nycorbusier

le corb sailed towards manhattan and:

"saw a fantastic, almost mystic city rising up in the mist. there is the temple of the new world. but the ship moves forward and the apparition is transformed into an image of incredible brutality and savagery. here is certainly the most prominent manifestation of the power of modern times."

he named nyc the catastrophe féerique, the great enchanted catastrophe.

hipster_heaven

every city should have a landing pad for the young, restless, and poor...

new nothing

everyone seems to be drooling over sanaa's new new museum in nyc's lower east side. the japanese always give designy people hardons. personally, i don't see what all the fuss is about. the new mu looks like a refined version of the lacaton&vassal palaisdetokyo formula of run-down shimmer and cool bareness.

+yawn+

still, i was delighted to read (i mean watch) sam jacob's last strangeharvest post with 20 pieces of sponsored architecture. i thought the whole thing was a joke. it probably is, a wink of sorts. anyway, it's the best review i've found so far. why didn't anyone notice this before?

stuck

recently i read a post dissing renzo piano's new nyt building, saying that pretty much the whole thing about it being innovative and "smart" architecture was pretty much bullshit, that it was more about surface and effects, the usual thing splashed with some fancy dressing. stepping back from the terms of my guy vs. yours or my style vs. yours criticism, a beautiful, subtle foto essay by anne leibovitz published in vanity fair hints at some of the contradictory issues behind the building (and building in general, we could say). the black and white photos seem ancient (early xxth-century ancient). beams and rough guys, like some twisted jazz age love song. other pictures look straight out of the seventies, village peopley. the slick and the wow of these huge cultural artefacts (skyscrapers i mean) usually have a dizzying effect, enough to make us forget the stale,conservative, out-of-date values and social frameworks they embody. leibovitz's behind-the-scenes pictures, unintendedly, maybe out of nostalgic urges, actually bring us to reckon with how little there is of our supposed innovative and progressive drive in this type of buildings, how small some of our steps have been.

via mark