retro

 





construction of

demolition of

cultural vandalism

[+] xref

ugly
desolate
monstrosity
crap
ungainly block
drab
corny


 


brutalist





misunderstood

• The Ford Foundation Building, New York NY 1967 - Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo & Associates
  • 1995 American Institute of Architects 25-Year Award
  • New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission 1997

  
  

• more

g r u m p y   o l d   . . .

• -- the "Black Rock"
  The CBS Headquarters, New York NY 1964 - Eero Sarinen
  
  • New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission 1997

• -- the "Glass House"
  Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., (now the Chase bank branch at 510 Fifth Ave. at 43rd Street), New York NY 1954 - Gordon Bunshaft/SOM
  • New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission 1997

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e x h i b i t i o n s

• Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism
  MoMA 11 W. 53rd St, Manhattan, New York, through 19-May98

   
  

• Fabrications: The Tectonic Garden -- Office dA ("nifty visual"), Munkenbeck & Marshall ("cut-rate Mies"), Smith-Miller & Hawkinson ("Hello there, 1988"), Enrique Norton/Guy Nordenson ("A bore on bricks"),
  MoMA, 11 W. 53rd St, Manhattan, New York, through 28-Apr98

• Fabrications: Full Scale -- Mockbee/Coker Architects, Eric Owen Moss Architects, Patkau Architects, the Stanley Saitowitz Office
  Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus Ohio, through 12-Apr98 tel 292-0330

   
  

• The Bronx Community Paper Co, 1997-2000 -- Maya Lin, HLW International
  $350 mil, a 26-acre tract of the Harlem River Rail Yards former industrial area
  Urban Center/Municipal Art Society, 457 Madison Ave, near 50th St, through 6-Feb98.

   
  

• Constructed Landscapes: Projects by Zaha Hadid
  
  • Habitable Bridge, Thames River, London, 1996
  • Boilerhouse Project, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1996

  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art -- through 10-Mar98; tel (415) 357-4000
   
  

• The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks
  Walker Art Center, Minneapolis -- through Jan98

   
  

• MoMA Expansion
  • Winning Design -- MoMA, New York -- 11-Dec97
  • "Toward the New Museum of Modern Art: Sketchbooks by 10 Architects" - MoMA, New York -- Jun-to-8-Jul97

   
  

• Coliseum Competition
  Coliseum Lobby, New York - Jan97
  Municipal Art Society Urban Center, New York -- Feb97

d e -   b a i t

• bilbao     [Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao]

  egregious sycophancy
  "Much of the media attention focused on Gehry's architecture is uncritical, some egregiously sycophantic. Herbert Muschamp's essay in the New York Times a few weeks ago is a case in point." (Lewis RK, wp_97.11.01)

  
  
   
  

• the crafty artisans     [Neurosciences Institute, La Jolla, California 1996]

  l a t e
  "We work in one room without a secretary and without computers. We produce all working drawings by hand - ink and pencil on Mylar. ... It means that we are slow workers. Construction drawings for a house take a minimum of six to eight months; CDs for a larger project take nine months to a year. This allow us to focus on developing details while pursuing the larger vision of a coherent whole. It is important for us to have the drawings (finished or unfinished) sitting physically on a desk so we can move forward by referring backward. Changes that are done efficiently on a computer are tedious in our office, requiring electric erasers, erasing shield and spit. But the slowness means that we must consider out ideas before we commit them to ink and that we come to understand the full ramification of changes as, page after page, we rub our lines. ... " (Tod Williams/Billie Tsien, "Slowness,"Newsline Fall 1996)

  
   
  

• the master builders

  Libeskind defense
  "... a theorist who has never built anything ... must therefore rely on forms of representation ... Libeskind would perhaps make no distinction between creating a building, a drawing or a piece of music." (Mark Dudek, Letter to the Editor, arev1144_Jun92)

  moot defense
  w : For a long time, you didn't believe that building was the necessary outcome of designing, and in fact you've built only about 20 projects so far.
  rk : S,M,L,XL is deliberately seamless about this, trying to present an absolute equivalence between unbuilt and built, because in a way I think it's a moot point. ..." (Katrina Heron, "From Bauhaus to Koolhaas," wired_Jul96)

  conspiracy theory
  "... all the people at the AA in the 1980s who were dismissed as wankers end up doing work all over the world. ... All these people weren't 'paper architects' as everybody said. They were real architects."

  "... Ever since I started building, I have never found any technical problems with my designs. I was talking to Rem Koolhaas about it. He agreed. It was a conspiracy, saying that our stuff could not be built." (Peter Cook, talking to Martin Pawley, in "Making paper architecture concrete," blp88_Jun92)

   
  can do
  lrc: "This particular project [Vitra Fire Station] has been built under your full control. Has it achieved what you had in mind when you designed it?"
  zh: " ... I think it shows two things: one, it is not so difficult to achieve your goals ... you can do whatever you want ..." (Zaha Hadid, talking to Luis Rojo de Castro 1995 - ecq73)