Sunday, January 28, 2007
Today's New York Times Arts and Leisure Section provides credible evidence that its architectural critic the Great St. Nic and its front page article, "Rehabilitating Robert Moses" have done a great disservice to Times' readers and harm to the cause of urbanism. I am also led to the conclusion that the Times' claims - "all the news that's fit to rint" - these days has the ring of sensationalism.
St. Nic reports more than critiques and provides the least amount of understanding in connecton with Gehry's design for Grand Avenue, downtown LA. First of all the birds eye view of the hard model, serveral eye level photographs of the same, and an accompanying site plan seem totally unrelated to explain what the evolution of Gehry's design was and whatever point St. Nic is trying to make. The following is Nic's bow to contextualism and urbanism: "In an early version of the design, the two residential towers were set at the site's northeast and southwest cornerrs, visually framing the complex and anchoring it into the surrounding skyline." Further: "Over the last year, as Mr. Gehry struggled to contain rising construction estimates, his box-like forms became more static, lending the design a more formal symmetry. The proposed facades of the two towers....., which orginally included fractured planes of glass that gave the impression that they were coming apart at the seams, are also less dynamic, forming a polite backdrop to Disney Hall across the avenue."
Looking at what I can make of the plans, I cannot see how the two towers frame the site, when the other forms look like they have been smashed up. Is he talking about context? I think not. And I cannot see how they anchor it to the surrounding skyline. If anything, the plan adds to the cacaphony of Disney Hall and the more stiff other buildings surrounding it. All of these contradictory words aside, and if Nic had just stuck to describing Gehry's evolving plan, some much better graphics showing the original, the altered plans, and a diagram about the impact of the evolution would have given the article the kind of clarity readers and the trained eye need.
If Gehry's plan is the beginning of a "new urbanism", I'm moving to the space station where at least form follows function.
Robin Pogrebin's front page article on the rehab of Robert Moses, unlike that smashed up thing I talked about earlier, is a very balanced piece of reporting. Moses' overwhelming crimes against urbanism, e.g. his destruction of neighborhoods and his rejection of more mass transit, are very well documented. This description, along with comments by Robert Caro who won the Pulitizer Price a while ago that documents his reign, balances the impact of the revisionism on this history by architectural historian Hilary Bannon.
To give her credit as a historian of the facts, she acknowledges his "anti-democratic methods and indifference to community values". But her stated reason for the show leads us in another direction: "I wanted to investigate Moses' with this emphasis on physical form". She highlights and is impressed by the majesty and durability of things like Jones Beach, Kips Bay Towers, bridge designs, and so on. Where her goals become twisted is when Mr. Finkelpearl of the Queens Museum says about the hosting of one of three exhibits on Moses: "This show is not about Moses, the guy. It's about what Moses did." To this distinction, Robert Caro violently disagrees.
The effect of both articles is the sowing of confusion. St. Nic with his excitement about new forms and unique concepts leads the reader and too many practicing architects, planners, and urban designers to believe and then to think this is the new paradigm.
New Is the new reality and truth, the past is boring and done for. Moses' rehab turns the public away from his very wrong, failed practices and gives the impression that he was a good guy, too. Again, because of the passage of time and the deadness that accompanies Caro's 30 year old book, Moses can be turned into someone else, not the anti-urbanist he really was.
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