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Santiago Calatrava is continuing to put his imprint on downtown Manhattan: The Times' David Dunlap reports that he's designing a new residential building near the South Street Seaport, which "would take the form of an offset stack of 45-foot glass cubes, a dozen in all, each intended to house only one or two families." And from the rendering, it looks amazing. At this point, it doesn't seem the building's 1000 foot height will be a problem for the historic area, as the LMDC says, "It's such an unusual building, it's worth taking a chance on." And Calatrava says about designing in New York, "If I was not born in this lifetime in New York, certainly in a previous life, I was a New Yorker."
Herbert Muschamp loves it: "The tower is effervescent, lighter than air. Yet its impact on the skyline is likely to be profound, not merely as an individual work of genius but as an example of what can be achieved when a city rediscovers the quality of delight." (The building reminded him of Warhol's Silver Clouds.) Muschamp also gives Calatrava a reading list.
Gothamist is big fans of what his design for the new PATH station looks like.
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Muschamp unquestioningly loves anything proposed by a member of his cultivated circle of powerful friends (including Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, and many others). Cloaking his prose in random, inscrutable cultural references, he confers the mantle of ineffable "genius" upon them without offering any explanation or critique (good or bad) of what they do.
He does nothing to explain what makes for good architecture to those who use and need it most--the general public. Rather, he panders to the architectural avant-garde to elevate his standing among them. As a result, he fails to stimulate a dialogue about the values or role of architecture in society, preferring instead to propagate only its celebrity culture.
He is the most sycophantic and least enlightening of any architecture critic out there today.
The above remarks are not intended to smear the reputation of Calatrava, who is indeed a very talented architect and engineer.
Herbert Muschamp is funny in that way. I wish one knew who critics were friendly with, but I guess if you run in those circles, you might want feedback from your critics (and vice versa - a critic wanting to hear hear an artist's new ideas) and relationships might develop.
wow can you imagine how much it will cost to live in one of those cubes?
i respect calatrava, but a series of stacked boxes? words cannot describe the level of excitement it illicits.
and there is an elite avante-garde circle amongst architects that are consistently praised by critics and their peers alike. koolhaas, ando, diller+scofidio (if they actually built architecture)...and calatrava. they could poo out a design and it would, more likely than not, still be praised. and while i agree that muschamp panders excessively to this avante-garde circle (most couldn't make sense of his references and allusions), i still find many of his reviews enlightening.
Hmmm. Where have I seen this before?...
http://www.lockhartsteele.com/blog/archives/2003_11.shtml#000677
Odd, I thought it looked a lot like an automotive camshaft: http://www.acm.org/tog/editors/erich/camshaft.jpg
how is it a poor use of space? it's taking a 6 story building and building an 8 story base with apartments on top. sounds like a creative use of the space to me.
i hear what everyone is saying, but i liked the stacked boxes, and i also like the new museum plan that sort of looks similar. clearly, present day architecture is still very much about minimalism and the international style- if mies or wright was still alive, they'd probably be building stuff that looks like this. anyway, in homage to the new new, i've decided to throw out all my furniture, acquire like 400 milkcrates, and live my own stacked-box adventure.
i hope the rest of you also have the courage to live out your architectural convictions. who wants my couch?
true, but you're also getting 8 floors below the apartments. and you wouldn't be able to build an apartment building that tall in that small a space.
present day architecture is actually still very much diverse. the darling child of critics for the time being might be modernist/international whatever. but other architects like thom mayne, liebeskind, zaha hadid, and coop himmelblau are definitely not modernists in the architectural sense. and id much more hope for a morphosis project in nyc sooner than another stack of boxes.
A wonderfully slim modern skyscraper that introduces much needed extra dollops of heterogeneity into the downtown skyline - what is there not to like about a singular, stand-out contribution of this kind? What are realistic alternatives of equal merit?
I can't wait to see the new skyline and hope this will be built as proposed.
"...only one or two families per floor?"
Maybe the families are really big.
or rich - this is basically stacking a dozen or so suburban houses (isn't 2000 square feet around average nation-wide?) yard and all in the city. Should be crazy prices. That said, I think it's beautiful - much more interesting than the Meier buildings on the west side hwy - and will definitely contribute to the skyline.
If you want to scoop on the "avant-garde circle of insiders," check out ARCHINECT (www.archinect.com) or find a copy of The Architects' Newspaper. Very dishy.
Christ that's hideous.
David Dunlap in the NY Times noted in March, 2004, that the 835 foot tall building would have 12 modular cubes, each 45 foot to a side, atop an 8 story base. 12 times 45 feet = 540 feet with a base of approximately 100 feet = 550 feet. Where are the other 285 feet (or approximately 25 stories)?
Even though I would never, in a (35 or so!) million years, be able to afford living in this building, just seeing it and knowing that it actually exists, would make me want to stay in New York. I think it's strikingly beautiful and it would make me really proud to be a part of this city.
This is awful!
"Sundeck" on a cube with a block of concrete above your head... you must be nuts.
hi you are welcome
It's really sad for me realize that in an architecture forum, where people must have more information about architecture than normal people, the concept of architecture is limited by maximum space use and megalomaniac projects...
In fact, it's a very american point of view about art (and about most things too).