Sweet Childs O’ Mine.

Feel the burn, Dave-O! We’re liking this Ouroussoff fella more every day. First he tells Riley that he’s a lazy suckup, and now he gives us the bullet points on the Dean of American Mediocrity, David Childs. Are you ready for your way-too-close-up, Mr. Childs?

This excerpt clearly skirts the edge of ‘fair use,’ but I would be remiss in not bringing you the rich panoply of digs my namesake fires up. It’s like a refreshing slap in the face when making a bad pass at a bar. But I’m weird like that. Enjoy:

The paradox is that Mr. Childs’s change of heart coincides with the most politically fraught commission of his career, the Freedom Tower at ground zero, which despite revisions is looking more and more second-rate.

By comparison, Mr. Childs’s work in the late 1980’s and 90’s seemed to testify to the creative void in American corporate architecture during the so-called Postmodern era.

As it turned out, Mr. Childs was never able to recapture the aura that Skidmore had in the 1950’s and 60’s, when it was a major force in shaping the direction of American architecture.

Ultimately, though, such setbacks have as much to do with the firm’s values as with Mr. Childs’s talent.

More typical of Mr. Childs’s recent output, however, is the watered-down ambitions of the recently completed Time Warner Center.

Mr. Childs reverts to the kind of developer-driven formulas that made his older buildings so soulless.

It is at ground zero that Mr. Childs will clearly leave his most lasting impact on the city, and it is there that the firm’s shortcomings seem most evident… Ultimately, what is now a “B” design – to use Mr. Childs’s language – could become a “C” building.

Props to the new kid on the block, and keep ’em coming.