"Nude" Skater Hits Rockefeller Ice
Straphanger Who Pulled Emergency Brake Comes Forward
Should MTV's Jersey Shore Be Cancelled?
Adam Lambert Says He's A Performer, Not A Babysitter
Boy with Asperger's Syndrome Rides Subway for 11 Days
The NY Times weighs in on Bernard Tschumi’s Blue building at 105 Norfolk St. Fresh off reviews from New Orleans, Paris and Brazil, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff is back home with a piece on the 17-story blue-paneled, crystalline tower.
Ouroussoff, as regular readers know, is put off by most of the high-design, luxury residential towers now rising across Manhattan. But, walking along the streets of the Lower East Side, alongside brick tenements, public housing complexes and Delancey Street’s "rusting infrastructure," the Big O. finds that despite his “teetering on the edge of becoming a real estate promoter,” he actually, gulp, likes the thing. He even says that it evokes Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie.”
Are we witnessing a softer, more cuddly, post-vacation Ouroussoff? Or is there something so lovably oddball about the building that O. just has to embrace it? Well, surprise, it’s the latter! The building, he says, lacks self-importance and has a “hypnotic appeal” that is grounded in the “gritty disorder of its surroundings.” Ouroussoff adds that unlike others who have designed buildings in the area – cough, The Hotel on Rivington’s Grzywinksi Pons, cough – Tschumi has an “older vision of the neighborhood,” based on the building’s twists and turns. Ouroussoff gives Tschumi a nod for building on a tight site with zoning restrictions and developer pressures. He even likes the apartments, which get “increasingly idiosyncratic” the higher you go.
And here's how he ends:
[T]he Blue Building is not a major work of art. But it nonetheless captures an aspect of the city that is slowly fading from view: its role as a sanctuary for misfits and outcasts, a place full of dark corners and unexpected encounters. If only such people could afford the price tag.We wish one day that we could figure out why he loves oddballs so much. And why he is reviewing Blue now when the building was the talk of the town for most of, um, 2006. Just asking.
Photograph by Betty Blade on Flickr
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Why not love oddballs, they are a lot more interesting than the boring evenballs.
I hated the Blue Building during every moment of its construction, then one night I went out, looked at it and 'got it'. Its not as out-of-place as I would have expected it to be.
I disagree with everything he says. I feel like the building is the largest, most glaring eye sore ever.
And no, that's not hyperbole.
It goes with the "richies" aesthetic...sooooo horribly kitch that will be landmark. Why does projects pick teh suckiest architects and make the rich?
It is better than a Frank Ghery monstrosity, but it is still awful bland thoughtless crap.
i had no idea this ridiculously ugly thing was tschumi. now i can loathe him all over again.
-recent columbia alum
Yes, the clutter underneath it is so much more attractive.
It looks like a huge Tetris block. The apartment prices are more hideous than the building. Boy miss Tonic.
oh what has become of Jewtown?
A cool touch is the "Richies" - was that part of the architect's vision...? LOL
this is what those puerto ricans in the LEs deserve.
Art???
I don't know which is more upsetting: Tonic being displaced by a bunch of overpriced apartments, the fact that this pile of Legos exists at all, or that the NY Times is praising tschumi for building it... pretty sad times for Manhattan
this building is responsible for the closure of Tonic, one of the best/only places to see live experimental rock and jazz in new york.
the music club was legendary, and now it has no place to go. say what you will about the oddball character of the archetecture, but buildings like that are killing that neighborhood.
-jon
An analysis could/should be done as to how we ended up with this aesthetic today, at this time. It really should trace its history to the contradictory philosophies of the post-modernists, and the art world sellouts of the 1980s like David Salle, Jeff Koons, etc.
The apologists around the works of the NY scene of the 1980s paved the way for contradictory explanations, illusory aesthetic sales pitches, and a complete lack of empathy, sincerity, and humanness in the arts of NYC.
And, this is what we're left with. Sad, sad, sad.
I agree that it stands out, but I haven't settled on whether it's a good or bad thing. It's certainly got more character than The Hotel on Rivington which is gray and bland.
I actually don't believe this building had anything to do with the demise of Tonic, which was located next door to BLUE. Before Tonic folded, I walked by and saw it co-exist with BLUE. Rumor is rent for Tonic became too high so they couldn't afford it, not that BLUE had anything to do with pushing it out since they seem to be separate entities.