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March 31, 2005
Exhaust
What architect thought it would be smart to put the parking garage exhaust vents on the usable 2nd level street front, immediately below residents windows? Close the window honey...
Posted by jmarston at 05:42 PM | Comments (2)
The Anti-Sit: Jaw Rail
Posted by jmarston at 05:21 PM
Stadium In Manhattan
Wow. What a scam. Seriously. You know if they announced this tomorrow most people would write it off as an April fools joke... but no, I mean really, who would of thought? No need to really put together a sensible reaction to this, because the only sense anyone should get is anger - then hearty laughter. Miss Representation, whose summary of today's news is spot on, has done a fine job covering this most epic of Monorail scams...
Even in China, they know that New Yorkers don't want a stadium in Manhattan... But Bloomberg news knew ahead that the Jets were likely to get the MTA to pick their bid. Huh. Thanks & Shouts to L. Jay Cross, Dan Doctoroff, Mikey B., and Peter K. Jerks.
Posted by jmarston at 03:38 PM
March 30, 2005
Odd-Top: First Edition
Much of the character and charm of large swaths of downtown Manhattan are inseparable from the omnipresent wooden water tower, a varied yet dependable aesthetic cue; it dots the skyline like the blinking red lights that beacon off newer skyscrapers in lower Manhattan. But akin to a fedora or fez; it’s lost some popularity as a signature skyline piece. Most newer – even not so 'new' – buildings encase their water towers and rooftop intake/exhaust fans with dressings of various sorts, with observably wide-ranging results. While some should have encased their utilities in order to meet the program of the building, others would have done better to leave utility alone, and allow the gracefulness of the wooden water tower speak without accoutrement.
Whatever the case, Transfer presents a new Category, Odd Top. I’ll be documenting the sightly, unsightly, and strange ways architects have decided to deal with this nearly universal challenge. Odd Tops begins with 4 examples of varying style, era, and success.
an older example...
a, well, 'newer' example...
cell phone editions make nice with monthly charges...
wow, how ugly could you make the penthouse & utility top - This Ugly.
Posted by jmarston at 05:02 PM
The Anti-Sit: TriAngular Pole Dance
Posted by jmarston at 04:45 PM | Comments (1)
March 29, 2005
27 East 27th
Ziff Davis is the primary tenant of this boxy & moxieless pile of failed 60's modernism, with its stairs to nowhere, its terrible street presence, and insulting sight placement. Oh, its a really nice facade, dude. Makes me feel like I'm waiting for a long, slow, bureaucratic death. Oh, and great landscaping as well. This building situates nicely, everything wrong with derivative modernism, kind of like an earlier Hatin' smackdown, on the Kips Bay Branch Library.
This building would be even more forgettable if it wasn't situated across the street from the site of the original Madison Sq. Garden, where its architect, Stanford White was murdered, and since 1928 the home of Cass Gilbert's golden topped 40-storey New York Life Insurance building. Give Madison some Love already!
stairs to the exhaust vents and seat less, scraggly, unkept perim-plaza.
Posted by jmarston at 05:17 PM
March 25, 2005
Cities and Kids
The Times put cities on the front page yesterday, essentially pointing out the obvious and persistant fact, that our cities are still struggling to attract and keep middle class families - oh-so-especially in areas where immigrant or poorer families normally fill the school rooms. They are just priced right out of the entire city - e.g. San Fran. They point out, "having fewer children really diminishes the quality of life in a city." & "It's not so much a social problem as it is a demographic and financial problem". Surely everyone knows having a kid ain't cheap...
Such a problem that the 2nd UN-Habitat passed a somewhat feel good initiative to make cities more child friendly, because "The Conference declared that the well-being of children is the ultimate indicator of a healthy habitat. Ummm, no shit. How about addressing the underlying reasons cities are "unfriendly to children".
The Brookings Institute, in 2003, published an interesting interpretation of 2000 Census data on Seattle. Showing, as one would assume, that "fewer than 20 percent of city households contain children, and Seattle households are smaller than those in any other large U.S. city" & "Seattle's suburbs added over 100,000 households of all types over the decade." No new news...
In a similar article as the Times, the Blue Oregon chronicles the loss of children in Portland, noting, "1962, Portland had 81,000 kids in public schools. Today, enrollment stands at about 48,000 students."
Although, Fannie Mae, sees things more opportunistically, "In fact, the taxes generated by attracting childless households to the city can be used to improve school quality for families with children without adding any additional burden on school systems. Those who study housing impact find that the combination eases pressure on municipal budgets." One has got to wonder though, NYC has been throwing money at their schools for years. In many respects I see it as a diversity issue. Economic diversity amongst the students, not more money...
Even the suburban paper of note, USA Today, jumped on the kids and cities fray heating up the Metro news rooms, noting that nearly 15% of Atlanta's total population is college educated and aged 25-34.
Chicago has not sat out on the emptying, although "The City of Chicago gained population for the first time in fifty years because natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) was sufficient to offset losses from net out migration."
Surely one of the most quoted in the post election fall out was Joel Kotkin, apologist for Patio Man, and all around hack for suburban and exurban sprawl, stating, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities--true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston, and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation--but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably in the sunbelt cities, exurbs, and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."
Finally, the excellent folks at The Next American City put the cities & kids issue on the front cover of their January issue... looking at the issue from a number of interersting angles. Rec'd.
Posted by jmarston at 05:27 PM
J.P. Morgan Library Expansion Renovation
Renzo Piano's renovation & expansion of the Morgan Library, whose main building was originally constructed by McKim, Mead, and White, seems to be coming along - a good 4 years into it. With an expected complete date of 2006. In accordance with strict preservation guidelines, the structure won't touch the original three buildings. The first two years seemed to be concerned with with a massive dig job... The philosophy of the project was also to create a shelter, a “safe for the treasure”, excavated in Manhattan’s schist rock: an underground, 26,100 square feet space, on five levels.
View from Madison Ave.
View from 36th St.
View from 36th St.
Along the main McKim entrance are two lions carved by Edward Clark Potter, who is responsible for Patience and Fortitude, the two lions in front of the Public Library at 5th and 42nd. He also carved the 30 statues atop the cornice at the Brooklyn Museum. There is something really cool about enclosing them in plexiglass.
Posted by jmarston at 04:09 PM | Comments (1)
The Anti-Sit: Ledge Stories
Posted by jmarston at 02:21 PM
March 22, 2005
The Anti-Sit: Dual Edition
Triangular!
Classic!
Posted by jmarston at 02:34 PM
Finally!
We're out of the Forties!
Posted by jmarston at 02:31 PM | Comments (1)
March 21, 2005
Replicate
Trippin out on Super Bloc 'luxury' buildings replicating themselves around Manhattan. 111 Worth St, referenced on Curbed for their interesting marketing strategies, is pictured below.
This lardy Tribecan superblock looks in rendering, a helleva lot like recently completed Anthem, located on 34th...in the Far East.
Lux Dorms, Replicate!
Posted by jmarston at 02:02 PM | Comments (2)
One Bryant Park
A dropped knot in the plywood lets a lucky peeping tom check the HUGE foundation hole for the Cook+Fox Bank of America tower at the corner of 42nd and 6th.
Posted by jmarston at 12:45 PM
A Quiet Town
"Marvin T. Miller, who is deaf, envisions the town he wants to create here: a place built around American Sign Language, where teachers in the new school will sign, the town council will hold its debates in sign language and restaurant workers will be required to know how to sign orders... Planners, architects and future residents from various states and other countries are gathering at a camp center in South Dakota on Monday and through the week to draw detailed blueprints for the town, which could accommodate at least 2,500 people. Mr. Miller, who has been imagining this for years, intends to break ground by fall." --NYTimes
Posted by jmarston at 12:23 PM | Comments (1)
March 18, 2005
Architecture vs. Urban Design
There is a lot of debate, and anger, between those who practice & follow architecture, and those who care and plan the built environment – not that there is, or should be, any Difference between the two, but... The assumed ego mania of Art-itecture, and their Star Architects, grates against the Public’s interest keepers – planners and urban designers who are not interested in the terms of capital A-rchitecture, and the practitioners of it, but in the smooth interaction between space and user. Insight garnered for and from the ‘public’. Maybe all that anger toward the ‘star architect system’, as it is pejoratively referred to, could be channeled at the highway appropriations bill, or county building boards, or *Gasp*, toward thinking more deeply about what type of Space & Structure honors the human experience better than Neat Shops, Scaled Streets, and Pedestrian friendly Corners. Albuquerque thought progressively about their downtown, and then hired a new urbanist firm who put forward a monster Rule Book of how buildings can and cannot address the space they inhabit.
While I like, in principal, the ease of "three rules", and its applicability in the exurban and suburban landscapes, even, at times, in the newly built urbanscapes, I find it frighfully weak and terminally simplistic in the consideration of Every Building at Every Site. As a lens of criticism it doesn't even begin to approach a work of architecture with any compelling rigor in its analysis of space, or the experience of it – except in its perimeter. It looks at the outline, and then condemns the center.
The hugely important move towards Urban Design is one I applaud, especially after journeying to places like the I-95 corridor of South Florida. This is the best place, and in my estimation, The Place this type of approach is necessary, productive, and applicable. The great cartopia wastelands needs hard and fast rebuttals, to what is a hard and fast space of alienation. But the ease with which Urban Design thinks of scoffing and leveling – absolutely discounting – architecture that doesn't treat its hard, simple, and derogatory regulation is simply candy fancy. I’m not arguing that we instill a priestly trust in a system of Star Architects. But the ire and anger America’s cartopias produce shouldn’t be channeled into architect bash sessions with the unruly newurbanist designer & bitter bureaucratic planner sanctimoniously charging Contempt in the court of the Passing Pedestrian. The constant condemnation of Rem's library is partly resultant from the idea that the pedestrian & their experience from the perimeter is above all the Singular drive in the design of any building, is mildly retarded at best. That, if it does indeed fail on that level then it was failed as a structure, is laughable analysis. Walk around Battery Park City, it fails to inspire anything but Ire in its well proportioned rule obeying NU plan. Great! Because architecture doesn't matter, right?
The ramming fascism of Glass Boxes has of course produced a qualified reaction amongst us, who never enter the boxes we’re towered over by. Surely the S&L's go-go 80’s of corporate office parks and searingly derivative Mies boxes has created an unhandled steam engine of angst towards our architects disregard for the pedestrian and the sick love for oil based transport... But.
But the current direction of so much bottled anger towards how we’ve produced our landscapes, what has taken precedent, and how much we’ve lost shouldn’t remit us towards burning the few sites of architectural luster we have, but towards the millions of developer built, cinder block suck holes going up every minute around the country, in every breath of wasted condemnation on folks like Koolhaas & Herzog. While I think much of Koolhaas’s work maybe theoretical bluster, laughable contradiction, and wholly inappropriate site handling, the preconceived prejudice so many have towards a building before they even experience it is downright sophomoric. What fucking building does Kunstler like? A Leon Krier sack of neoclassical derivatives? I hope not, he’s too intelligent for that...yet I think the anger birthed from our Oil based Suburban wasteland has clouded even the most astute.
It seems to me the trend is only gaining speed. As if the angry planners, who’ve aligned themselves with the urban designers, tired neo-traditionalists, and their new urbanist bedfellows, will finally get their Power back from those meddling artists of structure. Fuck the idea that every single building should follow some hard and fast Rules we’ve somehow cooked out of our banal little assessment of a stip mall. No shit the pedestrian should be considered, even worshipped, but fuck already. It’s deeper than that. I hope.
Posted by jmarston at 01:07 PM | Comments (1)
Around the Neighborhood
Like everyone with internet access, I've been browsing the New York Public Library's new Digital Gallery. Here is looking at the sites around my apartment and neighborhood...
Franklin at Eastern Parkway - 1910 (Bklyn Museum in the background)
Sterling at 7th Ave - 1937 (Flatbush in the background)
Brooklyn Museum - 1925
Flatbush - 1927
Posted by jmarston at 12:53 PM | Comments (1)
The Anti-Sit: Triple Threat
Posted by jmarston at 12:49 PM
March 11, 2005
Kelo v. City of New London
Bruce Ratner and his rag tag group of real estate cronies (Marty, yes you) may be in for a precedent that will not bode well for their Brooklyn stadium bid. Either adding fuel, or releasing steam from fight against Ratner's Atlantic Yards. A US Supreme Court decision is due on Kelo v City of New London in late June. Let the 5th amendment interpretation gymnastics begin...
Slate gives a play by play of the oral arguements made before the court on Feb 22... "It doesn't look like the good folks of Fort Trumbull will garner many votes today at all—save for that of Justice Scalia, who channels the many libertarian amici in this case when he repeats that you can constitutionally condemn land and give it to a private entity—a railroad or public utility. "But you can't give it to a private corporation just because it might increase taxes."
The Boston Globe published a searing defense of the little guy where he quotes an earlier Supreme Court decision... ‘‘The despotic power ..... of taking private property when state necessity requires, exists in every government,’’ Justice William Paterson wrote in a 1795 case, Vanhorn’s Lessee v. Dorrance, but the state must not invoke that power ‘‘except in urgent cases.’’ He could not imagine any situation that would justify ‘‘the seizing of landed property belonging to one citizen, and giving it to another citizen. ..... Where is the security, where the inviolability of property, if the legislature ..... can take land from one citizen, who acquired it legally, and vest it in another?’’
The Seattle Times also published an editorial defending the interests of individuals against the desires of developers... "Since the landmark 1981 casePoletown Neighborhood Council v. City of Detroit, in which the Michigan Supreme Court ruled Detroit could condemn an entire community in the interest of giving its land to a new General Motors plant, abuse has been rampant. (The Michigan court has since reversed its decision, but the damage was done.) By one analysis, eminent domain was used more than 10,000 times between 1998 and 2002 to transfer title from one private owner to another."
While USA Today published an opinion by APA executive director, Paul Farmer in support of the developer's right to eminent domain..."Using condemnation only when a government entity will own the property — for example, for a highway or jail or to remove blight — unduly restricts a community's ability to manage growth and change." Ummm, BULLSHIT. Additionally, the APA published their take on Kelo v. City of New London.
Legal Affairs hosted an interesting debate on the Kelo case, where in a flash of libertarian angst I happen to agree with Prof Epstein when he states... "I know you may not agree, but if building up the tax base counts as a "public use," then no one's home is safe. After all, the local government only has to project higher revenues from the newer use, without having to substantiate the claim. Although New London's brief tries to gloss over the massive deficiencies of this ill-conceived plan, it's worth noting that this redevelopment project has thus far consumed $73 million in Connecticut money to perform feasibility studies, do environment cleanup, and install infrastructure. But New London still hasn't found any viable projects to put on the nearly 90 acres of prime property it already owns. Why it feels driven to take about 1.54 acres owned by Ms. Kelo and her neighbors is anybody's guess."
David Sucher, of City Comforts, notes... "In my opinion, justice demands the "public use" provision of eminent domain be clarified to exclude purely private gain." while he hi-lites some amicus briefs by famous urban thinkers, here, linking Jane Jacobs', and here, John Norquist... "But, taxpayers are now being asked to underwrite the risks of real estate-related economic development ... for speculative acquisition of real estate. This has resulted from the recently acquired taste for expediency among certain members of the private development community who hunger for government to speed up the development process and/or cut existing landowners off from the economic potential of their land ... Lured by proffered visions of tax base enhancement and upscale amenities, some local officials are supporting this sort of "corporate welfare," and it not only raises serious Fifth Amendment questions, but skews the evaluation of projects and their long range community impacts."
A resident of CT posts on Crooked Timber that... "I live in CT and have been following this issue for the past couple of years. The most unusual aspect of the “eminent domain” asserted by the Town of New London and supported by the CT Supreme Court is that the alledged future benefit to the town is particularly insubstantial...There is a true snake-oil, pie-in-the-sky aura to the whole development scheme, and if it seems crazy that the state supreme court has gone along with it, you should keep in mind that that court is largely the creation of our recently-departed, ethically-challenged kleptocratic Governor Rowland, who never met a developer he didn’t like (as long as the gratuity was adequate)."
Posted by jmarston at 01:29 PM | Comments (2)
Attack of the Useless Awning!
34th Streets' most Garish and Heinous little tub of lard. At least Tads keeps a level of respectability with the neon... Bring the neon back, or at least the multi-bulb display. Please, those types of adverts can take me back to Gotham's 40's era advertising... But this glowing plastic awning, is drawning... hiccup.
Posted by jmarston at 12:04 PM
March 10, 2005
Ground Floor
It appears that every new Super Block apartment building going up in New York has planned for only 2 or 3 retailers to occupy the ground floor... This inevitably leads to Big Box retailing and all of its requisite banalities. Not to advocate 6 two-thousand sqft boxs set for DryCleaning/NailSalon/Starbucks, although some of the time it necessitates. But a rereading of the type of spatial designs that attract the type of businesses that the luxury developer should want, the type of places they're trying to associate the condo with in the first place. Which, if they acted with any intelligence, would upscale their investment regardless. Intimate, remarkable, designed spaces, of varying sq footage and frontage. But instead, I breeze by tower after block, and the faint sucking sound of another Duane Reade - or in a shrill move to appease the yuppies marginal interest in proper urban street fronts, a Whole Foods - extracts from a passerby the faint hope for something remarkable to the neighborhood, to the experience of that spot on the grid. But Murray Hill is, as Kips Bay does, as they would do...
Posted by jmarston at 02:11 PM
Architecture of Obesity
Posted by jmarston at 01:36 PM | Comments (2)
Zip Zap Rap
Thazz Right!
Posted by jmarston at 12:27 PM
In like a Lion out like a Lamb?
its march. new york shitty weather...
Posted by jmarston at 11:35 AM
March 09, 2005
The Anti-Sit: Lil Buddies
Posted by jmarston at 11:56 AM
March 08, 2005
Stone & Glass
"The symbolic value of stone resides in far more than its durability and permanence...the symbolism of stone - and of precious gems - is an essential element in the belief of many pre-christian religions and of early christianity itself. in the primitive view of nature, stone is not dead, it is a concentration of power and life... the true siginificance of stone lay not only in its immense age, its slow maturing over the millenia, but in its cosmic, extraterrestrial origin." -- John Brinckerhoff Jackson
So what of the symbolic qualities of glass? Has glass taken the role of stone in the vernacular of building symbol & monument. Not necessarily. Yes, in monuments to capitalism, power, and Good Taste, so they say... but we still build very many Monuments in a neoclassical vernacular. With, gasp, white marble, and gasp-gasp, doric columns. Except when mo(nu)ments of brilliance - Maya Lin, Daniel Libeskind - shine through the hollow attempts at aping 2000 year old strokes of meaningful architecture. Is it any wonder the WWII memorial has absolutley no significance, bordering on insult? We've been struggling with the WTC site... A confused hybrid Glass Monument to the sky, or a confused hybird stone Memorial below?
Are the qualities of glass, Transparency, Reflection, Penetration, Versatility, Erasure, Reparability, Perspective, Universality, and Insubstantiality, today's most significant symbols? It sure seems so. Hell, everyone likes sunlight, a view, and bringing the outside inside; so to speak. But I wonder what quailties a wood sheathed skyscrape would have, or a glass airplane.
Posted by jmarston at 05:11 PM
March 07, 2005
The Anti-Sit: Stoop Stories
Posted by jmarston at 10:52 AM | Comments (1)
March 04, 2005
Kips Bay Branch of Bull
A Library? Yes my dear, I now hate books too.
This is the type of building that really gives the modernists a bad rap, and rightfully so. Designed by Giorgio Cavaglieri, it opened in 1972, and its been pissing on us ever since. Civic? Hahaha...
Posted by jmarston at 12:14 PM
March 03, 2005
I-SeS
What is the terminus of Luxury Condo construction in Manhattan? How many buyers can really be in the market for five hundred thousand dollar studios. In unremarkable hi-rise towers. In neighborhoods without grocers. How many euro trash pied-a-tierres can we swallow before the market explodes with inventory, and penniless Cocoran brokers talking about the early two-thousands?
Everywhere you turn, another, sometimes noteworthy (Perry St Towers, 80 South St), but most of the time trite, lux condo tower is under construction, just completed, or on the Globe St. broadsheet. I support density, and new residential construction, as a rule. But Please. If it happens to be a noteworthy building, the 500 grand studio, already so outrageously priced, jumps to atmospheric heights. Is it unimaginable for middle-income New Yorkers to live in a hi-rise and not in a row home? Does everyone in Vancouver make 6 figures?
Besides the explosion of towers on the ladies mile, and the similar blowback of shadows in Hells Kitchen, the district around the Empire State Building/Midtown South, seems to be budding with new lux hi-rises - and the ball may have just started bouncing.
So here, what better reason to kibosh the CT based developers shitty neighborhood branding and come up with a new monkier, I-SeS, or, In the Shadow of the Emprire State. Perfect I-Gnorance.
The northern most lux condo tower of the newly minted I-SeS neighborhood is the 617 ft, 57 storey, Michael Grave's sheathed 425 5th Ave. On the west end of the district, on 6th, the 463 ft, 46 storey Atlas, and in the center, on 33rd st, another cartography stimulated building, and perhaps the most appalling looking, the 348 ft, 34 storey, Magellan. And the southern most, on 31st st, the 450 ft, 41 storey, Tower 31. Supposedly a project by Trump bed partners Costas Kondylis & Partners, although the project isn't credited on their site... Heres to hoping this tower can slow I-SeS from futher architectural banality, and not end up in twenty years looking like Kips Bay hi-rises or Murray Hills monstrosities.
So that brings us to the newest finger in I-SeS hand - the 471 ft, 47 storey, 325 Fifth Ave. Which all of the photos in this post have originated from, the giant hole excavated for 325's foundation. The renderings leave me a little cold and distant, but perhaps, against my better cynic, we'll get something akin to architecture at 325 5th Ave. But I'm not crossing my rebar. So heres to I-SeS, I hope you can do something with your good bad self, cause you're home to the interminable and lovely ESB, and I've always loved how the sun shines so brightly up 5th ave from the Flatiron, and your 70's fab Broadway dirty with soot, and meat sticks, the sidewalks littered with belt wrappers, and cheap perfume boxes. Keep it togehter for us.
Posted by jmarston at 04:48 PM | Comments (5)
The Anti-Sit: New Horizons
Now in shades of peach...
Posted by jmarston at 01:59 PM | Comments (1)
March 02, 2005
The Hotel Cavalier
Sometimes reskinning isn't done to upscale, occasionally it’s a good way to downscale a building or entrance. As was the case with Dr. Lock Shoes... which surely didn't have the same flair as this fine piece of work --
The Hotel Cavalier
Seeing as they don't rent as a hotel anymore, but as an SRO, and one of few still operating in Manhattan, perhaps they wanted to retool to their market. Surely they flew headway into any HPD regulations, and nothing says welcome to the Hotel Cavalier, then carpeted cement, corrugated steel, and a handy pay phone located right out front. I miss these browbeaten sites of downscaled, home-shabbed, and thoroughly shantytown DIY New York architecture. And then sometimes, I don't.
"This building was constructed as a hotel in 1888 by the real estate developer George R. Read, 9 Pine St. The architect was Bassett Jones, 49 Broadway. The building was a 5-story brick structure (estimated cost $45,000) intended as a hotel with "5 families each floor, 20 in all, first floor to be used as stores." these notes thanks to NYC Signs 14th to 42nd.
One side note, Basset Jones, who designed the Cavalier, also designed the Granliden Hotel.
Posted by jmarston at 05:50 PM
The Anti-Sit: Arts & Crafts Edition
Posted by jmarston at 03:47 PM