Quote of the Day

Incidentally, I have no quarrel with people doing what they want with interiors, of course. None of my business. But when the mania for glass and geometry starts to be imposed on the public realm it's another thing entirely...

One of these days I'll get around to making the case that today's highbrow-architecture scene is well understood as something akin to the high-end women's-fashion world. Both fields specialize in the creation of brittle, hysterical whimsies that are sometimes amusing in snobbish and absurd ways. Little harm is done when such productions are fodder for the pages of Vogue, and when they're understood to serve fantasy purposes. But what kind of person would impose high-strung, soon-to-fall- out-of-fashion craziness on our public realm?

— Michael Blowhard:

The Best Way To Develop Atlantic Yards & Hudson Yards

RICHARD BRODSKY and I have been saying the same thing: why aren't more people listening to our words of wisdom?

The Atlantic Yards and Hudson Yards sites are being developed in the wrong way: instead of selling them to mega-developers like Forest City Ratner and Tishman Speyer (who are both having trouble coming up with the cash), we should develop them the way New York was traditionally developed. That means platting the streets and blocks, and selling lots on those blocks. No eminent domain would be involved.

If the New York City Planning Department decides the highest and best use for the land being sold is rowhouses, they can sell lots sized and coded for rowhouses. If they want office towers or apartment buildings, they can sell lots sized and coded for those. Obviously a modern office building requires a larger lot than a rowhouse, and its lower floors should be coded for retail. If the market changes, the lot sizes can be changed if the codes are properly done.

Of course, rowhouses aren't what should be built on either of the railyard sites, because the infrastructure to build over the yards is too expensive: you need larger buildings to share the expense. And Atlantic Avenue is a wide and important street that should be shaped by taller buildings on both sides of the avenue.

This is the way most of the best parts of New York have developed. The streets and blocks of Manhattan were platted in 1811. The streets and blocks of Brooklyn were platted in 1837. Neighborhoods like the Upper East Side and Park Slope were later made by developers and builders buying lots, often individual lots, and building an assemblage of buildings that gave the neighborhoods their character.

Good superprojects like Rockefeller Center are rare, the exceptions that prove the rule. The norm for these superprojects are the monolithic, boring developments that Robert Moses built in all five boroughs. These are not just the megalithic housing projects that have been such a blight on their neighborhoods and communities, but also the developments like Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, now gone, was a friend an ally of the developers like Bruce Ratner who want to build new superprojects. It's rumored he saw himself as a new Robert Moses. But these egotistical displays of macho power are not what have made the neighborhoods. It's time to get back to the time-proven methods that have built the best neighborhoods and communities, building at the scale of the block and the lot.

Robert Moses was wrong. Jane Jacobs was right.

PS: Norman Oder tells me there has long been support for involving multiple developers, including in the Unity Plan. He sent me some links about that from his blog, so I've got to say that the general press either hasn't understood that or for one reason or another hasn't said much on the subject.

Second, there's a matter of scale here that's worth discussing. When someone talks about involving multiple developers, they could mean, for example, that 3 developers would get 2 blocks each. That's still different than the way the city was traditionally developed, or is typically developed today. Most buildings in the city only fill a small portion of the block they're on. For example, look at the two buildings going up near my apartment, the Lucida and the Brompton. The Lucida fills one end of the block that runs between Lexington and Third Avenues and 86th and 85th Streets. The Brompton is on the corner of Third Avenue and 86th Streets. The majority of each block is filled by a range of buildings, with smaller buildings on 85th Street than on the wider avenues and 86th Street, which is as wide as an avenue. If a single building filled those blocks, the effect on the neighborhood would be very different.

In other words, until Le Corbusier, Robert Moses and Urban Removal came along, New York's development was typically by the lot rather than by the block, the superblock or the mega-project. In today's economic environment, it's difficult or impossible to get financing for a large project — when Jerry Speyer can't raise enough financing for the Hudson Yards project, you realize that perhaps no one can. But banks still give loans for individual buildings, of the type that are going up all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.

That says that Atlantic Yards and Hudson Yards are more likely to go ahead by selling lots than by trying to sell the whole project at once. That process is also more likely to produce more money for the MTA, and a better city for all of us.

PPS: Paris and Rockefeller Center used a different model. But why they succeeded when Atlantic Yards fails is another story.

Bloggers of the world, Unite!

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER published today a list of The 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate. The list includes two New York blogger friends, Norman Oder (at number 77) and Lockhart Steele (91).

As much as I like the idea of bloggers running the world, I think we have to say this is a superficial list that leaves out many of the real heavy hitters. Several of the big families of New York real estate, like the Roses, are missing. Financing and construction are grossly undervalued — where's Peter Lehrer? And Frank Gehry is not the most powerful architect in New York real estate. I would guess that would actually be David Childs, but there are several who would come before Gehry, who's only designed one building here.

Neo-Modernism, Back To The Future Again

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED, that a young man in a good architecture school, must be designing 1960s-style buildings. That's the impression you get from Dwell, which I read recently in the airport. The issue I read featured sober and straightforward new houses that all looked like they were built in the 1960s. The only exception was a silly article on the Junior Starchitects MRDV, with quotes like this: "We want to position our work outside of architecture, as a clear piece of sociology and ecology."

To see what that means, click here. Shades of 1960s British loonies Archigram.

UPDATE: More on Neo-1960s here, here, here and below.

More on the Starchitect / Simpler divide here (Post-Katrina housing fits designers' agendas. But can the city live with it?):

No one has yet picked MVRDV's mailbox or its alternative version, which looks suspiciously like a boat upended by Katrina.

Several architects said they were appalled by MVRDV's proposals, which play more to the academy than the needs of displaced residents, and may be uninhabitable.

"That's graphic design, not architecture," Timberlake said. Bingler was more blunt: "When are we going to reach the point when architects say, 'This is unprofessional?' . . . It may even be unethical."

Bingler said his firm, Concordia, had steered clear of trendy concepts. Its design features a peaked roof, but one that slopes in five directions.

A roof "that slopes in five directions" — thank God they got over the trendiness.

1968, or 2008?

THE ONLY WAY we know the second part of this video wasn't made in 1962 is that that it has techno-pop and retro-style personal computers.

Royksopp - Remind Me (with Caveman)

Why, oh why, can't architects be like this?

Jacob Collins, The Hen Islands from Eastholm, 2008

THE PAINTER JACOB COLLINS says young artists don't worry about ideology and modernism versus tradition: if they see a beautiful traditional painting they think it's cool, even if their own work is very different.

Starting this Thursday, Jacob is having a show at Hirschl & Adler Modern. Jacob is one of the best.

Jacob Collins @ Hirschl & Adler Modern, May 8 — June 13, 2008

"Sure to get the vote of every thinking man"

DURING ONE OF ADLAI STEVENSONS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS, a reporter told Stevenson that he was "sure to get the vote of every thinking man" in the country. "Thank you, but I need a majority to win," Stevenson said.

Yesterday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina show that Hillary hasn't succeeded in making Obama look so much like an egghead that he can't win. But as people have feared for months now, she has hurt his popularity, and made it harder for him to beat McCain. I wish she would realize she's also hurting the Democratic Party, her own future races, and the political discourse in this country.

I've voted for Hillary in the New York Senate races, but her I'm More Macho tactics have damaged her standing with me. More importantly, she's based her campaign on not taking the high road.

She's acting like the queen in that old macho joke: "Balls," cried the Queen, "If I had t(w/o)o, I'd be the King." It's the opposite of the thinking man.

UPDATE: MAS chooses "Oppressive"

THE MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY says the Atlantic Yards site may actually look more like the image on the right for the next few years:

Curbed has the details. along with a Reboot Poll that says "none of the above."

MAS - Atlantic Lots

Festive, or Oppressive?

A STORY IN TODAY'S DAILY NEWS presents revised designs for the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn, designed by Frank Gehry.

Gehry calls the design "festive," and the photos are colorful. But imagine yourself as one of those little dots down on the sidewalk in the model. I think the chaotic shapes would feel oppressive over your head.

Rally to Stop Atlantic Yards - Saturday

Click here to enlarge letter:

Brooklyn Speaks

A Glutton for Punishment

NYU has released drawings for a proposed tower next to I.M. Pei's Washington Square Village [sic*]. As always, Curbed has the story.

A commenter on Curbed writes, "NYU obviously is looking for space, and it can only build up [but] I don't like towers in the park (at all) either."

Despite the reaction the last time I posted on Curbed, I replied:

NYU has several options, because there is a lot of open land in Washington Square South. I've given classes to architecture students at Notre Dame, the University of Miami and Georgia Tech on the principles of urban design, taught with 5 walking tours of New York City (we begin in Manhattan, work our way through Midtown and the Village, then go to Brooklyn and finish at Forest Hills Gardens - a "transect" of urbanism).

The third class begins under the arch in Washington Square, talks about the square, the Manhattan grid, Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, then goes to Washington Square South [ditto] and finishes in the West Village piers on the Hudson.

All the students immediately experience the difference between the old streets of the Village and the monotonous superblocks of Washington Square South, which could be in Any New City, USA, even though a wonderful section of Greenwich Village used to stand exactly where they are now. This has a lot to do with why Washington Square is usually full of people, while the similarly sized space in Washington Square South north is usually devoid of a single soul. They're only a few hundred feet apart.

How could some of the real Village be brought to Washington Square South without tearing down what's there now? Well, look at Pei's almost identical towers in Philadelphia, the Society Hill Towers. Because Ed Bacon (1 degree of Kevin Bacon) was Philadelphia's planner in charge, he imposed new rowhouses on Pei, who usually preferred the wide open spaces of superblocks. Low to medium rise buildings (two to ten stories) and perhaps even a tower or two could similarly and easily be placed around Pei's towers, and the streets of the village would be better for it.

The axis of Wooster Street still runs through both blocks of Washington Square South, and both blocks have a lot of empty street frontage along other Village Streets. Urban infill there would be a piece of cake. NYU's decision to continue the tower in the park model is a mistake. People don't move to New York to live in suburbia. I'm sure a good "visual preference" survey of NYU students would show they prefer traditional New York streets to empty superblocks. Every day of the week, the surrounding streets are full of people enjoying themselves, while the blocks sit virtually abandoned.

An earlier story in Curbed showed plans for other block (below). I have only one (hyphenated) word to say in response: sub-urban.

* A typical developer ploy is to name your project after whatever you are destroying: Fox Run Estates, Town Center Shopping, Washington Square Village.

Continue reading "A Glutton for Punishment"

eeFray iFiWay @ arbucksStay (Limited Time Offer)

HERE ARE INSTRUCTIONS for free WiFi at Starbucks on your iPhone or Macbook.

Which reminds me of a story:

Continue reading "eeFray iFiWay @ arbucksStay (Limited Time Offer)"

Kunstler on Colbert Report Tonight Last Night

Click here to watch the video

World Made By Hand
The Colbert Report

We Build This City

NEW YORK CITY's Sustainable Streets program is an important development. Download the plan here.

All the best blocks in New York,

are shaped by stone and brick buildings. If you don't agree, show me the block.

Non-architects don't find this surprising. They look around and say, "Of course." Look at Time Out's list of The 50 Best Blocks in New York.

Time Out is hip and young and has nothing against Modernist architecture. But when you go looking for the best blocks in the city, if you're not an ideologue you're going to see that glass buildings don't make city streets as well as masonry buildings. Some good blocks might have a single glass building that makes an interesting contrast. But if you go somewhere like Midtown that has quite a few blocks made primarily of glass towers, you'll find pretty boring blocks. Upper Park Avenue is one of our most beautiful streets — Park Avenue right above Grand Central is boring.

Young architects and architecture students have a lot of trouble with these ideas, because they've been taught anti-urban ideas. First, that the architect's vision and the building's uniqueness are more important than making a good block and a good city. And, they're interested in architectural fashion, which for at least the last 10 years has been in a neo-60s mode. That means glass, and lots of it.

Find this a little hard to believe? Well take a look at these comments at Curbed, where I'm called a "douche," "a major douche" and an "old, ugly NIMBY piece of shit" (by people I've never met). What did I say that was so terrible? Here it is:

There is no connection between glass-skinned buildings and "progressive" or "innovative." Corporations and developers have built hundred of thousands of them since 1950.

What separates New York from most of America, particularly most of America built since 1950, is that it is a place where people can walk and want to walk. Eighty per cent of Manhattan residents don't own a car. (FWIW, I was born here and I do own a car.)

Density and interconnected streets allow one to walk. Beautiful, safe and interesting streets make us want to walk.

All the best blocks in New York (that is all the places where people most want to walk, live and work) are shaped entirely or primarily by masonry buildings. If you disagree, what blocks are you talking about?

New York has long had diverse and eclectic buildings and streets, and there's nothing wrong with a new or different building here or there. Lever House and the Seagram Building were interesting additions to Park Avenue. But Park Avenue between Lever House and Grand Central before all the corporate glass towers were built. And midtown was a more interesting and beautiful place before it became dominated by glass towers, as it is now. Who enjoys walking along Madison Avenue in the 50s?

[continued]

Cities Need Both Order and Richness
What's Good For Starchitects Is Good For The World
What's So Good About This?
Dog Bites Man

Continue reading "All the best blocks in New York,"

The Way We Live Now

David Becomes Goliath

(The photo's been anonymously moving around the internet — see the original here.)

Travels with my iPhone

A Bedford horse farm in the early spring.

The same farm a few days later.

BEDFORD, NEW YORK is about as close as you can be to New York City with any real illusion of being in the country. I lived and worked there and should write about it and post some photos. But for now, here are some photos from my iPhone and a few earlier words (look in the second and third paragraphs).

Continue reading "Travels with my iPhone"

PS: Urbanism & An Architecture of Place

ON MY WAY TO BEDFORD, I drove by the the new Yankee Stadium. It's next to the old stadium (ruined by blind engineers in the early 1970s), and unlike CitiField, is urban. Down the hill from the Grand Concourse, next to the subway, the new stadium usually comes right up to the street.

But the "traditional" architecture is poorly done. HOK's designers (HOK designs virtually all the new ballparks) should take some courses at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. With a little training, their buildings would be a lot better.

V&V: They're Not McKim, Mead & White

Urbanism and An Architecture of Place

CitiField has no city, and the Metropolitans have no metropolis.

OVER AT DESIGN OBSERVER, the great Michael Bierut wrote a good piece on baseball parks that I thought was a little too quick to equate traditional design with "nostalgia" while asking the question, "Why is it so hard to build a baseball stadium that looks like it belongs in the 21st century?"

In the comments, I said,

Michael,

I suspect you're trolling here, but I'll bite a little bit.

Why are you assuming that the architecture of the 21st Century should be the same as the architecture called for by 19th century architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies Van Der Rohe?

They wanted a Zeitgeist architecture, an architecture of time, which they tied to the expression of technology. The architecture needed today, I believe is the architecture of community and place. And sustainability.

There was a time when Modernism accurately expressed our culture, but that time is past. It is now nothing more than an expression of style, and that expression is increasingly ego-centric, anti-urban and unsustainable.

We need buidings that add up to the creation of good places. Extensive studies by Chris Alexander, Space Syntax and many others increasingly show that the qualities that do that are timeless and universal.

My standard for judging CitiField is not whether or not it's nostalgic, but whether or not it's a good place. That's determined by many qualities including the spatial experience, the proportions of the facades, the quality of the materials, etc.

Continue reading "Urbanism and An Architecture of Place"

For the New Spartans

UPDATE: After another good start, Wang is now 5 and 0 in 2008, with a 3.23 ERA. But with Hughes, A-Rod and Jorgie all on the DH it could be a long year for Yankee fans.

DESPITE two World Series rings in four years, which is two more than the Yankees have had this century, some Sox fans still feel the need to misanthropically attack the Yankees. They use stats to show that Derek Jeter is one of the worst defensive players in baseball, and that Chien Ming Wang, who since he first came up has won more games than any other pitcher in baseball, can't possibly win.

So I was interested to see this quote from Red Sox Nation favorite son baseball analyst Peter Gammons:

First of all, range factor is a phony stat. It will tell you that Roberto Alomar is a mediocre second baseman, and he's the best I've ever seen. It doesn't take into consideration instinct. Jeter is the most consistent of the three [Jeter, A-Rod, Nomahr] making the tough play, and he makes the double play -- starting and finishing -- the best... I say this each October: the best thing about watching the postseason is watching Jeter play every day for 15-20 games so I go home each winter realizing how great he really is. No stat sheet shows that.

Then last week, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said this,

He’s the best thing ever in the game. He’s got everything you want. Who’s better than Derek Jeter? Nobody in the game.

Julio Lugo, my a**.

Derek Jeter, Bill James & Moneyball
Summer's Calling
Winning Players (New York Times: "Baseball's Leading Man of Math Has Some Second Thoughts About the Numbers")
Is the old Athens of America the new Sparta?

Continue reading "For the New Spartans"

Live from New York

It was 72º as the Stock Exchange closed for the day, and Stone Street started to fill up.

One hour later:

A father and son team own most of the restaurants on Stone Street, the oldest paved street in America (some claim). Private ventures joined city and state agencies in paying $1.8 million to rebuild the dilapidated, which once it gets warm becomes one big outdoor food court and drinking center.

Because if there's anything New York City needs it's another glass-covered office building ...

UPDATE: Curbed readers comment here.

1775 Broadway (above), soon to be 3 Columbus Circle (below)

To get the glass on, workers are today hammering the cornice off this old friend (the Newsweek Building), designed by the architects of the Empire State Building.

More photos and info @ Curbed