It's been a busy month for NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. After tackling Jean Nouvel's skyscraper, Renzo Piano's Times building and the West Side Rail Yards designs, today he turns to the feverishly celebrated New Museum, previewed yesterday by Gothamist. Designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Japan-based SANAA, the highly refined seven-story, 174-foot building succeeds, says Ouroussoff, on a "spectacular range of levels: as a hypnotic urban object, as a subtle......

NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews Jean Nouvel's future 75-story tower at 53 West 53rd Street, describing it as "the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation." He compares Nouvel's latest to the Woolworth, Chrysler and Seagram buildings. Filling a 17,000 square-foot vacant lot next to MoMA, the structure will be the future site of a developer Hines' 100-room hotel and 120 "highest-end" (Hines' words) luxury apartments. MoMA, which sold the lot......

Various officials followed up with some more thoughts about Frank Gehry designing his very first playground for Battery Park. Mayor Bloomberg said, “Everything Frank Gehry touches is unique, and I’m sure it will be a great park." Check out this quote, via the Post:"I once gave money to redo a children's playground in Central Park. I can't go in it because you have to have a child. But when I look in it, people seem......

Jean Nouvel mania reaches a fevered pitch with today’s glowing NY Times review of the French architect’s rising Soho and Chelsea buildings. Nicolai Ouroussoff references Hitchcock and Uma as he concludes that sleek and stupendous living may not be so bad after all. Calling the Soho building (windows pictured, left) on Grand between Broadway and Mercer “more restrained,” the NY Times architecture critic admires Nouvel’s embrace of the cast iron-frame buildings of Soho’s manufacturing......

At noon today, Suzanne Vega and Lou Reed will play a free concert at the opening of 7 World Trade Center. As we all know, 7 WTC is the only tower to be rebuilt since 9/11; the plaza already opened this week. The first tenants (the developers of the building - Silverstein Properties) will move in Friday, followed by the architects (Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Richard Rogers) working on the three buildings being......

It'll be an alley of cray architectural all-stars downtown! After turning over Freedom Tower reins to the Port Authority and getting a pretty sweet deal, given everything, developer Larry Silverstein has annointed British architect (and Sir) Richard Rogers to design Tower 3 and Japanese Pritzker-winner Fumihiko Maki to design Tower 4 at the World Trade Center. Rogers is making a splash in New York lately - he'll be designing the Javits Center expansion, the......