When Tishman Speyer's bid was selected as the winner in the West Side Rail Yards development derby, politicians were relieved but the NY Times' architecture critic was upset. Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote the design "lacks even the pretense of architectural ambition" and called it a "wishful fantasy" and "a damning indictment of large-scale development in New York." In today's NY Times Arts & Leisure section, Ouroussoff takes on "big-time development" and how renderings are so......

Brookfield Properties, which had offered a plan to bring back streets - as well as 12 million square feet of development and 15 acres of public space - to the West Side Rail Yards, has declined to continue in the bidding process. The MTA had requested revised Hudson Yards proposals with more financial details by yesterday and the bids received were from Durst and Vornado, Tishman Speyer and Morgan Stanley, Extell, and Related Companies.......

There's been a lot of ink, virtual and otherwise, already spilled on Governors Island. But today, NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff proclaimed that the new site "could well become the most inspired public park built here in generations." He also said the plan is "humble in scale but big on ambition." But didn't he say last spring that the designs lacked ambition? Hmm. We have to give him this: Of the five proposals,......

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......

While everyone knows that the proposals five development teams have offered up for the MTA's West Side rail yards are likely to change, the NY Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff made it clear that he hopes they do, with a withering review of the five plans. Noting the great opportunity that developers have, Ouroussoff says the designs "are not just a disappointment for their lack of imagination, they are also a grim referendum on......

Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for the NY Times, enjoys working in his employer's new headquarters, he writes today, but the building designed by Renzo Piano falls short of the best skyscrapers in the city. For one, it allegedly harbors a streak of nostalgia, which in the world of architectural discourse amounts to an aesthetic identity crisis. The nostalgia in question is a longing not for neo-Gothic frills and cornices, but for the 1950s era......

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......

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted yesterday to landmark eight new sites in four of the city's boroughs - the Bronx loses out. City Room details the new landmarks, which include the Lord & Taylor building, the white brick Manhattan House, two homes on Grand St., the Standard Varnish Works Factory building (its owner thinks the designation is bad for business) and the Greek-Revival style Fillette Tyler Mansion in Staten Island and the Voelker-Orth Museum, Bird......

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......

The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation is having a public meeting tonight to share the five designs for the island so far. The designers will be presenting and the public can offer feedback. The meeting is at 6:30PM at FIT (Reeves Great Hall, 28th Street and 7th Avenue), and you can see the designs here and wonder if you agree with what the NY Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff thought about them, as......

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......

The NY Times has a glimmering review of Frank Gehry’s first New York structure to actually get built. Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff calls the IAC building, the headquarters for Barry Diller's media empire, “elegant” and “a much-needed touch of lightness” to the city’s skyline. Gehry’s latest, writes Ouroussoff, reflects how developers are paying closer attention to design. Boasting “strangely chiseled forms that reflect the surrounding sky,” the IAC, one of several new towers along......

This morning, the NY Times takes a look at the Mayor's $7.5 billion affordable housing plan four years since he announced it and one year since he expanded it to 165,000 units of low- to moderate-cost housing. About one third of the projected units, or 55,000, have been financed to date, and 41,366 have been completed. But the 10-year plan may not succeed in producing a net increase in affordable housing. The problem is......

In yesterday’s NY Times, Nicolai Ouroussoff notes the onset of 21st-century medievalism, the siege-like architectural style that has surfaced since 9/11. Equating Baghdad’s Green Zone and Israel’s West Bank barrier with the concrete bollards that line Park Ave. and Wall Street, Ouroussoff writes that a new protectionism has emerged in contrast to architecture’s era of transparency. He compares the ethos of American military headquarters in Baghdad to gated communities of Southern California and wonders whether......

Governor Spitzer who once called the Freedom Tower a “white elephant” and questioned its economic viability announced his support of the project today in lower Manhattan alongside the Mayor and NJ Governor John Corzine. Spitzer said that after looking into alternatives, he decided that it was best to proceed as planned, citing the strong real estate market. Plus, it's a good photo op. The site’s financials could change. The Associated Press is reporting that......

Today the NY Times reviews a new show at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Titled “Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X,” the exhibit explores 70 architectural magazines published in New York and elsewhere during the period. Pamphlets and building instruction manuals are included in the "little magazine" category. The most New York-centric covers described by Nicolai Ouroussoff feature an elephant attacking the Guggenheim Museum and a skyscraper made of Swiss cheese.......

+ Delays are plaguing Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House. + The Central Park Conservancy is going global. + Paris’ Phare Tower recalls Grand Central Terminal’s machine-age fascination, reports New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. + A map that's “one of the most beautiful, important and accurate plans of New York,” according to IN Phelps Stokes, who designed the University Settlement House at Eldridge and Rivington and Columbia’s St. Paul's Chapel. + An architect who......

Newsweek is reporting that architect Renzo Piano is drawing up plans for a downtown addition abutting the High Line even though the Whitney’s board of trustees hasn’t made a final decision. Piano first heard word of a possible relocation in September. “My first reaction was sad, when you spend a couple years struggling, and dreaming, about a scheme, and finally you may end by not doing it,” he told architecture critic Cathleen McGuigan. There was......

Well, this wasn't a surprise: An Upper East Side community board committee moved to reject plans for a 30 floor apartment tower at 980 Madison Avenue. The design by Lord Norman Foster, ballyhooed for his addition to the Hearst Building and a design for the World Trade Center, is shorter than the Carlyle Hotel nearby, but the Carlyle's height is less obtrusive due to set backs. Just last week, the NY Times' architecture critic Nicolai......

+ The New York Sun calls the Queens Museum of Art building "fascist" and its redesign renderings "weak." Rare feat. + Norman Foster sets his sights on a neighborhood known for its aversion to "bold contemporary architecture" (rendering, right). No, we don't mean Greenwich Village and we do wonder if this is NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff's way to sway opinion to keep the design in tact. + Speaking of downtown, more than a......

Until March 5, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a show dedicated to Santiago Calatrava, the already-beloved in NY architect behind the new PATH Transit Hub at the World Trade Center. The show, Santiago Calatrava: Sculpture into Architecture, features two dozen sculptures amongst drawings and architectural models. However, in a skeptical review in the NY Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wonders how the sculptures actually figure into Calatrava's process (plus, the sculptures are "mostly derivative......

The NY Times tackles real estate and class in two articles that span two boroughs. First, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff gives his thoughts on the Brooklyn waterfront plan, saying the park will be a "major civic asset" but a proposed hotel-residential complex have the potential to devour parkland and glorious views: "We live in an age, sadly, when little public benefit arises before a developer takes a cut." It does seem like the future of......

A moment that has become sadly familiar over the years, yesterday saw family and friends of September 11 victims descended into Ground Zero to pay their respects, lay flowers and remember their loved ones as the city remembered September 11, 2001. Brothers and sisters of the victims read the names of the 2,749 killed on that bright day in a short and moving ceremony. This year, the speeches reflected on the London bombings and New......

-Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. Services start at Ground Zero in the early morning. Moments of silence will be observed at 8:46, 9:03, 9:59 and 10:29 A.M.. The Tribute in Light will be on from dusk until dawn from it's new West and Morris Streets location. Other events are also planned. -The Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff says that the Ground Zero rebuilding effort has turned into a "hallucinogenic nightmare: a roller coaster ride......

The plans for the proposed buildings around the Brooklyn Nets arena have been revealed by architect Frank Gehry, and they show a dazzling group of skyscrapers at various angles. The NY Times calls it an "instant skyline" and notes that the plan is far from a sure thing, given that developer Bruce Ratner still faces a bit of community antipathy for his plans. But the excitement is best summarized by the first paragraph of......

The new Freedom Tower design was presented yesterday, showing the more fortress-like design (the NY Post calls it "Fort Zero") that's supposed to meet the NYPD's standards for safer and more bomb-resistant buildings. The jury is out: It's less ugly than before (at least this design had one vision, versus two stitched together), but it's still...lacking. But safer, so it seems New Yorkers are being asked to choose between safe designs and ones that......

Forget Saddam in his underwear (people, this is like seeing your uncle absent-mindedly walk around the house without his pants, only if your uncle is a murderer and despot), the truly awesome photograph that the NY Post has today is this shot of Governor Pataki and polarizing international architect Daniel Libeskind getting cozy. Photographer Josh Williams captured the moment, to which the Post writes, "What will Libby Pataki and Nina Libeskind say when they see......

There's more discussion about whether or not the current plans for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site meet security concerns, especially Freedom Tower. A lengthy NY Times article notes that the NYPD's recently publicized concerns are "disturbing." More interesting: Police Commissioner Kelly says that the NYPD has been working with developers for the past 16 months about security issues, which would make one think the developers would have had some idea of what......

As 2004 draws to a close, Gothamist can't wait to see what happens in 2005 when it comes to the West Side Stadium plan. Last week, NJ senator Frank Lautenberg wrote letters to the EPA and Federal Highway Administration to see if they can find some reasons why the stadium shouldn't be built, which isn't totally surprising since the NY Jets are trying to abandon Giants Stadium. Gothamist wonders if Lautenberg shouldn't be contacting......

The NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff Arts > Art & Design > Architecture Review: Art Fuses With Urbanity in a Redesign of the Modern" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/15/arts/design/15moma.html?hp">raves about the renovated Museum of Modern Art:Designed by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi with Kohn Pedersen Fox, the expanded museum is a serene composition that weaves art, architecture and the city into a transcendent aesthetic experience. Its crisp surfaces and well-proportioned forms clean up the mess that the building had become......