizza, Tour De Brooklyn
After this weekend's Tour de Brooklyn, one more blogger thinks that Bruce Ratner's controversial "Atlantic Yards" project is an actual neighborhood.
Today, I went on the bike tour of Brooklyn. The borough president Marty Markovitz, in his true Brooklyn accent, started us off. The tour went through a rainbow of neighborhoods: Atlantic yards, Crown Heights, Bed-Sty, Eastern Parkway, Bushwick, and curiously the Navy yard.
Bodega, And the Lil Debbie Award Goes to.....
BODEGA always pays homage to where it is due and deserved. We are awarding the Lil Debbie cake award to Addy & Ferro (our 2nd home) . Standing out can sometimes be a challenge, but this 3 year old Fort Greene based boutique has been standing strong and continues to bring the community fly threads.... Addy is also known for being heavily involved in the community, putting together book drives for children, supporting a NON Atlantic Yards, and pushing people to vote...for Obama (you can register there!).
Gray Wolf's Howl, Will Columbia Take Manhattanville?
From an article explaining the history of the Manhattanville fight against Columbia University's expansion and abuse of eminent domain:
Given the community’s misgivings about the Columbia plan, it’s not surprising that many expansion opponents have connected with residents of two other New York neighborhoods where huge development projects—Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Willetts Point in Queens—have sparked backlash against the use of eminent domain.
Daily Kos, In local news
Sometimes, in my rage at the Federal administration, I forget that local politics has its own fair share of disgrace. Case in point: the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
In case you didn't know, for the last few years Brooklyn has been victim to a rash of eminent domain abuse by the city and the development company Forest City Ratner. The company has enlisted architect Frank Gehry to design a vast mess of construction to sit on top of the rail yards at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, as well as on top of the former sites of many perfectly good residential buildings. The centerpieces of the project are to be a massive tower once known as Miss Brooklyn, and an arena for the Brooklyn Nets (currently the New Jersey Nets).
Of course, this is all financed by the usual shell game involved in pro sports construction.
Two architectural blogs recap the recent article from Architectural Record:
mimdap.org, Gehry, Atlantic Yards’ta yapacağı kulelerin boyunu kısalttı
Atlantic Yards bölgesinde 700 000 metrekarelik karma kullanımı bulunduran New York City projesi, ilk günden çeşitli tartışmaları başlattı. Projenin simge binalarından olan Miss Brooklyn binasının yüksekliği 190 metreden 155 metreye indirildi.
architectsjournal.co.uk, Frank Gehry cuts back New York tower amid financial downturn
The signature building of the 800,000m2 development, called Miss Brooklyn, has been downsized by Gehry from 62m to 51m in height due to the tough economic climate, but campaigners still believe the development is too big for the area. It is pictured here in its latest iteration.
According to the Architectural Record in New York, the building's use has been changed from residential and office space to 65,00m2 of commercial space and even the name has altered. It will now be referred to as Building One.
Posted by lumi at 4:38 AM
May 23, 2008
Gehry Downsizes Tower Design for Atlantic Yards
Architectural Record
by C.J. Hughes
The architecture-business bible, perhaps inadvertently, hits the nail on the head.
Even Frank Gehry projects don’t seem to be immune to the current economic downturn.
Atlantic Yards, a 22-acre, 8-million-square-foot mixed-use New York City project that’s been mired in controversy from day one, is now scaling back its signature building, Miss Brooklyn, from 620 to 511 feet in height. Along with the downsizing comes a change in function: originally, the tower was to feature condos and offices, but the new design calls for just 650,000 square feet of commercial space. As such, developer Forest City Ratner Companies is also renaming it, from Miss Brooklyn, for the borough it will sit in, to the more prosaic Building One.
The high-rise has a completely new look. Previously, its facade was arrayed along relatively straight, clean lines, renderings show. Now, though, the glass-and-steel structure twists and tapers as it climbs, skewing its silver-colored panels at enough odd angles to suggest a house of cards. [Emphasis, ours]
NoLandGrab: Atlantic Yards suggests a house of cards in more ways than one.
Posted by eric at 8:25 PM
Two sides of Gehry
The Brooklyn Paper
From a letter to the editor by Municipal Art Society (MAS) President Kent Barwick about the group's love-hate relationship with Frank Gehry and Forest City Ratner:
The MAS criticized the Atlantic Yards proposal for its poor planning and the total failure of its public and private sponsors to meaningfully engage the public. The MAS presented an award to the IAC building because it was selected by an independent jury as one of the best new buildings in New York City.
The fact that both projects are designed by the same architect is immaterial. In the same awards ceremony, we honored Forest City Ratner, the developer of the Atlantic Yards project, by naming the New York Times Building one of the best new buildings in the city.
Posted by lumi at 5:22 AM
May 21, 2008
Gehry's dutiful B1 charade and the marketing of naming rights
Atlantic Yards Report
In for a dime, in for a dollar--or many, many thousands of them. The opportunity to build his first arena, and maybe even "a neighborhood practically from scratch", means starchitect Frank Gehry dutifully participated in a charade over the name of the flagship Atlantic Yards tower, which is now--as predicted by me and NoLandGrab--up for a naming rights sponsorship.
Posted by eric at 9:51 AM
Brooklyn's Her Maiden Name: Ratner Offering Naming Deal for Atlantic Yards' Tallest Tower
The NY Observer
by Eliot Brown
Here's one we called a couple weeks ago:
Bruce Ratner is looking for a new name for the signature office tower in his $4 billion-plus Atlantic Yards project.
The Frank Gehry-designed tower was known as “Miss Brooklyn” until it was shrunk, redesigned and re-unveiled in April under a new, more staid moniker: “B1.” It turns out that that name, too, may change, should developer Forest City Ratner, led by Mr. Ratner, find a tenant eager enough to attach its name to the building.
NoLandGrab: "Find a tenant eager enough to attach its name to the building?" Forest City would be happy enough just to find a tenant that wanted space in the building, since it won't break ground until it has leases for at least 50% of "B1."
Posted by eric at 9:25 AM
May 19, 2008
Not Mr. Gehry's neighbourhood?
A Frank Gehry-designed arena complex in Brooklyn is a target in New Yorkers's favourite blood sport - real estate
Toronto Globe and Mail
By now, surely, Frank Gehry is inured to the revulsion of others. After wrestling with the Spanish over his whimsical Guggenheim Bilbao museum, with Angelenos over his blindingly reflective Walt Disney Concert Hall, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over leaks in a $300-million complex he designed there, and with his own neighbours over his chain-link-fence-adorned house in Santa Monica, the 79-year-old Canadian-born architect is now one of the primary targets of community activists over the gargantuan Atlantic Yards development in downtown Brooklyn, of which he is the chief architect.
Conceived more than four years ago when developer Bruce Ratner purchased the New Jersey Nets and announced his intention to move them to Brooklyn, Atlantic Yards was envisioned as an instant neighbourhood: a 16-building, nine-hectare complex that would throw down an 18,000-seat basketball arena, thousands of luxury condos, low-income housing, and eight office towers.
The only problem was, there was already a neighbourhood there.
Posted by lumi at 4:24 AM
May 16, 2008
A SUITE GROWS IN, UM, MANHATTAN
ESPN The Magazine
by Otto Strong
The New Jersey Nets took one step closer to Brooklyn Thursday, even if the stopover came in the form of a showroom high above midtown. Team brass rolled out a living, breathing life-size version of what the suite experience will look and feel like in a new sales center on the 38th floor of The New York Times building.
The Celtics may have this season's Big Three, but the the Big Three who served as MCs for Thursday night's event—Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Nets owners Bruce Ratner and Jay-Z—brought the one liners with them.
...Jay-Z was announced to be the first owner of a "bunker suite," one of 12 "event level" spaces that actually has no direct view of the courts, but is tucked between the home and visting teams locker rooms. At 500-square feet, these suites are larger than many Manhattan apartments. And at $540,000, they're just about as expensive, too. Aside from having a sophisticated décor that rivals trendier dwellings in the city, these suites include private bathrooms, multiple flat panel HD-LCD TVs and even a regulation pool table. Also included are eight courtside seats per suite, ya know, just in case you feel like checking out LeBron in person.
NoLandGrab: We're pretty certain that Forest City Ratner misses the irony of selling "bunker suites" in an arena that they swore was completely secure — before they re-designed it to eliminate most of the not-so-safe-looking glass façade.
Posted by eric at 2:09 PM
The Kitchen Sink
The Brooklyn Paper
Boroughwide: Hypocrisy alert! Our friends at the Municipal Art Society — who opposed the Frank Gehry-designed Atlantic Yards project — seem to have no problem with the starchitect’s IAC Building on the West Side of Manhattan. The Society just awarded Gehry as a co-winner (with Renzo Piano) of its MASterwork award for best new building. We wonder if they’ll do the same for Miss Brooklyn when (or, more accurately, if) she’s built at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic. …
article [scroll down]
Posted by eric at 2:03 PM
May 14, 2008
So, who's #77 on the Observer's 100 most powerful people in NY real estate list?
Atlantic Yards Report
For those of you who think that the all-too-powerful real estate industry pulls most of New York City's levers (is there anyone who doesn't think that?), a ray of light has emerged: it's a man, it's a journalist/blogger, it's Norman Oder!
According to the New York Observer's quite arbitrary list of the 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate, Bruce Ratner is #8, Frank Gehry is #51, and I am number #77.
While the listing is flattering, I can't say they have me convinced. For example, Charles Bagli, the veteran real estate/development reporter for the New York Times--and formerly at the Observer--does not appear on the list and he's way more powerful than I am. (Despite my criticisms of his AY coverage, he's a very able reporter.) And I am not more powerful than Nicolai Ouroussoff, the Times's architecture critic, at #85, nor Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, chair of the Assembly's Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, at #89; he has the power to grill public officials. And where's Julia Vitullo-Martin of the Manhattan Institute, a savvy and provocative commentator?
NoLandGrab: Like some modern-day Lincoln Steffens (or Fremont Older), Oder has raked the muck caking Atlantic Yards, and in so doing, has exposed the project's seamy underside like no other journalist.
Posted by eric at 9:55 AM
May 12, 2008
Closing Bell: Ratner, Gehry, Pool Barge Win Awards
Brownstoner.com
by Sarah Ryley
Forest City Ratner and Frank Gehry were cited by the Municipal Art Society, but no, the awards weren't for the new renderings of Atlantic Yards.
The Municipal Art Society announced last week the winners of its seventh annual MASterwork Awards, and three Brooklyn heavy hitters made the list. Renzo Piano's New York Times building, built by Forest City Ratner, and Frank Gehry's IAC Building won for best buildings. While both buildings are in Manhattan, Ratner is the developer of the controversial Atlantic Yards area and high-rise megaproject and that place where there's a Target, and Atlantic Yards is designed by Frank Gehry. The Floating Pool lady, moored at the future Brooklyn Bridge Park last summer (and now in the Bronx), won for best neighborhood catalyst along with The New Museum. Diane von Furstenberg's DVF Studio Headquarters in the Meatpacking District and the Museum at Eldridge Street won for best historic renovation.
Posted by eric at 11:05 PM
May 9, 2008
‘Miss Brooklyn’ Renamed & Reconsidered
NY Sun
by James Gardner
The Sun's architectural critic thinks the new renderings of Atlantic Yards (or at least a portion of the project) are an upgrade over the previous version.
Forest City Ratner has this week released the latest plans for its contentious development of the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, more specifically for the parcel of its 22 acres that faces the southwest, looking past the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. In an architectural context that tends, over time, to drag all things down in the direction of safe and unassuming mediocrity, these plans, from the studio of Frank Gehry, have the distinction of being even bolder than the initial ones and, in some senses, a little better.
But...
With the release of these latest renderings, we finally have some sense of what the Atlantic Yards might actually look like completed. But a great deal could happen between now and then, and the plans could change dramatically in the next few months.
Posted by eric at 9:40 AM
May 8, 2008
Atlantic Yards Reboot Poll: Miss Brooklyn or B1?
Curbed.com
Curbed lets you play American Idol, Starchitecture edition.
On the left, we have Frank Gehry's original Miss Brooklyn, released almost exactly two years ago. On the right, is the new contender, the unfortunately named B1, released this morning. Whether B2 or Mr. Flatbush are coming in 12-24 months is unknown, but B1 is the latest Atlantic Yards thinking.
Which is better, Miss Brooklyn or B1?
NoLandGrab: Commenter #7 had this to say: "B1! The name harks back to the bomber that never worked, and the perfect defense against a terror attack is a building that already looks blown up!"
Posted by eric at 7:52 AM
Closing Bell: Gehry's Arena Turns Blue
Brownstoner
The arena has been altered as well, and now it's blue! Per a press release from developer Forest City Ratner's people: "The Barclays Center, the future home of the NBA Nets franchise, has also received an updated design. Frank Gehry’s swooping blue metallic exterior surrounds the Center and is in keeping with his world-renown distinctive style."
We've posted some of those other world-renowned buildings. Notice that Brooklyn's metal is the least bend-y.
Posted by lumi at 6:36 AM
May 7, 2008
Frank Gehry's new Miss Brooklyn- B1
Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compass
The litany of Frank Gehry's real-world design bloopers sets the stage for one critic's pan of the latest designs for three buildings in the 17-building Atlantic Yards complex.
“B1” is a monstrosity- it looks like a child was building a diorama for a school project when someone bumped into the table before glue set. How the public is even supposed to tell what is what amazes me- I have a trained eye and I can’t make out what the mass of toothpicks at the base of the structure is. I am insulted that Gehry is attempting to use vapid, hollow artist statements to justify a design that he clearly wasn’t expecting to have to defend.
Gehry's defense of the red and pink horror (B2) that towers beside the gold cardboard-box was one of the most patronizing statements I’ve heard issued from the FCR/Gehry camp. The pink and red is supposedly there to “speak to the residential fabric of the neighborhood.” And we, as Brooklynites, are not supposed to know any better, because clearly we do not understand art, and this is great; the man understands our residential fabric! Clearly he understands it better than myself, because last time I looked around the Atlantic Yards footprint, I saw brownstones, row houses, limestone and granite facades and accents. But then again, I’m not even sure if Frank Gehry has even been in Brooklyn.
Posted by lumi at 6:43 AM
May 6, 2008
Give heave-ho to 'Lego' building, say Atlantic Yards critics
NY Daily News
by Jotham Sederstrom
Call it a scrap heap, a life-size land of Legos or, as one critic described it, a post-apocalyptic nightmare - just don't call it fit for Kings County.
One day after the release of scaled-back new designs for the controversial Atlantic Yards project, New Yorkers took a bite out of the spiraling, Lego-like remake of the signature 620-foot Miss Brooklyn building.
"You're kidding, right?" said Anthony Lomastro, 62, when shown renderings of the wild-eyed, glass-and-steel skyscraper, now called Building One. "That looks like it's falling down instead of going up. It's awful."
Posted by eric at 11:19 AM
Decoding the FCR press release on Site 5, the arena, and "Building 1"
Atlantic Yards Report
Who killed Site 5?
The Forest City Ratner press release that followed yesterday's Daily News exclusive confirms some things only hinted at in the coverage.
Notably, the building at Site 5 seems to have vanished, the arena would be surrounded with more metal than glass, and the billing of Building 1 (formerly called Miss Brooklyn) as slimmer still doesn't obscure the fact that it would be nearly twice as bulky as the Williasmburgh Savings Bank, one foot taller at 512 feet.
And Frank Gehry, under the control of the developer's p.r. department, gushes about the potential for the flagship tower, though he avoids calling it, as he did two years ago, "my ego trip."
Also, despite developer Bruce Ratner's statement in a press release that "we mark a significant chapter in Atlantic Yards’ progress," the new image gallery released yesterday is significantly less ambitious than the one released nearly two years ago, in May 2006, given that it includes only three buildings, omits Site 5, and omits any designs for Phase 2.
The failure to produce any more images casts further doubt on the developer's plans for the project at large.
Posted by eric at 10:15 AM
DDDB PRESS RELEASE: New Frank Gehry Atlantic Yards Design:
"Ridiculous" Design Has No Impact on Stalled Project
Renderings Only Show Phase 1 of Project
Leaving Out Bulk of "Affordable" Housing
BROOKLYN, NY— Today Forest City Ratner and its architect Frank Gehry released new designs for a portion of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards proposal in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The architectural renderings show a new design for the project’s proposed arena and 2 other buildings in Phase 1 of the project. But the developer shows no rendering at all for Phase 2--the larger part of the project--which is planned to encompass about 78% of the 2,250 "affordable" units. A State Funding Agreement provides no timeline whatsoever for Phase 2 and the developer has not provided a credible timeline for Phase 2.
"The new design from Frank Gehry is no better than the last--in reality it has gone from the absurd to the ridiculous aesthetically and programmatically," said Ron Shiffman, Professor, Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment and a New York City Planning Commissioner [1990-1996]. The fact that there isn’t a new design released for Phase 2 concerns me greatly. It seems like there is no plan for the bulk of the affordable housing, which would be in Phase 2. To destroy buildings of significant quality that could house people and jobs for what looks like an open-ended series of parking lots, rather than housing that could be affordable to low and moderate income area residents, is terrible planning and policy."
The New York Daily News published the Frank Gehry renderings as an exclusive. The paper reports that the so-called "Miss Brooklyn" signature skyscraper, is now called simply "Building 1." The reduction of that tower from 620 feet to 511 feet was announced as a "concession" on December 20, 2006 when the project was approved by the Public Authorities Control Board. Today marks the first time the reduction has been shown in a rendering. The rendering does not show the project’s massive scale as it relates to the surrounding neighborhood; its only context is a dark void explaining nothing about the projects context.
The NY Post published exclusive renderings from the Municipal Art Society (MAS) which show the project fully built out within the existing neighborhood context, as well as built only in part (an arena. and one building) surrounded by newly demolished, blighting parking lots. Apparently the MAS renderings were motivated by the March 21 NY Times interview with Mr. Ratner where the developer described the trouble he was having getting his project off the ground.
"Mr. Gehry and Mr. Ratner can release redesigns of Atlantic Yards’s buildings every week if they’d like, but that wouldn’t respond to the core reasons for the widespread opposition to the project," said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn spokesman Daniel Goldstein. "The new designs are a fantasy. The project lacks committed financing (including tax-free housing bonds and a bond for the arena), an anchor tenant, and the land needed for the project, while Ratner faces vigorous litigation, a frightening credit market and exponential increases in construction costs. His project is in serious jeopardy. So when he says he ‘anticipates’ it will be completed in 2018, it's simply not credible. It means nothing."
DEVELOP DON'T DESTROY BROOKLYN leads a broad-based community coalition fighting for development that will unite our communities instead of dividing and destroying them DDDB is 501c3 non-profit corporation supported by over 4,000 individual donors from the community.
#
Posted by lumi at 4:18 AM
May 5, 2008
Atlantic Yards Designer Revises Look For Miss Brooklyn
AHN.com
by Vittorio Hernandez
Aside from at least two new lawsuits, New York's Atlantic Yards project is again the talk of the town as the designer of the tower revised his masterpiece by lopping off 100 feet.
Miss Brooklyn, renamed as Building One, would be down to 511 feet from the original design by Frenk Gehry of 620 feet. The residential component has been removed also, leaving the development as a commercial office space venture.
Gehry explained the innovations he has introduced. "My enthusiasm for Atlantic Yards has grown and grown until arriving at our current design, which works better with the surrounding area that it ever had before," Gehry told the New York Daily News.
Posted by eric at 2:17 PM
Atlantic Yards' Miss Brooklyn is slashed more than 100 feet in massive redo
NY Daily News
By Jotham Sederstrom
Say bye-bye to Miss Brooklyn. She has been dumped for "Building 1" in these new designs released exclusively to the Daily News:
Miss Brooklyn, now called Building One, has been slimmed down and has become more festive, resulting in a very unique office building," he said.
"I've tried to give it some energy and excitement as it meshes with the arena design."
The 34-story structure - once expected to rise higher than the Williamsburgh Savings Bank - will now be dwarfed by it. The sleek Miss Brooklyn is replaced by an asymmetrical design that rises like a spiraling Lego structure, edges askew.
The glass-and-steel-framed building, seen as the centerpiece of the oft-stalled 22-acre project, will no longer house condos and instead will offer 650,000 square feet of office space, officials said.
The condos will be shifted to a different building or be built as rental units instead, said Forest City Ratner Executive Vice President MaryAnne Gilmartin.
Meanwhile, "B2," which will be completed first, is a red-and-pink-hued, 340-foot building featuring 350 market-rate and affordable apartments, which Gehry said "speaks to the residential fabric of the neighborhood."
The Daily News's online slideshow of the new Phase 1 designs contains some images of previous versions of Gehry's Atlantic Yards designs. Here are thumbnails of the new images — click to enlarge.
Atlantic Yards Report, New renderings show Miss Brooklyn cut (duh), renamed, "more festive," but questions unanswered
Norman Oder is first out of the gate with commentary on the new project images released this morning in the Daily News:
A Daily News exclusive today shows new renderings of the flagship Atlantic Yards tower but hints at many questions unanswered, notably the apparent dumping of a Phase 1 tower at Site 5 (see building at far left below), the continuing role of architect Frank Gehry, the plans for the proposed Urban Room, and new designs--apparently with less glass, a potential security issue--for the planned arena.
...the news is that the tower would be cut to 511 feet and feature commercial office space only, but neither is a surprise.
After all, the agreement to keep the tower shorter than the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower was announced as a "concession" on 12/20/06, to coincide with the approval of the project by the Public Authorities Control Board. And I reported in February on developer Forest City Ratner's apparent plans to make Miss Brooklyn an office tower only.
Oder tries to answer some of the hard questions that the News left on the table:
The Daily News reports that the building would include 650,000 square feet of office space, which is more than the 528,000 square feet described last October. Given that the building was once supposed to also include a hotel with 164,652 square feet, it's a good bet that the revised plans trade hotel space for office space.
...
If 30% of the apartments are to be affordable, that means 105 affordable apartments, with 42 of them low-income.While the article doesn't specify the location, Building 2 is at the northeast corner of Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue, according to the official Site Plan. According to the General Project Plan appoved by the Empire State Development Corporation, its maximum height was to be 322 feet. (That refers to the last occupiable floor, so the 340-foot figure may refer to rooftop mechanicals.)
Building 2 is supposed to open at the same time as the arena; the developer says 2010, but that seems highly speculative. Nor was the developer asked if the project would contain 16 towers, as approved, or 15, as hinted by yesterday.
Read the rest of the article for speculation about the "missing buildings" and the urban room.
Posted by lumi at 6:09 AM
May 1, 2008
Mirrors and Glass
Photographer Tasha O'Neill searches the world for reflections; her latest are in the buildings of Frank O. Gehry.
PacketOnline.com [Central NJ News]
By Ilene Dube
While Brooklynites brace themselves for architect Frank Gehry's vision for Brooklyn, there are local fans who are waiting in the wings to make a pilgrimage:
Enthusiasts — myself included — began making pilgrimages to the Basque region of Spain. In some ways resembling a large boat covered with titanium fish scales, the Bilbao Guggenheim’s design was said to be inspired by the architect’s memories of the live carp his Jewish grandmother brought home each week. She would keep it in her bathtub until time to make gefilte fish.
Gehry designs closer to home include the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Anondale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and the Stata Center at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. The latter made news last fall when MIT sued Gehry because leaks in the building led to cracked masonry, mold, backed-up drainage and falling ice and debris blocked emergency exits. Gehry fans among us eagerly await the completion of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, the addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and our very own Lewis Science Library on the Princeton University campus.
NoLandGrab: Sorry to flatten the fluff in your nutter, but Atlantic Yards isn't coming any time soon, and even if it does, Gehry will probably not be designing all the buildings, as was originally announced.
Posted by lumi at 5:00 AM
April 29, 2008
Ratner Speaks
Atlantic Yards Report and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn examine Bruce Ratner's interview on NY1 last night (transcript/video).
Atlantic Yards Report, Ratner lowers our architectural expections; will Gehry ease away?
Yes, the "news" (as hinted by the New York Observer) from the fairly gentle profile NY1 ran last night of Bruce Ratner is that the Atlantic Yards developer is talking populism, not Gehry-ism:
“We need jobs, we need shopping that's appropriate and the right price and quality goods, we need supermarkets that provide food that is of quality and well-priced, we need housing, and you know what? The architecture is important, but it's not that important,” says Ratner.
"I want to do great architecture, but I have to say something, which is that, if one is going to boil life down to architecture, then you know what? It's not for me,” he adds.
Interviewer Budd Mishkin, host of the "One On 1" series, didn't raise the suggestion, but to me it hinted as a potential estrangement from Frank Gehry. (Gehry's not mentioned at all in the piece, though models of his buildings are evident and, of course, such video segments are edited.)
After all, Ratner not so long ago was emphasizing his commitment to architecture:
"I’ve been talking for ten years about trying to use ‘design architects’ instead of ‘developer architects," he told New York magazine's Kurt Andersen in 2005. (Citation below.)
Gehry's never designed an arena, so to him that may be the prime lure of the Atlantic Yards commission. Given that most of the project, including the Miss Brooklyn tower (which Gehry called "my ego trip"), has been delayed and layoffs have occurred in Gehry's office, it's possible that Gehry--who has publicly said that typically he'd bring in other architects to work with him--sees a light at the end of the tunnel.
If so, Ratner is now talking about housing and jobs and big box shopping, not architecture.
(The profile offered a look at Ratner in his earlier days as well as a reasonable survey of his life and career.)
NoLandGrab: If starchitect Frank Gehry only designs the arena, then even Gehry detractors might start missing the old guy. The prospect for interesting architecture will become very dim — think MetroTech in the middle of Brownstone Brooklyn.
DDDB.net, Breaking: Ratner Eats East River Fish, Says He's "Progressive"
Develop Don't Destroy got a hearty chuckle from last night's interview. The community group ran the disco-era photo of Bruce Ratner and noted that the self-proclaimed "progressive" ate the fish he caught out of the East River.
NY1 did this fluff job on controversial Atlantic Yards demolition man Bruce Ratner. Some might say it was even hagiographic.
Ratner wants to make sure you know that he is a "progressive." He is so "progressive" that he makes sure to tell the interviewer, Budd Mishkin, that he is "progressive," and Budd tells the viewers that Bruce is "progressive." He also understands the opposition to his project because....their concerns "are not inappropriate," and people have the right to their opinions.
NoLandGrab: Ratner boasted of catching a striped bass, which is migratory and doesn't actually live in the East River, so might not be all that bad for eating, if you want to take your chances. Then again, it must have been a quite big striper because, currently, they have to be at least 28" to be a keeper.
Posted by lumi at 5:46 AM
L.A.'s Grand Avenue project snags on loans
LA Times
By Cara Mia DiMassa
The other Frank Gehry-designed megaproject is also stalling out:
The developer of the Grand Avenue project in downtown Los Angeles said Monday that completion of the $3-billion redevelopment effort will be delayed until 2012 because of difficulty in obtaining construction loans amid the real estate downturn.
The Frank Gehry-designed high-rise project is seen as a linchpin in downtown's revitalization, and the delay is the latest sign that the loft and condo craze in the city center is cooling off.
...
Grand Avenue is one of several mega-developments around the nation that are in trouble because of the credit crunch. In Seattle, developers recently shelved plans for a $7-billion development downtown, citing the poor economy. Huge projects in Las Vegas, Phoenix and New York have also been scaled back or delayed, including part of the Gehry-designed Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and a $14-billion development of the area around Penn Station.
Posted by lumi at 4:56 AM
April 26, 2008
Layoffs at Frank Gehry's firm have L.A. architects on edge
L.A. Now
One Gehry architect told LA Now today that 23 workers were laid off in the firm's Venice office in response to the delay in the giant Atlantic Yards project in New York and the slowing economy. On Thursday, Curbed LA reported a rumor that 80 people had lost their jobs. Gehry's firm, for its part, is not talking, failing to respond to several e-mails and phone calls today.What's for sure is that architects, along with real estate developers and builders, are seeing business drop off steeply, with no end in sight. Says Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne:
"I think it's likely certain big firms around town will have to take similar action; even foreign investors flush with capital, which have been keeping a few high-stakes projects here from collapsing, are starting to look wary of investing in the U.S. All the same, Gehry's is a special case: The sheer scale of the firm's Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn -- not to mention Grand Avenue, Abu Dhabi and other mega-commissions around the world -- meant it had to expand over the last few years to an unprecedented degree. Staffing levels there really had nowhere to go but down."
Posted by amy at 10:59 AM
April 18, 2008
Miss Brooklyn monologues
The Brooklyn Paper, Letter to the Editor
To the editor,
I have shown sketches of Frank Gehry’s “Miss Brooklyn” tower to dozens of people and almost everyone who sees it sees what I see: a vagina-shaped entrance that makes it appear that Miss Brooklyn is squatting on her knees at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues (“Gehry to Brooklyn Paper: Miss Brooklyn ain’t dead — in fact, she’s hotter than ever,” Web exclusive, April 4).
I think Gehry’s frontal design is, to put it discreetly, simply naughty. Could he be pulling this satirical trick on us similar to his “Ginger Rogers–Fred Astaire” building in Prague?
Could all of the people who have seen the rendering — architects, designers, students and faculty of design — be crazy?
Brent Porter, Clinton Hill
The writer is an architect and professor at Pratt Institute.
Posted by lumi at 5:14 AM
April 16, 2008
Answers About Brooklyn Architecture
City Room (The New York Times Blog)
Diana Lind, author of "Brooklyn Modern: Architecture, Interiors & Design," answers questions from readers. She most definitely has not drunk The Times's Kool-Aid when it comes to Atlantic Yards.
Q: Speaking of Atlantic Yards, what does Ms. Lind think of this megadevelopment, and its potential effects on Brooklyn life?
— Posted by matt
A: Living in Fort Greene half a block from Atlantic Avenue, I’ve thought a lot about the Atlantic Yards project and its potential impact on life in Brooklyn. Certainly the site merits some kind of development, but I’m opposed to the Ratner plan as it stands now for a few reasons. I take umbrage at the project’s vast, uninterrupted scale; its street closings; its miserable sense of public space (when was the last time you threw a Frisbee on a private building’s lawn?); and most recently, revelations of its more than $2 billion worth of tax write-offs and subsidies from the government, according to the New York Post. Though the project has promoted the fact that it’s going to create jobs and housing, the scheme of using public money to finance this endeavor sounds like robbing Peter and Paul to pay Mary (sorry, the pope’s coming to town).
But I also have aesthetic qualms with the project. I don’t think any one architect should be in charge of designing 22 acres of any city. In a March 21 article by the New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, the project’s uncertain status is lamented. Mr. Ourousoff points to the importance of great planning projects like Rockefeller Center (roughly the same size as Atlantic Yards). But Rockefeller Center was developed by a team of architects; Atlantic Yards will not be. Gehry is good at what he does, and as others have noted his voluptuous style would nicely contrast with the phallic bank building, but more than seven million square feet of his outlandish style (of any architect’s style) starts to look pretty tacky and boring, no matter the context.
So, if the project goes ahead as it’s planned now, how this will affect life in Brooklyn? A lot. Irreversibly. It will complete Brooklyn’s transformation from a post-industrial residential borough to a city unto itself and will extend Downtown Brooklyn to Fort Greene, Prospect Heights and Boerum Hill.
Spending time in Brooklyn now, one senses the borough’s promise and mutability. When and if Atlantic Yards is completed, I think many people will feel an enormous opportunity was lost on a not particularly innovative project. If I were in charge of the development site, I’d scrap the plan, build a platform over the railyards, and auction off small parcels of the site to varied developers, cultural organizations and schools. The diversity of approaches to the parcels would mimic the city’s naturally haphazard development process and allow for more community involvement.
NoLandGrab: Better hurry up and take a screen shot of this piece, since we don't think we'll be seeing such unvarnished criticism of Atlantic Yards in the pages of the Times's print edition any time soon.
Atlantic Yards Report, Answers About Brooklyn Architecture, criticism of AY
Norman Oder must must have been rendered speechless, since he posted the passage we cited above sans comment.
Posted by eric at 12:21 PM
Is Frank going Gehrazy?
International starchitect and Atlantic Yards designer Frank Gehry is no longer suffering from the run-of-the-mill diva complex. Recent comments from critics and the master himself make us wonder if he's gone off the deep end.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn concludes that Gehry sounds "fed up" in comments made at Yale University. Maybe he's fed up, or could it be paranoia?
“Cities are filled with bad buildings and nobody complains,” he said. “But if I do a building, there’s all sorts of protests.”
Such opposition has presented hurdles for Gehry’s work — including the plan for the massive Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn that he first presented some five years ago and that has since changed dramatically.
“I’m supposedly doing 20 or 30 buildings in Brooklyn, but at this point I doubt if it’ll ever all happen,” Gehry acknowledged on Friday.
Either Gehry is being blasé, or he's really losing count of how many buildings he's designing for the largest single-source private development project in NYC history. Typically, regular folks try to mask early signs of dementia.
Gehry is clearly in denial, as most narcissists are, in this quote run by New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer:
Have they got things against me?” he asked. “No, it’s against Bruce. You know, when Bilbao was in the model stage, when I was presenting it, I went to Bilbao and there were 300, 400 people with little candles stretched out in three rows, and I had to walk through them to get into the building, and they were protesting me. They published a fatwa in the paper saying ‘Kill the American architect.’ So I’m sort of used to it.” He also suspects his critics will become converts. “Now I go to Bilbao and they kiss me,” he said. “I think the same thing will happen here.”
Selophane.blog gets to the point:
Now Frank Gehry has envisioned himself as the new Pope, when working ex-catia he is a man that can do no wrong.
Dearest Frank:
We don't know whatever gave you the impression that we don't appreciate all that you are trying to do for us. Please know that we all LOVE you and that we're truly sorry and saddened that you feel this way. We understand that creating a "neighborhood practically from scratch" is hard work and you have to be a supergenius, like yourself, to do it. Everyone knows that your Atlantic Yards design has captured the "body language of Brooklyn," so please don't give up on us now.
xoxo
Posted by lumi at 4:47 AM
April 14, 2008
At 79, miracle-worker Gehry still going strong
Yale Daily News
by Paul Needham
Frank Gehry, Atlantic Yards starchitect, lectured at Yale last Thursday. Among his observations of a life in architecture is this assessment of the state of Atlantic Yards:
“I’m supposedly doing 20 or 30 buildings in Brooklyn, but at this point I doubt if it’ll ever all happen,” Gehry acknowledged on Friday.
NoLandGrab: Sometimes, less is more.
Posted by steve at 6:00 AM
April 2, 2008
The New Gehry Residence in Los Angeles
Here's a really good item we missed yesterday about Atlantic Yards starchitect Frank Gehry's latest creative turn:
It is not often that an architecture master reinvents himself, but that is precisely what Pritzker Prize winning architect Frank Gehry has done. Gehry, who first won international recognition with his own residence, a masterpiece of post-modern architecture, has revealed what can only be described as the first post post-modern architectural work, the New Gehry Residence, completely confounding both his critics and promoters alike.
The New Gehry Residence is located in a nearby suburb of Los Angeles is the newest reinvention of Gehry’s signature architecture. The house, which seems to resemble your typical two story McMansion, has all the details that one would expect from his work. The odd shapes resting one on top of the other seem to look like a gable roof, but are in fact so complex, that it took NASA engineers, and builder and his crew, 6 months to make them work. “We couldn’t get them to work together” said one of NASA’s chief engineers. “When Frank asked us to have the larger shape be nested on top of the other two, we new that this was going to be challenge.”
But wait, there's more!
Posted by lumi at 4:20 AM
March 25, 2008
Ouroussoff's Gehry defense was more "hero worship" than civic concern
Atlantic Yards Report
So what exactly did New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff mean last Friday when he counted himself among "we" opponents of the Atlantic Yards project?
I observed that "more likely, he’s an opponent of [architect Frank] Gehry’s vision being stymied." Indeed, more of that perspective emerged in a Sunday essay headlined Nice Tower! Who’s Your Architect? that also involves a Gehry project for Forest City Ratner.
Writing about the architect's Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan, Ouroussoff, with satisfaction recounted how Gehry got over on the big developer:
Some architects were able to work around conventional real estate wisdom by forging exteriors that would impose a specific experience on the interior spaces. By the time the consultants at Forest City Ratner, the developer behind Mr. Gehry’s Beekman building, realized that the wrinkled walls of the architect’s tower would be mirrored inside the apartments, for example, it was too late to change without a costly reworking of the design.
Posted by lumi at 4:47 AM
March 21, 2008
What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn?
The NY Times
By Nicolai Ouroussoff
Frank Gehry fan and Times architecture critic Nicky O digests the grim realities of Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards plan:
The growing possibility that much of the multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn will be scrapped because of a lack of financing may be a bitter pill for its developer, Forest City Ratner. But it’s also a painful setback for urban planning in New York.
So if the decision to proceed with an 18,000-seat basketball arena but to defer or eliminate the four surrounding towers is defensible from a business perspective, it also feels like a betrayal of the public trust.
Mr. Gehry conceived of this bold ensemble of buildings as a self-contained composition — an urban Gesamtkunstwerk — not as a collection of independent structures. Postpone the towers and expose the stadium, and it becomes a piece of urban blight — a black hole at a crucial crossroads of the city’s physical history. If this is what we’re ultimately left with, it will only confirm our darkest suspicions about the cynical calculations underlying New York real estate deals.
After offering an unsubstantiated narrative about Gehry's evolving aspirations for the project, including one careless claim about the eastern portion adhering "to the street grid" (they are, in fact, superblocks), Ouroussoff concludes:
No development at all would be preferable to building the design that is now on the table. What’s maddening is how few options opponents seem to have.
We could wage a public campaign to stop it. We could pray that Forest City Ratner comes up with more money. But given that the city approved the plan, we cannot prevent the developer from building the arena. Nor is there any way of preventing Forest City from selling off pieces of the property to other investors, who could then come up with any design they liked, as long as they abided by zoning and density guidelines.
Mr. Gehry, on the other hand, could walk away.
NoLandGrab: "We COULD wage a public campaign to stop it." Why didn't we think of that?
Regarding the public outcry, it would seem like a good time for BrooklynSpeaks to get behind public sentiment and strongly reject Atlantic Yards, which is pretty much gonna be an arena with an enormous "temporary" surface parking lot.
As for Gehry, we've been saying for a long time that this project was going to be a blight on the aging starchitect's legacy. Now that mission creep has set in, any "legitimate architectural hero" would get out before it's too late.
Posted by lumi at 6:05 AM
Times critic Ouroussoff says Gehry should pull out of the truncated “eyesore” AY may become
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder illustrates the evolution of The Times's achitecture critic's position on Atlantic Yards, and corrects the record on a few items in the "elegy" for the project:
After an initial column praising Atlantic Yards, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff in June 2006 wrote a more pensive if hardly tough assessment of the project, taking up the cause of architect Frank Gehry, lamenting his lack of sway with developer Bruce Ratner and the failure of the government to plan for open space.
Six months ago, Ouroussoff was predicting a redesign for Phase One of Atlantic Yards, one that would reveal whether “Brooklyn will receive a dazzling 21st-century version of Rockefeller Center.” It never emerged.
Now that financing troubles (and more) have slowed the project significantly, reducing it to an arena at first, Ouroussoff has written something of an elegy, urging Gehry to leave the project, predicting blight (!), and even seeming to emerge as a project opponent.
Posted by lumi at 6:03 AM
March 14, 2008
Another Ratner lie! Gehry was not ‘born in Brooklyn’
The Brooklyn Paper reports on Ratner's latest lie, one that was originally exposed by Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report:
Gehry’s birthplace would not be all that newsworthy were it not for the fact that Ratner touted Gehry’s supposed Brooklyn origin as evidence of his 16-skyscraper project’s outer-borough roots.
But Gehry was born in Toronto. In Canada.
The lie was hiding in plain sight on Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Web since at least 2004. The Web page — www.atlanticyards. com/html/ay/gehry.html — said that Gehry was “born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929.”
...
Journalist Norman Oder said the lie “can’t be an honest mistake,” citing architecture critic D.J. Huppatz, who once pointed out, “the born-in-Brooklyn connection [is] a fabrication designed to further make the Gehry design palatable to the local community.”
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn spokesperson Dan Goldstein makes a good point:
“If they manipulate basic, easily proven facts, it’s not hard to imagine what they do with more opaque, easily manipulated facts like their convoluted financing scheme, ‘affordable housing’ plan, and their overall claims about the project’s ‘public benefit.’”
Here's Forest City Ratner spokesperson Loren Riegelhaupt's best defense:
Forest City Ratner spokesman Loren Riegelhaupt admitted the error, but said, “The reality is that it was simply a miscommunication between his office and ours. He evidently lived in Brooklyn briefly at one point, but was not born here. We apologize for any confusion and have corrected the Web page.”
NoLandGrab: The irony is that Ratner promotes someone who had lived in Brooklyn for around a year as a baby as being from Brooklyn, while Atlantic Yards supporters consider someone who has lived in Brooklyn two decades, a newcomer.
Back in February, we dared Ratner to tell the truth about something, anything! The offer still stands.
Posted by lumi at 5:11 AM
March 8, 2008
A Portrait of the Architect as Artist: Frank Gehry in New York
Critical Cities (via Core77)
Gehry’s centerpiece skyscraper of the Yards, the unfortunately named “Miss Brooklyn”, is a “curvaceous” glass tower (of frosted glass perhaps?) and seems the most formally interesting of the 16 skyscrapers. Many of the other towers appear to be simply conventional high-rise condo boxes with a jaunty angle here and there. While Gehry has mastered the singular iconic building, it is hard to see how this will translate to urbanism on such a scale. The designs thus far suggest no radical rethinking of urban space and little thinking about the effects on the existing local community. The increased population density, combined with the absence of adequate parking, schools, hospitals or other social services to service such a huge influx of people, all confirm that the proposed Yards is an exercise in simply maximizing profit by squeezing in as many luxury apartments as possible.While Ratner’s basketball arena and the promise of NBA in Brooklyn is the sweetener to win over the local African-American community, commissioning starchitect Gehry seems to be a ploy to win over the design-conscious local gentrifiers. The website for the Atlantic Yards interestingly states the following for Gehry’s biography: “Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, Mr. Gehry and his family moved to California after living in Toronto, Canada, until he was 18.” The born-in-Brooklyn connection seems less an honest mistake than a fabrication designed to further make the Gehry design palatable to the local community. However, judging from the strong local opposition to the project (which even includes local anti-Gehry graffiti at the site), the ploy seems to have failed, and may yet damage the reputation of the rumpled genius, at least in Brooklyn.
Posted by amy at 10:00 AM
March 7, 2008
So, the claim that Gehry's Brooklyn-born comes from the AY web site
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder runs down the source of the bogus claim, found in court papers filed by Forest City Ratner, that architect Frank Gehry was born in Brooklyn.
I shouldn't have been so hard on Forest City Ratner attorney Jeffrey Braun, claiming in a 1/25/08 legal filing that architect Frank Gehry was born in Brooklyn. After all, the claim comes directly from the official Atlantic Yards web site.
...
Well, it can't be an honest mistake, can it? After all, the Atlantic Yards bio of Gehry links directly to the architect's Pritzker Prize bio, which states that he was born in Canada.
For more than two years, since Gehry stated his willingness to meet with Brooklynites but deferred to his client, and since he cracked that protesters "should've been picketing Henry Ford," Gehry's certainly lost some of his aura in Brooklyn.
Posted by steve at 8:03 AM
February 26, 2008
L.A.'s upscale downtown delayed
As the economy takes a toll on plans, observers focus their concern on two mega-projects: Grand Avenue and Park Fifth.
LA Times
By Cara Mia DiMassa
Frank Gehry's other urban mega-project, in Los Angeles, is being delayed:
More than a third of the approximately 110 residential projects proposed for downtown... have been delayed or put on hold amid the rocky real estate market.
Yet downtown boosters and urban planners are focusing most of their angst on two mega-projects: the Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue complex on Bunker Hill and Park Fifth, which would be the tallest residential complex west of Chicago.
Both projects have pushed back their start dates in recent months as developers sought capital and construction loans in an increasingly difficult market and negotiated the various government approvals needed to begin construction.
Posted by lumi at 6:49 PM
February 9, 2008
Knowing the landscape: how Miralles outpaced Gehry
Atlantic Yards Report looks at the differences between Gehry and another 'wavy' builder, Enrique Miralles, as seen by critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen in the Feb. 13 issue of The New Republic...
Goldhagen suggests the issue is not so much sculpture but landscape:
When these projects take off into curves, it is because Miralles and company decided that curves are what a particular architectural challenge evoked. There is no aggressive monumentality here, no cookie-cutter high-end product dumped wherever the money exists to pay for it. There is, instead, sensitivity and study. Miralles and his colleagues receptively investigated the landscape and the site. They considered when and how the people who were to use the structure or the landscape might live in, move through, and prospect space; how they might touch, and imagine touching, surfaces. Sure, they made use of computers to actualize their ideas. But their architecture neither starts nor stops with skin, or with what digital technology offers. Steeped in architecture's history, Miralles used architectural precedents when they offered reasonable solutions to problems that, in the words of Viennese modernist Adolf Loos, had already been solved. Steeped in art, nature, and local traditions, Miralles playfully engaged architecture's metaphorical possibilities.
Posted by amy at 10:04 AM
February 7, 2008
Real Estate Round-Up
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
This week's Round-Up notes the strange claim by Forest City Ratner that Frank Gehry is a Brooklyn native.
Forest City Ratner’s attorney may be trying to help the company change the future of Brooklyn, but he is also changing the past, according to the AtlanticYardsReport blog. The blog reported that in the case challenging an environmental review of the Atlantic Yards project, pre-appeals papers prepared by Ratner attorney Jeffrey Braun falsely claim project designer Frank Gehry to be a “Brooklyn native.” According to the blog, the line reads: “The project is being designed by Frank Gehry, a California-based Brooklyn native who is one of the preeminent American architects of our era.” By all other accounts, Gehry was born in Toronto, Canada, and now resides in Los Angeles, Calif.
The blog allows the mistake to be just that: an innocent mistake, which it probably is.
Posted by steve at 5:19 AM
February 6, 2008
Square Feet: A Plan to Open a 1980 Gehry Mall Design to the Air
The New York Times
by Terry Pristin
Frank Gehry won acclaim as an innovative architect when he redesigned his home in this beachside city. But another local Gehry design, the enclosed 1980 mall known as Santa Monica Place, has long been regarded as obsolete — a suburban-style shopping center that turns its back on a thriving urban corridor.
...The mall is often described as a “cork” that cuts off pedestrian traffic from the adjacent Third Street Promenade, a pedestrians-only shopping strip that has been hugely popular since it was refurbished in 1989. In redeveloping the mall, the original back door will be opened up, the steps will be replaced by a ramp, and brick pavers and jacaranda trees will be added, echoing those at the Promenade across the street.
NoLandGrab: Hmmm, "a suburban-style shopping center that turns its back" on the neighborhood. No wonder Frank and Bruce are such bosom (liberal, do-gooder) buddies.
Posted by eric at 4:48 PM
February 4, 2008
Forest City Ratner attorney claims Gehry as a Brooklyn native
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder spots a strange claim in Forest City legal papers.
It's a not-terribly relevant exaggeration, a sign perhaps of carelessness or litigation overkill, but Frank Gehry, the Toronto-born architect who said he was inspired by a Brooklyn bride, is apparently a Brooklynite, at least according to a Forest City Ratner attorney.
NoLandgrab: Would the monstrous Miss Brooklyn be any better if Gehry had spent his youth playing Johnny on the Pony and stoop ball?
Posted by steve at 7:05 AM
January 22, 2008
Before Gehry joined Ratner: "one architect" model was wrong way to go
Atlantic Yards Report
In February 2002, some months (presumably) before developer Bruce Ratner asked him to work alone on the Atlantic Yards project (and towers over the Atlantic Center mall), architect Frank Gehry suggested that a "one architect" model to build "sections of the city" was precisely the wrong way to go.
The video from the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference has just been posted. Gehry's musings on the issue began at about 12:28, under the "City building" segment.
...
The question is why he agreed; perhaps the opportunity to build his first arena, and a "neighborhood practically from scratch" trumped Gehry's qualms about the "one architect" model.The Regional Plan Association, using a somewhat different gloss on the term Gehry used, argued last May that Atlantic Yards shows we must get much better at "city building."
Posted by lumi at 5:18 AM
January 21, 2008
"Nice building. Then what?" Frank Gehry on TED.com
TED.com
Interview with Frank Gehry, February, 2002
Frank Gehry wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. But after blowing up a part of his house, at age 14, he decided against it. He's gone on to create some mindblowing buildings, including the Guggenheim at Bilbao and LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall. This wildly entertaining conversation with Richard Saul Wurman (then host of TED) touches on many topics, including the power of failure, the importance of collaboration, and the need for architects to bring personal expression to the table. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 22:00.)
Double-takes:
"When I came out of college, I started to try to do things contextually... and I tried to understand that language as a beginning as a place to jump off. There was so much of it being done by spec builders, it was trivialized so much, that I just stopped.... It didn't feel good to me."
"The issue of city building in democracy is interesting because it creates chaos. Everybody doing their things creates a very chaotic environment. If you can figure out how to work off each other, if you can get a bunch of people who respect each other's work and play off each other, you might be able to create models for how to build sections of the city without resorting to the one-architect (like the Rockefeller Center, model) model, which is kinda from another era."
[...or Atlantic Yards, which makes you wonder if Gehry gets much sleep these days.]
"Bilbao did not leak — I was so proud. The MIT project... sent the facilities people to Bilbao... they were there for three days and it rained everyday. They kept walking around, I noticed they were looking under things... they wanted to know where the buckets were hidden. I was clean, there wasn't a bloody leak in the place — it was fantastic. Well, up until every building leaked."
[Uh, oh...]
Posted by lumi at 4:52 AM
January 1, 2008
The Paradoxes of Starchitecture
Picketing Henry Ford
Stuart Schrader examines the rise of the starchitect and explains how individual style contributes to commodification and banalization of their own work.
Is Gehry Gehryfying Tiffany’s when he loans (well, sells) his brand to the jewelry maker or is Tiffany’s Tiffanyfying Gehry? I suppose it’s both, to the detriment of the individuality of each.
Posted by lumi at 7:22 PM
December 30, 2007
Gehry és New York – szeretem, nem-szeretem
építészfórum
If anyone has Hungarian language skills, feel free to visit the blog directly. The best translation we could find (Babelfish does not include Hungarian!) goes something like this:
Regrettable , that Gehry eme quality not run into outcrop one other , afoot lev New York i his work során , the brooklyni Atlantic Yard in the event of. THE then kilenchektáros its territory stray felhkarcolócsoport Gehry yet biggest consignation , which through months trending disputations kereszttüzében she stood. ( last year the authority the concourse os reduction írták off , but the projection yet that way also gigantic ) The constructional negatived according to the lakótorony bite tow the Forte Greenwich and the Flyer Heights városrész amongst. Yet the development directional Bruce Ratnert substantiated , to that hintingly , that Gehry celebrities uses up the eleve he's bad planting presztízsének raising. THE Slate magazine posted Gehry nek solo candid epistolary Jonathan Lethem , the renowned penman this writes : " unable am was it worth , that such a passible man , than Your are , that it had been susceptible such censurable league kötni , whose definitely disastrous outgrowths they'll be "
This all makes sense when the title translates to the Borat-esque "do you like , not - do you like."
Posted by amy at 8:02 AM
MIT Sues Frank Gehry Over Buggy $300M CS Building
Slashdot
For anyone interested in what the smart kids have to say about working in a Gehry masterpiece, the MIT building was slashdotted. One former employee of the building had this to say after visiting:
The interior spaces are very architecturally interesting. But have so many bugs it is unbelievable. There is one meeting room where the walls are made with perforated plywood; this is a cool idea, but, regrettably, due to the mechanisms that human vision uses to fuse the images between the two eyes, the sea of holes makes people feel queasy in that room. The workspaces are part of a grand open-office design. The previous building where LCS/AI was housed was the antithesis of open design -- a series of small offices -- and it worked very well. With the new building, researchers and students spend more of their time at home, rather than in the building, because the lack of acoustic privacy in the open design makes it extremely difficult to get any research done. In another area, there are ledges high up in one two-story space that are visible only from the story above -- kind of interesting, but these ledges will never, ever be cleaned and are starting to accumulate a goodly layer of dust. This wouldn't be so bad, except that people entering that space from the elevator lobby are immediately faced with this grime.From what people intimately involved with the planning have told me, Geary approached the design of this building with astonishing hubris and disregard for any of the actual needs of the occupants. Interactions with him were often tense and acrimonious. Geary's willing ignorance of the real use of the building, rather than his imagined fantasy, shows. It's a cool looking structure that works very, very poorly as a research laboratory. Although few people who work there are willing to state it out loud, the rumblings are being felt that the decline of computer science research at MIT has in no small part been due to this negative influence of the building on daily worklife.
A current employee in the building was also not impressed:
There's a brief interview with Gehry in the film "My Architect" about Louis Kahn, and Gehry was interviewed in his architectural office, and it's as traditional as you could imagine: a big rectangular room with drafting tables. That settled it for me: it's not just hubris; he's an asshole. He sits in his comfortable space and designs expensive torture chambers; there's a Gehry-designed level of hell awaiting him.
Posted by amy at 7:49 AM
December 20, 2007
A Gehry Funny for Thursday
SFGate.com
Posted by steve at 11:45 AM
December 4, 2007
Gehry flunks MIT
Posted by lumi at 6:10 AM
November 22, 2007
FREE TURKEYS
HAPPY THANKSGIVING! This year, we are giving out free turkeys to a few NoLandGrab All-Stars.
The Turkey Trot...
is awarded to Bruce Ratner, the Empire State Development Corporation, and the New York Police Department for dancing around the terrorism and security issue.
The Leaky Turkey...
goes to Frank Gehry, who came up with this canard last week: "My name is Frank Gehry, and my buildings don't leak." Like, ok, at least half that sentence is true.
The Jive Turkey...
will be delivered to Eliot Spitzer's home, because today is day 325 after "day one," when "everything changes" (except in Ratnerville). One thing that actually has changed is the Governor's approval rating.
Tofurkey...
goes to the ombudsman, because he or she is not real either.
Leftover Turkey...
will be served to the folks who are working on the UNITY plan, just in case this project doesn't happen and someone is looking for a plan B.
Turducken
The red herring stuffed in a land grab, stuffed in a boondoggle, goes to the proverbial three men in a room (you know who you are).
Turkey Gravy...
will be on Vito Lopez's table this holiday, for sneakily inserting a special clause in 421(a) "reform" legislation that delivers special affordable housing subsidies to Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan.
The "Gobble Gobble" Award
This year's recipient is none other than Bruce Ratner, for taking down every building he possibly can in the Atlantic Yards footprint.
Posted by lumi at 9:00 AM
November 13, 2007
Frank Gehry: has the bubble burst?
The First Post
By Charles Laurence
Superstar architect Frank Gehry is being sued by MIT - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology renowned for technological innovation - and the court action suggests that the Gehry bubble may be about to burst.
...
Gehry, 78, became America's most celebrated architect since Frank Lloyd Wright after building the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He has since created a host of other buildings which have captured the imaginations of both critics and the public. The latest is billionaire Barry Diller's headquarters in Manhattan, which suggest billowing sails on the Hudson river. But do they work?
Guess what Bruce Ratner and Frank Gehry have in common? We'd tell you, but we have to check with our lawyers first:
Contracts with Gehry Partners turn out to have clauses gagging public criticism or complaint, so now critics are wondering whether problems are being covered-up at Bilbao and other famous buildings.
Posted by lumi at 5:19 AM
November 12, 2007
Frank Gehry Environmental Impact Hall of Fame
When centuries of architectural wisdom and common sense are rejected for the sake of art, you end up with a career highlighted by some mind-boggling environmental impacts:
GUGGENHEIM MUSEM, BILBAO, SPAIN
Who cares about personal safety when you're visiting a work of art?
Though folks like to sneer at the curious brown stain that appeared on the facade of the iconic building ("The New York Times reports Mr Gehry as saying that the problem arose when the building contractor allowed a silicon-based fireproofing sealant to spill onto the titanium" — BBC), the more serious environmental impact is the poorly designed public spaces that only appear to be inviting to muggers.
Project for Public Spaces has inducted the museum into its very own Hall of Shame:
Though it is near the center of the city, the Guggenheim shuns any relation to its context. The building challenges locals and tourists (not to mentioned handicapped people) to enter some of the least inviting public spaces and entranceways anywhere.
...
Only seconds after I took the pictures, the two men ran over to the couple and mugged them – they simply grabbed the camera out of their hands and ran off. Anywhere else in Bilbao, we would have yelled something and there would have been people around to try stopping them. But instead, with no one else in sight to help, we felt isolated and vulnerable, and all we could do was watch. We later told police about it, and they told us that there are muggings in that same location very frequently.
CASE WESTERN UNIVERSITY, PETER B. LEWIS BUILDING
Avalanche???
The shiny, swirling $62 million building that houses the business school at Case Western Reserve University here is a marvel to behold. But it is sometimes best admired from afar.
In its first winter, snow and ice have been sliding off the long, sloping stainless-steel roof, bombarding the sidewalk below. And in bright sun, the glint off the steel tiles is so powerful that standing next to the building is like lying on a beach with a tanning mirror.
...
"You might have to walk on the road to make sure you don't get hit by ice,'' said Adam Searl, a junior at Case Western's Weatherhead School of Management.''Maybe they should have thought about it before they had built the building. It's Cleveland. We get ice. We get snow. We get rain.''
2003, gunman loose in a labyrinth
The [seven-hour] standoff took place inside one of the more idiosyncratic buildings in the country. The $61.7 million Weatherhead School of Management was designed by the architect Frank Gehry and opened for this past school year. It is characterized by the jagged, polished metal surface and odd shapes that are prominent in Mr. Gehry's designs.
That made for a "constant cat-and-mouse game," said Chief Edward Lohn of the Cleveland police, with SWAT team members exchanging gunfire with the suspect as he ran to different floors, peeking and firing around corners.
"There are no right angles in the building," Chief Lohn said at a news conference late tonight, shortly after the suspect was taken into custody.
NoLandGrab: Gehry certainly isn't to blame for the 2003 rampage in which one person was killed, but it does call into question the manner in which people are forced to interact with his buildings.
WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, LOS ANGELES
If you can't take the heat... (then don't hire a starchitect)
Throughout the summer, passing motorists reported being distracted by the reflected rays, while pedestrians described having to cross the street to avoid the intense heat.
The report, which was delivered to local politicians last week, said temperatures on sidewalks adjacent to the concert hall reached higher than 58 C [136 F].
The panels were eventually sandblasted to reduce the glare, at a cost of $180,000 to the taxpayers.
MASSACHUSETS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, STATA CENTER
All wet
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up.
Fool me twice...
Oh, and as in the case of Case Western, the Stata Center has problems with "sliding ice and snow." With any luck, maybe global warming will take care of that problem and Gehry will be deemed prescient.
Posted by lumi at 2:47 PM
FRANK LLOYD WRONG
CRACKS FINALLY APPEAR IN THE FAD OF GEHRY
NY Post
By Kyle Smith
When there are problems with Frank Gehry's buildings, the startchitect's response is to blame the victim. MIT is the latest of several high-profile projects that display a sincere lack of common sense — will Brooklyn be next?
In a lawsuit first reported by the Boston Globe last week, MIT alleged that the three-year-old Stata Center, one of Gehry's trademark designs from the Four Car Pileup school of architecture, is already suffering from cracks in its amphitheater because of poor drainage, as well as widespread leaks that have been there since virtually the day the building opened. In winter, outdoor mini-avalanching turns entrances into hard hat zones.
...Professors at the MIT building - including Noam Chomsky - complain that they can't put in bookcases (the walls are tilted) and they're living in a zoo because of the open plan's lack of privacy (actually, it's more like living in a petri dish - there's mold growing on the outside). People with IQs that exceed Queen Latifah's weight have complained that they get lost in the maze-like internal layout. One of the conference rooms stuck into the roof is so bizarrely shaped that a third or more of all visitors - including Gehry himself - suffer dizzy spells in it.
One of Gehry's most praised creations had to be torn up because its floor was too slippery for women in heels. Who could have expected fashionable women to congregate in such a space - the Conde Nast Cafeteria here in Midtown?
...
Gehry is diluting his cool factor so quickly - now he's designing jewelry, wristwatches and the Wyborowa Vodka bottle - that he seems determined to become the Pierre Cardin of design, and once his stuff is everywhere, as it soon will be, future generations will look at his jumbly faddish structures the way we look at shoulder pads or hoop skirts. When he builds the Ground Zero arts center and the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, will he embarrass us the way he has so many others?
Posted by lumi at 6:22 AM
Gehry on the "uplifting effect" of "real architecture"
Atlantic Yards Report
According to Frank Gehry, "Real architecture tends to have an uplifting effect on the people that experience it, and it creates identifiable icons—like the Sydney Opera House—that brand a city, even a country."
Would Atlantic Yards be uplifting or just another "ego trip?" And, what does it mean when your brand is "drunken robots?"
Posted by lumi at 6:04 AM
November 9, 2007
Gehry sued! Cracks at MIT cast doubt on ‘Miss Brooklyn’
The Brooklyn Paper
By Gersh Kuntzman
Gehry Partners, the architect’s Los Angeles-based firm, was paid $15 million for the Stata Center design. The innovative building, which Gehry once said “looks like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate,” has been hailed by critics and its users since it opened in spring, 2004.
But its janitors were never fans.
Almost immediately, according to the suit, the center’s outdoor amphitheater began to crack due to drainage problems. And snow and ice slid dangerously down the angled roofs and piled up in ways that blocked emergency exits.
Mold grew on the exterior and there were regular leaks in the roof, the suit continued.
...
Gehry is currently designing Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development, which has the 52-story Miss Brooklyn tower — and an 18,000-seat basketball arena — as its focal points. A spokesman for Forest City Ratner declined to comment on whether the company was concerned about the design issues raised by the M.I.T. lawsuit.The arena will be built with public money — and Ratner’s relocated New Jersey Nets would only be a tenant in the state-owned building, said a spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, which is partnering with Ratner to build the $4-billion Atlantic Yards project.
The spokesman declined to explain if the public or Ratner would have to pay to repair any flaws in Gehry’s design.
...
Gehry did not respond to requests for comment from The Brooklyn Paper, but he did tell the New York Times that new buildings such as his “are complicated.”
...
it’s not the first time that Gehry has had problems at one of his trend-setting buildings. In 2004, he sandblasted parts of his celebrated Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles after people complained that the aluminum skin caused a blinding glare.A swirling, $62-million building that Gehry designed for Case Western Reserve in Cleveland was likened by the New York Times to “a tanning mirror” that “sent snow and ice sliding off the sloping s