Filthy Architecture

Responding to msg by 00mtdarrall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx () on

>Makes a good reason not to use a public computer (like
>at a university), doesn't it? But seeing as how almost
>everything we touch has much the same crap on it,
>what's a guy to do?


My point about filthy computers is applicable to my critique of
Stoneworks, St John the Divine, Columbia University and the
Jewish Museum addition:

The stoneworking operation, for example, is located across the
street from a major hospital and a senior citizens home. Its
noxious industrial processes -- dust, noise, heavy trucks,
dangerous equipment -- are allowed on a church property under
the guise of training youngsters but would be prohibited by a
commercial operation under the building code and zoning
resolution.

Similarly, Columbia and other non-profit insitutions are
allowed to overbuild and skirt other building and construction
laws and regulations under the cover of their "institutional"
classification and "public benefit" role. They are permitted
to remove residents, destroy housing and annihilate local
stores to build more academic structures. Gwathmey Seigal's
dormitory up the street from Stoneworks is a case in point.

Members of the boards of these insitutions are often from the
corporate and real estate worlds who use these compliant
institutions to manipulate development in surrounding
neighborhoods. And the Dean of the School of Architecture at
Columbia is expected to go along or out he goes.

Maybe James Polshek (or one of his employees) will post here on
his tenure at CU and his related work promoting St John the
Divine through its architecture. He is one of several brokers,
Like Philip Johnson, for "winning" architectural solutions
around here if not elsewhere.

The preservation style itself, as in the case of St John the
Divine and the Jewish Museum addition, is used to cloak other
acitivities which would be resisted if presented in their true
form. Poor Roche, after Graves was mauled for his Whitney
proposals, museums throughout NYC jumped at the safety of a
hack preservation solution like the Jewish Museum addition.

A tour of these and other bizarre NYC architectural projects
should offset the wildly inaccurate picture hawked in the media
and at the schools. I suspect similar betrayals are occuring
in other cities.

This betrayal is what I call the filthy patina of architecture:
that cosmetic, which, if carefully analyzed, will identify the
revulsive deals that underlie. We should not take it for
reality.

John
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