March 25, 2004

I Love Paris in the Sewer

Lightningfield snaps some fine pictures from his visit to the Musée des Egouts de Paris, the Paris Sewer Museum, which highlights some of the lesser known achievements of a few centuries of l'etat. Very Foucault's Pendulum....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 08:18 AM

March 04, 2004

Cantilever House

! Herbert Muschamp calls it a "stairway to heaven penthouse paradise," which is odd, since it looks more like a zipper than a staircase. The zipper on the fly of lower Manhattan. ["Chicka-boom!" indeed, Herbert.] What is it? It's Santiago Calatrava's latest project for New York, a 1000' residential tower of cantilvered cubehouses on South Street. (yes, as in Seaport. NYC zoning laws now require super-luxury buildings to be built adjacent to cornball-laden malls.) Each cube will be a single...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2004

I Heart The Time Warner Mall

If you need me, I'll be at the Time Warner Mall, getting in line for the escalator to Whole Foods, where I'll be bellying up to New York's only Jamba Juice. "Whata Juice?" you say? Soon enough, you will be surrounded by seemingly rational people discussing the merits of Power-sized Bounce Back Blasts with Vita Boost. You can join in, or you can take your mall-snobbery and chain store disdain, grind it into a powder, dump it into your (Stick-in-the)...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2003

Herbert Muschamp, Leg Man

Continuing in my apparent "interesting, but what does it mean for The Matrix?" vein, here's a quote from Herbert Muschamp's TMI review of the Men in Skirts exhibit at the Met's Costume Institute: I knew the Wachowski Brothers had lost it when Keanu Reeves showed up in their film The Matrix Reloaded dressed in that floor-length black soutane. If you're fortunate enough to have a leading man of Mr. Reeves's slim, agile physique, you do not — not! — cover...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2003

SWAT team blames Gehry architecture for delay in trapping Cleveland shooter

It took police more than seven hours to shoot and capture the gunman who opened fire in the newly opened Peter B. Lewis Building for Case Western's business school. It was "almost a cat and mouse game," said Cleveland Police Chief Edward Lohn. Why so long? "As the SWAT team entered the building, they were constantly under fire," Lohn said. "They couldn't return fire because of the design of the building. They didn't have a clear shot." The design,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2003

Architectural Survivor 3: See Who Gets Voted Off The Island

It's architectural reality TV, with so many last-minute campaigns, twists and turns, you'd think Fox was running it, not the Port Authority. The final two bachelors, er architect groups in the design "competition" for the WTC site have been workin' it hard, according to design reporter Julie Iovine's NYTimes article, even turning up on Oprah. Herbert Muschamp weighs in, too, slightly chastened. Meanwhile, Edward Wyatt's report of a LMDC committee's surprise recommendation of THINK over (the Pataki/Bloomberg-favored) Libeskind sounds like...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2003

What're THINK Thinking?

Team THINK's winning WTC design: lattice towers with a, um, museum? embedded in it image: rvapc.com Goin' to hear THINK architect/model Rafael Vinoly at Urban Center tonight (as suggested by Gawker)? Ask him if the reason he was a no-show yesterday on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show was that listener's early comment, which surprised Lehrer, about how THINK's towers appear to have an airplane embedded in it? Listen to the exchange is in the "3rd audio clip. [Note: If you...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2003

On WTC Site Designs

What I hope doesn't carry through from the plans the LMDC selected from Daniel Libeskind and THINK Team: Needlessly symbolic height (1,776 feet) Why not two 911' high towers? Duh, because. Single high-profile elements that completely draw attention away from the plan and architecture of the rest of the site. What I hope does carry through: "The Bathtub" as part of the memorial (Read Edith Iglauer's 1972 New Yorker article about its construction, as discussed here.) Paul Goldberger's called-for "Eiffel...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 01:41 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2003

Herbert Muschamp: Think THINK!

Herbert Muschamp, the Professor Emile Flostre of architectural empathicalism, gives his blessing to the THINK team's proposal to build a World Cultural Center at the former WTC site. There are several things to like about the proposal, not the least of which is to turn the emphasis from the overwhelming commercial interests on the site, which the market can take care of just fine, thanks. Think's proposal most closely ressembles Paul Goldberger's call for an "Eiffel Tower for the 21st...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 07:32 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2002

How To Tell Me and Brad Pitt Apart

Took a whirlwind trip to the Yale School of Architecture to see an exhibition (mostly) of the theoretical works of the Rotterdam architecture firm, MVRDV. Ivory tower academics? Nope. They actually build. Alot. And Yale dean Robert Stern rightly praises "their belief that invention grows out of knowledge is refreshing in a profession too often mired in fashion." Through projects like Metacity/Datatown to Pig City to the 3D City Ballet, the firm's just-the-facts analytical approach to the problems of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2002

On why Rem Koolhaas should wake up every day thanking his mother

Usually, when you get googled for "I went to high school with Ben Affleck" or "red vines and hidden meaning," you're left to wonder who the hell that was, and what's going on in those folks' heads? So imagine my thrill when the guy searching for "Rem Koolhaas architecture and Matt Damon" sends a confessional email and includes a link to his weblog, Laughing Boy. Check it out [Mom, this doesn't include you.] Of course, I still have no...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg allen at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)