[NB: A reader alerted me to two inaccuracies, which have been corrected in the text and some comments have been appended below the text]
LIVING IN NEW YORK and being a fan of architecture always means having to say you’re sorry. More precisely, it means having to say, ‘Well, it could have been worse.’ Considering that we exist at the center of architectural practice, and, allowing a four-hour travel radius, at the academic center as well, we are still condemned to rationalize positive comments about much of which comprises architectural production that ranges from embarrassing to abhorrent.
The past two years have seen notable efforts to bring nameplate architects into the otherwise banal practice of making multiple dwelling facilities in Manhattan. Whereas the loft renovation was typically the cutting-one’s-teeth opportunity for young designers, they are finding themselves outflanked by the massive egos of the architectural ruling class, who, in some cases, are doing buildings from top to bottom. The list of recent projects, some real, some announced, some abandoned, include offerings from Graves, Meier, Calatrava, Gwathmey, Foster and Johnson. No longer content to watching the acronym posse (SOM, HOK, KPF) torture itself to try and develop a newer, cheaper way to wrap what is basically a light industrial manufacturing facility turned on its end with a ‘curb appeal’ in the form of a slighter different glass skin than the neighbor, we are now able to witness four decades of intellectually and formally bankrupt design theory fail miserably in the face of New York residential real estate market.
Trying to condense this argument into a comestible critique is difficult, since I don’t want to write a thesis here, but, rather, talk about a single building that seems to be emblematic of the unfortunate confluence of all these forces: developers and their middling stable of firms reaching up to where the demigods languish, the exalted slumming long enough to find out that it really is as bad as it seems down here.
Some of this process is explicable though the more considered words of others, but the runs the risk of seeming fussy and pedantic, an odd charge oft leveled at architects (and their critics), given they must, in the end, present visceral and near permanent arguments for these ideals. And so we have here Frederic Jameson:
It will no doubt be observed that the symbolic act of high modernism, which seeks to resolve contradiction by stylistic fiat (even though its resolution may remain a merely symbolic one), is of a very different order and quality from that of a postmodernism which simply ratifies the contradictions and fragmented chaos all around it by way of an intensified perception, or a mesmerized and well-nigh hallucinogenic fascination with, those very contradictions themselves (contenting itself with eliminating the affective charge of pathos, of the tragic, or of anxiety, which characterized the modern movement) [Architecture Criticism Ideology, PAP, 1985]
The reading presented above is acceptable mostly if one divests themselves of the belief that postmodernism is a design approach best characterized (and limited to) the candy-colored pastiche of the 1980’s and exemplified by Michael Graves, and instead opens it to include what is often lumped in as ‘traditional architecture’: the recent efforts to create, or recreate, structures that ape almost invisibly types — more often than not ones that prove to be lucrative real estate opportunities instead of significant by any aesthetic measure — in the extant stock.
This approach is consistent with the ‘playful’ belief that postmodernism existed almost post ideology — though some of its practitioners would have it that this free-form and arbitrary appropriation was a valid ideological approach to social conditions which enabled it. The strict traditionalist actions are cut from the same cloth, albeit with a more fitted approach. However, the guileless appropriation of history is same. Context is stripped down so that only formal terms remain, regardless of its history. Therefore, a design is admissible only when it succinctly apes its immediate environs, at all costs, and ‘authenticity’ collapses into an indiscernible mass of comfort through familiarity. To be inflammatory, but perhaps accurate, it’s the architectural equivalent of keeping the neighborhood as white as can be (which always protects real estate values).
But Jameson is an academic, not an architect. He hasn’t built a building (not so far as I know), and that’s fine for me, but when presenting such a relentless critique, you often get a little, ‘fine, but what are we supposed to do the meantime’? Folks like Manfredo Tafuri would have you respond ‘not much’, meaning that the collusion between an architect and prevailing hegemony is so inextricable that a critical practice is nigh impossible (or so reads Jameson).
There are both contemporaries and students of Tafuri who have both tried to live with the understanding of this strident stance whilst cleaving some path in the world that is hopefully adequately critical and still compelling. A strong example of this is Vittorio Gregotti, who presents this commentary about a decade later:
The spectacle is nothing but the pure form of separation: when the real world is transformed into an image and images become real, the practical power of humans is separated from itself and presented as a world unto itself… where everything can be called into question except the spectacle itself, which, as such, says nothing but, “What appears is good, what is good appears.”[Inside Architecture, MIT Press, 1996]
Unlike Jameson, he offers design that ostensibly opposes what his commentary derides. I can attest to an expression of affinity to the visceral before sanctioning his opinion. But it also occurs amidst its own historical moment, and I am merely a wide eyed naïf about that context, idealizing the Marxist posturing of an (Italian) culture that is nonetheless rabidly capitalist in many of its concerns, and in the end, may simply be another sucker for modern Italian design. Then again, maybe that’s not a bad thing.
THE HUBERT is a condominium building in TriBeCa nearing completion (photo), designed by BKSK Architects (with interiors by Alan Wanzenberg) and developed by Robert Siegel*. You’re probably familiar at least with a rendering of it if you have entered the city via the Holland Tunnel over the past two years. A large ad was situated in the lot at Beach and Varick streets (the intersection you encounter if you take the third exit from the Holland Tunnel rotary), and, at a glance, implied that the building was slated for that very lot. In fact, it is to the west, on Hubert Street, behind an existing former industrial building which is also undergoing redevelopment (by Joseph Pell Lombardi, who was involved in such notable conversions as the Atalanta building, the Ice House and the Julliard Building, as well as the upcoming Mohawk ‘Atelier’).
The building is unapologetically nostalgic. One might be tempted to say respectful, but that line is getting harder to distinguish each passing year of winking irony. My initial impression of the rendering was that someone decided to do the TriBeCa loft experience in an exceptionally thorough manner. I never studied the image well, and had a hard time situating it — the site is an ell, the bulk of which sits on Hubert Street, and the renderings obliterated all contextual elements. And though rendering technology has long passed the stage of photorea
lism, there are still enough tricks you can pull to make something to like more or less than it actually is. I simply assumed the rendering was a sales gimmick to generate interest in a building that was more or less a stock Costas Kondylis hack job.
But I have been removed from production long enough to discover that, no, the rigor with which the industrial loft building was fabricated whole cloth is, at times, terrifying. Or, as some preservation hack might say, appropriately respectful. Once the building was clad and topped out, you could see quickly how much it depends on the ‘Sky Lofts’ (photo) next door: the bay spacing of the windows (photo), the variegated brick pattern, color, and even the use of decorative stone caps mimics almost exactly the elder neighbor. The desire for double insulated glass, and marketability of expanses thereof has changed the proportions such that the panes run from column to column, and oddity and failure of which (photo) is not apparent in the rendering. Here again, Gregotti has a relevant observation (that is particularly acute if you wade through the Hubert sales site and see those renderings/movies):
Everything has at times been resolved, at the most superficial levels, by bestowing on the information media an importance great enough to allow construction of projects loaded primarily with the weight of their role as illustration. This gives the printed and transmitted photographic image a decisive role in judgment, and shifts the much more complex and structural notion of form, with all its reasons and resistances, in the direction of decoration, atmosphere, and syllogism.
I am tempted to detail the particular failings of this buildings, since it is a trap one gets into when one is the apologist. The ‘it could have been worse’ logic induces lassitude. And it calls to mind an argument that circulated amongst studio mates and friends (one that this continues with some to this day) — the gap between when might be called ‘good architecture’ and ‘good building’. Among the more talented of my friends, there wasn’t much of a gap, but for those philosophically inclined towards the latter, regardless of their skill, the argument was that we should know how to make a good building, since that failure would leave a structure bereft of its most elemental qualities, an ethical failure that no amount of theorizing could polish. Further, even the most critical reading of the work of someone like Gregotti will find that good building is in evidence to an almost pathological degree, even as sources diverse as Pasolini and Tom Wolfe will point out the formal and experiential failings of Italian housing developments. And so, even as the very being-ness of The Hubert must be questioned and (ultimately) condemned, its failures as a building are notable as well, since this is a town with a housing shortage that borders on criminal.
Unlike most of the warehouse stock in the area, the building makes liberal use of setbacks, reminiscent of Hugh Ferriss renderings, as well as a few larger buildings nearby (such as 60 Hudson, the Western Union building). One certain goal was to maximize the potential for terrace space. The renderings, and even the built form, to a lesser degree, benefit from the forced perspective this allows. But since the building does not soar beyond its neighbors, the column to column glass makes the building look more squat that it needs to. Additionally, the setbacks are necessary to bring some semblance of light into building. The siting, which is so carefully obscured in any promotional materials, is due west of one of the largest buildings in TriBeCa, and more or less hemmed in by its neighbors (photo), resulting in a largish building in what is basically a side street, mid-block lot. Most of the middle and lower level units will receive direct sunlight for an hour or two at best each day. The ‘maisonettes’ are two story units touted as having direct street access, part of a recent move on the part of developers to integrate ‘town home’ living with fully engaged units. Here, the entrances will be on Collister Street, which would be called an alley if it did not date to the early days of New York, when streets were far narrower, and the entrances open on to a sidewalk that will be positively suburban in scale – in this case, three feet, but without a yard or any intermediary grass.
Such are exigencies of developing in New York. Such are the failings of architects when faced with the demand of developers. One could simply dismiss these awkward conditions as inevitable, but that simply isn’t the case. Rather, it is the result of marketing driven decisions that are divorced from a prudent design program. Collister Street will never be Charles Lane, but that fact makes no difference to untrammeled greed and ignorance of real estate agents and developers (‘Your own private entrance – on a street with only three other addresses!’).
The interesting challenge would be if all of this insipid typicality hadn’t driven the decision-making. None of the recent attempts of bringing the star power to the process have mastered the nexus of all the attendant issues (regardless of where final culpability lies in the Perry Street building fiasco, there are enough missteps on the design side to characterize the project as more failure than not). Not that perfect execution should favor any approach, and there is more than a small measure of absurdity in trying to create a hierarchy of value in what are basically homesteads that are fundamentally pornographic by most socio-economic measures.
The units that you can see, both from the plans, and now, at street level before they are knitted up with very expensive treatments, are mean little spaces, jumbled together to resolve the expectations of the vulture-driven marketing: requisite master bathroom suite, ancillary spaces with esoteric terms such as ‘media room’ that are only wide spaces with too many circulation points, all of which are simply places to pile furniture and others toys that celebrate the absurd cost of the air itself. There is no way that furniture and finish can possibly enumerate just how dear this McMansion hell is, and so, why bother?
The failures of this building call to mind a fantasy I’ve always had. Whenever I’ve looked for an apartment, no matter what my budget, I was always told, in tones ranging from helpless to sarcastic that “there’s simply nothing in that range right now”. Someday, when architectural nitpicking makes me rich, I want to walk into a vulture’s office and deadpan that I have, say, $30,000 a month to spend, and watch them contort their face to prepare their standard line, and that if I was will to go to, say $32,000 they ‘might have something’. And so, of course, the money is never enough. Since the Hubert is close to sold out, if not completely at this point, and I know squat about how to research condo transactions, I can only assume that the about $100 million worth of real estate exchanged hands. And this leads me to ask, my attempts at trenchant commentary about modernism and its lack of effective legacy in Manhattan aside, is this not enough? Is this what $100 million gets you? Nasty little suburban apartment spaces with really expensive fixtures? It’s a fraud: tasteless and pointless. And almost entirely pre-sold. What incentive could there possibly be to prevent the next one?
* IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT, Tsao & McKown, who are designing interiors for a project two blocks to the west, were listed as the architects. The Sunshine Group was listed as developer. The Sunshine Group is only the marketing agent. This misattribution has little material impact on my overall thesis, but certainly is an unacceptably slipshod bit of fact checking on my part. Given the minor role of the Su
nshine Group, it would seem the title of this piece should also be amended, but for the sake of newsreaders and general archiving, I’m leaving it lie.
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You are my Sunshine…
[NB: A reader alerted me to two inaccuracies, which have been corrected in the text and some comments have been appended below the text]
LIVING IN NEW YORK and being a fan of architecture always means having to say you’re sorry. More precisely, it means having to say, ‘Well, it could have been worse.’ Considering that we exist at the center of architectural practice, and, allowing a four-hour travel radius, at the academic center as well, we are still condemned to rationalize positive comments about much of which comprises architectural production that ranges from embarrassing to abhorrent. The past two years have seen notable efforts to bring nameplate architects into the otherwise banal practice of making multiple dwelling facilities in Manhattan. Whereas the loft renovation was typically the cutting-one’s-teeth opportunity for young designers, they are finding themselves outflanked by the massive egos of the architectural ruling class, who, in some cases, are doing buildings from top to bottom. The list of recent projects, some real, some announced, some abandoned, include offerings from Graves, Meier, Calatrava, Gwathmey, Foster and Johnson. No longer content to watching the acronym posse (SOM, HOK, KPF) torture itself to try and develop a newer, cheaper way to wrap what is basically a light industrial manufacturing facility turned on its end with a ‘curb appeal’ in the form of a slighter different glass skin than the neighbor, we are now able to witness four decades of intellectually and formally bankrupt design theory fail miserably in the face of New York residential real estate market. Trying to condense this argument into a comestible critique is difficult, since I don’t want to write a thesis here, but, rather, talk about a single building that seems to be emblematic of the unfortunate confluence of all these forces: developers and their middling stable of firms reaching up to where the demigods languish, the exalted slumming long enough to find out that it really is as bad as it seems down here. Some of this process is explicable though the more considered words of others, but the runs the risk of seeming fussy and pedantic, an odd charge oft leveled at architects (and their critics), given they must, in the end, present visceral and near permanent arguments for these ideals. And so we have here Frederic Jameson:The reading presented above is acceptable mostly if one divests themselves of the belief that postmodernism is a design approach best characterized (and limited to) the candy-colored pastiche of the 1980’s and exemplified by Michael Graves, and instead opens it to include what is often lumped in as ‘traditional architecture’: the recent efforts to create, or recreate, structures that ape almost invisibly types — more often than not ones that prove to be lucrative real estate opportunities instead of significant by any aesthetic measure — in the extant stock.
This approach is consistent with the ‘playful’ belief that postmodernism existed almost post ideology — though some of its practitioners would have it that this free-form and arbitrary appropriation was a valid ideological approach to social conditions which enabled it. The strict traditionalist actions are cut from the same cloth, albeit with a more fitted approach. However, the guileless appropriation of history is same. Context is stripped down so that only formal terms remain, regardless of its history. Therefore, a design is admissible only when it succinctly apes its immediate environs, at all costs, and ‘authenticity’ collapses into an indiscernible mass of comfort through familiarity. To be inflammatory, but perhaps accurate, it’s the architectural equivalent of keeping the neighborhood as white as can be (which always protects real estate values). But Jameson is an academic, not an architect. He hasn’t built a building (not so far as I know), and that’s fine for me, but when presenting such a relentless critique, you often get a little, ‘fine, but what are we supposed to do the meantime’? Folks like Manfredo Tafuri would have you respond ‘not much’, meaning that the collusion between an architect and prevailing hegemony is so inextricable that a critical practice is nigh impossible (or so reads Jameson). There are both contemporaries and students of Tafuri who have both tried to live with the understanding of this strident stance whilst cleaving some path in the world that is hopefully adequately critical and still compelling. A strong example of this is Vittorio Gregotti, who presents this commentary about a decade later:Unlike Jameson, he offers design that ostensibly opposes what his commentary derides. I can attest to an expression of affinity to the visceral before sanctioning his opinion. But it also occurs amidst its own historical moment, and I am merely a wide eyed naïf about that context, idealizing the Marxist posturing of an (Italian) culture that is nonetheless rabidly capitalist in many of its concerns, and in the end, may simply be another sucker for modern Italian design. Then again, maybe that’s not a bad thing.
THE HUBERT is a condominium building in TriBeCa nearing completion (photo), designed by BKSK Architects (with interiors by Alan Wanzenberg) and developed by Robert Siegel*. You’re probably familiar at least with a rendering of it if you have entered the city via the Holland Tunnel over the past two years. A large ad was situated in the lot at Beach and Varick streets (the intersection you encounter if you take the third exit from the Holland Tunnel rotary), and, at a glance, implied that the building was slated for that very lot. In fact, it is to the west, on Hubert Street, behind an existing former industrial building which is also undergoing redevelopment (by Joseph Pell Lombardi, who was involved in such notable conversions as the Atalanta building, the Ice House and the Julliard Building, as well as the upcoming Mohawk ‘Atelier’). The building is unapologetically nostalgic. One might be tempted to say respectful, but that line is getting harder to distinguish each passing year of winking irony. My initial impression of the rendering was that someone decided to do the TriBeCa loft experience in an exceptionally thorough manner. I never studied the image well, and had a hard time situating it — the site is an ell, the bulk of which sits on Hubert Street, and the renderings obliterated all contextual elements. And though rendering technology has long passed the stage of photorealism, there are still enough tricks you can pull to make something to like more or less than it actually is. I simply assumed the rendering was a sales gimmick to generate interest in a building that was more or less a stock Costas Kondylis hack job. But I have been removed from production long enough to discover that, no, the rigor with which the industrial loft building was fabricated whole cloth is, at times, terrifying. Or, as some preservation hack might say, appropriately respectful. Once the building was clad and topped out, you could see quickly how much it depends on the ‘Sky Lofts’ (photo) next door: the bay spacing of the windows (photo), the variegated brick pattern, color, and even the use of decorative stone caps mimics almost exactly the elder neighbor. The desire for double insulated glass, and marketability of expanses thereof has changed the proportions such that the panes run from column to column, and oddity and failure of which (photo) is not apparent in the rendering. Here again, Gregotti has a relevant observation (that is particularly acute if you wade through the Hubert sales site and see those renderings/movies):
I am tempted to detail the particular failings of this buildings, since it is a trap one gets into when one is the apologist. The ‘it could have been worse’ logic induces lassitude. And it calls to mind an argument that circulated amongst studio mates and friends (one that this continues with some to this day) — the gap between when might be called ‘good architecture’ and ‘good building’. Among the more talented of my friends, there wasn’t much of a gap, but for those philosophically inclined towards the latter, regardless of their skill, the argument was that we should know how to make a good building, since that failure would leave a structure bereft of its most elemental qualities, an ethical failure that no amount of theorizing could polish. Further, even the most critical reading of the work of someone like Gregotti will find that good building is in evidence to an almost pathological degree, even as sources diverse as Pasolini and Tom Wolfe will point out the formal and experiential failings of Italian housing developments. And so, even as the very being-ness of The Hubert must be questioned and (ultimately) condemned, its failures as a building are notable as well, since this is a town with a housing shortage that borders on criminal.
Unlike most of the warehouse stock in the area, the building makes liberal use of setbacks, reminiscent of Hugh Ferriss renderings, as well as a few larger buildings nearby (such as 60 Hudson, the Western Union building). One certain goal was to maximize the potential for terrace space. The renderings, and even the built form, to a lesser degree, benefit from the forced perspective this allows. But since the building does not soar beyond its neighbors, the column to column glass makes the building look more squat that it needs to. Additionally, the setbacks are necessary to bring some semblance of light into building. The siting, which is so carefully obscured in any promotional materials, is due west of one of the largest buildings in TriBeCa, and more or less hemmed in by its neighbors (photo), resulting in a largish building in what is basically a side street, mid-block lot. Most of the middle and lower level units will receive direct sunlight for an hour or two at best each day. The ‘maisonettes’ are two story units touted as having direct street access, part of a recent move on the part of developers to integrate ‘town home’ living with fully engaged units. Here, the entrances will be on Collister Street, which would be called an alley if it did not date to the early days of New York, when streets were far narrower, and the entrances open on to a sidewalk that will be positively suburban in scale – in this case, three feet, but without a yard or any intermediary grass. Such are exigencies of developing in New York. Such are the failings of architects when faced with the demand of developers. One could simply dismiss these awkward conditions as inevitable, but that simply isn’t the case. Rather, it is the result of marketing driven decisions that are divorced from a prudent design program. Collister Street will never be Charles Lane, but that fact makes no difference to untrammeled greed and ignorance of real estate agents and developers (‘Your own private entrance – on a street with only three other addresses!’). The interesting challenge would be if all of this insipid typicality hadn’t driven the decision-making. None of the recent attempts of bringing the star power to the process have mastered the nexus of all the attendant issues (regardless of where final culpability lies in the Perry Street building fiasco, there are enough missteps on the design side to characterize the project as more failure than not). Not that perfect execution should favor any approach, and there is more than a small measure of absurdity in trying to create a hierarchy of value in what are basically homesteads that are fundamentally pornographic by most socio-economic measures. The units that you can see, both from the plans, and now, at street level before they are knitted up with very expensive treatments, are mean little spaces, jumbled together to resolve the expectations of the vulture-driven marketing: requisite master bathroom suite, ancillary spaces with esoteric terms such as ‘media room’ that are only wide spaces with too many circulation points, all of which are simply places to pile furniture and others toys that celebrate the absurd cost of the air itself. There is no way that furniture and finish can possibly enumerate just how dear this McMansion hell is, and so, why bother? The failures of this building call to mind a fantasy I’ve always had. Whenever I’ve looked for an apartment, no matter what my budget, I was always told, in tones ranging from helpless to sarcastic that “there’s simply nothing in that range right now”. Someday, when architectural nitpicking makes me rich, I want to walk into a vulture’s office and deadpan that I have, say, $30,000 a month to spend, and watch them contort their face to prepare their standard line, and that if I was will to go to, say $32,000 they ‘might have something’. And so, of course, the money is never enough. Since the Hubert is close to sold out, if not completely at this point, and I know squat about how to research condo transactions, I can only assume that the about $100 million worth of real estate exchanged hands. And this leads me to ask, my attempts at trenchant commentary about modernism and its lack of effective legacy in Manhattan aside, is this not enough? Is this what $100 million gets you? Nasty little suburban apartment spaces with really expensive fixtures? It’s a fraud: tasteless and pointless. And almost entirely pre-sold. What incentive could there possibly be to prevent the next one? * IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT, Tsao & McKown, who are designing interiors for a project two blocks to the west, were listed as the architects. The Sunshine Group was listed as developer. The Sunshine Group is only the marketing agent. This misattribution has little material impact on my overall thesis, but certainly is an unacceptably slipshod bit of fact checking on my part. Given the minor role of the Sunshine Group, it would seem the title of this piece should also be amended, but for the sake of newsreaders and general archiving, I’m leaving it lie.