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Friday, March 03, 2006
UPDATED: The Avant Garde New Orleans Krewe
THE AVANT GARDE KREWE of architects led by Reed Kroloff continues in its cluelessness. In the new ArtForum, Prof. Kroloff has published an article called Newer Orleans Six Proposals. In it, Kroloff calls the Governor of Louisiana "hapless" — good luck enlisting her support, Reed.
For that matter, if your goal is to engage the public and to affect the civic dialogue in New Orleans, why go to ArtForum, which must have a readership in New Orleans around one tenth of one percent of its citizens? Or why hold your "charrette" 6,000 miles from the city in Holland?
On the other hand, Kroloff is smart enough not to show any of the designs in the article, because (Apparently) he's not clueless enough to think that anyone outside the architectural avant garde and its groupies will like the work. As I've been saying all along, Kroloff and his krewe are incapable producing work that the state, the city or its residents will want to use. The only one of the six that includes any urban design is Thom Mayne's proposal, and it stays at the level of the sketch diagram. The others are conceptual art / anti-urban object buildings that would be equally out of place in Rotterdam, Omaha or Quito. (See for yourself, here and here.)
“The New Urbanist Svengalis have now seduced Louisiana's hapless governor and been given the keys to the state. But the real goal, the very city on which their movement is based, is New Orleans. And until now, no one has offered an alternative to their toothache of a future. The proposals you see here [sic], in the pages that follow, thus inaugurate an important dialogue. They bring fresh new vision to a city waiting to hear that its greatest days are not behind it, that it has an architectural future that will stride confidently beyond its past.”
Actions speak louder than words. Judging by Kroloff's actions, he's thrown in the towel and admitted defeat. Perhaps now that he's shown all he can do is talk, he'll stop working behind the scenes to prevent anything concrete from happening in the city he professes to love.
DPZ is holding a charrette in New Orleans that starts tomorrow. Kroloff's invited, with or without his krewe.
March 3, 2006 in Architecture, Culture, Current Affairs, Education, New Urbanism, Urbanism | Permalink
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Reed Replies:
As you could see by my article in Artforum (which has nearly 100 readers in the greater Louisiana area I'll have you know) the push to preserve New Orleans' "cultural patrimony" means pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box when it comes to architecture and urban planning. After all, experimentation and improvisation is at the heart of African-American music...why should white male architects work any differently?
When I see the breakthrough designs in Artforum I see models for a future Crescent City. One that looks nothing like "Old Orleans" as I like to call it. Why not a New New New Orleans?
I say, bring in the 'innovators' who as expected will propose the unexpected! Rem was telling me the other day that city hall he proped for Dubai would work great here. So I say, let's build it here! We don't need some re-hashed historical style manual imposed on geniuses like these famous friends of mine? Some of their rejected designs for museums and sculpture parks would work great here. These experimental forms and typologies that have never been built anywhere in the world are just what The Big Easy needs. We need more buildings that say "impressive" when they're seen in magazines like Artforum. Who cares what the common folks think about buildings. We're the experts! Would you invite some developer's pal like Zyberk or whatever his name is to solo with a jazz band?!
Historical context and walkability and all that wrought iron? Toothache time! New Urbanism? Sorry, not invented by Thom Mayne & Co. (or anyone famous for writing rather than building) so why are we even writing about it? Let's leave cornytown in the ocean where it belongs. Let's build parks that aren't pretty or traditional but look like HONEST landfills like that Guadalupe River Park. Let's build buildings that would look at home in 'The Matrix' like the Mercedes Benz Museum. My car would look AWESOME there.
Posted by: Troy Torrison at Mar 3, 2006 2:27:11 PM
Wow, Mr. Torrison, that's comedy gold. What's not so funny is how little you would have to change to submit it to Artforum in Kroloff's name, and get it published.
Posted by: Omri at Mar 4, 2006 1:58:38 AM
keep that metal scrap heap modernist crap out of new orleans. that zigzag so-called "avant garde" building will be dated upon completion when the starchitects are onto the next architectural fad. ugly, egotistical buildings like that kroloff one are a disease to urbanism where the only concern to the architect is being different with all practicality thrown out the window. i've got no problem with classic modernism but what the hell is this new deformed architecture by zaha hadid, thom mayne, reed kroloff etc???
Posted by: jon at Mar 5, 2006 2:06:23 AM
I'mk on page 3 of Reed's article and he hasn't said anything yet.
Posted by: David Sucher at Mar 5, 2006 7:14:09 PM
I read the whole thing.
Kroloff is a Dean?
I haven't read anything quite so embarassingly banal in a long time. What is his point?
Posted by: David Sucher at Mar 5, 2006 7:22:33 PM
As usual, when I find myself in agreement with 95 percent of what is said about something, I turn my attention to the 5 percent where I beg to differ.
All that context-free stuff that Reed Kroloff & Co. are pushing in the Artforum special section would not, as I think they believe, be a magnet for tourists--and right now, tourism is all New Orleans has as an economic mainstay; I'm afraid that this crowd is right when they put the city in a class with Detroit or Cleveland rather than in a class with Houston or Seattle. (Though I don't think that has to be the case, and the reasons why it is now and doesn't have to be are more political than spatial, economic or architectural.)
People come to NO mainly because it's a period piece. Jazz has long since evolved from what's served up at Preservation Hall, for instance, but when the vistors come, they expect to hear respect for tradition coming out of even the contemporary musical practitioners (e.g., the Neville brothers). A Koolhaas-clone library in the downtown would resemble a flat seventh in a major chord.
But I wouldn't toss that hill on the scrap heap so fast. It seems to me that one of the big problems with evacuating New Orleanians in place was that there were few high places to evacuate them to. The city sits in a bowl that's largely below sea level. If some more high ground could be added to the city's stock of land, the calamity might not be so bad the next time it happens. However: the high ground needs to have buildings on it. A naked hill--even an attractively landscaped one--is no place to wait out a hurricane.
Posted by: Sandy Smith at Mar 6, 2006 12:20:54 PM
It's true that some of the greatest landmarks of Modernism have been the civic buildings, like the Guggenheim Bilbao (some of the worst too, like Boston City Hall).
Civic buildings are the perfect opportunity for an object building. So I agree with you. At the same time, my objection to the UN Studio design is less its form than the idea that what New Orleans needs is a "mediatheque and city hall."
I think the avant garde like UN Studio has put so much emphasis on innovation that they have lost much of their ability to judge the good and the bad.
Posted by: john massengale at Mar 6, 2006 12:59:58 PM
