New York Times Architecture Review

Astrohome
by Nicolai Ouroussoff

Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah. Starchitect Ben van Berkel. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah: blah blah blah. Blah blah.Of all of them, he has so far come closest to fulfilling the dream of a truly elastic world, one in which the boundaries between work and play, private and public life have all but melted away.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah the weekend houses for a rich Russian blah blah conjures a tornado of images: Hudson River School paintings, garish Las Vegas casinos, ’70s kitsch and Russian fairy tales. Somehow van Berkel manages to fuse these images into a coherent architectural vision, one that allows the mind to drift through different worlds without ever becoming unhinged.

Blah  blah blah.  BLAH. Blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah. Blah blah.

A short, wiry man with penetrating eyes, Leo Tsimmer grew up in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), a grim industrial wasteland at the base of the Ural Mountains. He brings to mind the kind of maverick spirit that once defined the American West: a healthy willingness to take risks coupled with a disdain for the values of the crusty Old World establishment. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Tsimmer moved to Moscow, where he quickly joined a new breed of scrappy capitalists then reshaping Russia. He organized Moscow’s first rave and even opened a chain of American-style doughnut shops.

Blah  blah  blah  blah  blah  blah.  This is the house’s connective tissue, and its elastic form conjures multiple metaphors: the muscular structure of an alien creature, a piece of toffee, a birth canal. Blah blah.

Editor's Note: Why does Ouroussoff criticize New Urbanists for working for the middle class at the same time he portrays the Russian rich and the Starchitects who work for them (designing energy-burning weekend retreats) as admirable heroes?

The answer is easy. Ouroussoff is an ideologue who sees the promotion of Starchitecture as his primary responsibility. Any thing or person that can advance that goal is good. Anything that threatens the advancement of Starchitecture is to be opposed.