The Architecture Thread

StephenHero · Jan 12, 2011

This is fun. But bring I guess you're supposed to crap into a coffee can.

pruppert · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by mharwitt

Ourousoff sounds like a jackass going on about "connecting to the Latino community," not to mention implying that Grand is somehow meant to be a "single, dominant, cultural hub."

This is what I thought. I know it's his job as a critic to address this all while it's still relevant, but I wonder if he has access to plans/information that the public doesn't get. I hope to god he isn't making all these claims off the same four/five renderings we see.

Agreed at the ridiculousness of connecting to a latin american shopping center two blocks away. Grasping at straws, i think. Not sure the critique of the visible archives/curation is fair either. Jean Nouvel did something similar at MusÃ

e du quai Branly, and I enjoyed it. It seems odd to argue that the institution needs to serve all of LA, and then argue that being able to see the archives would be a bore, since most people never see that side of things, are are marginally interested in art to begin with. Seems like it offers something new to the majority of the patrons.

Thoughts on that skin? He says steel, I figured there was GFRC involved, or some kind of cast material.

StephenHero · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by pruppert

This is what I thought. I know it's his job as a critic to address this all while it's still relevant, but I wonder if he has access to plans/information that the public doesn't get. I hope to god he isn't making all these claims off the same four/five renderings we see.

He does.

mordecai · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by StephenHero

He does.
it is that which allows him to make jackass claims of such depth. presumably if you live in that treehouse you *********** woods. probably not much dairy or meat in your diet, so it would just be fertilizer.

gomestar · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by mharwitt

it is that which allows him to make jackass claims of such depth.

he wouldn't be a critic if everything he said was bright and rosy.

mordecai · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by gomestar

he wouldn't be a critic if everything he said was bright and rosy.
not really the point, gome. i dislike the museum design, and generally like ourousoff, but claiming that the design of the building will somehow force a Hausmannization-style interaction between the "elites" on Grand and the "latinos" a few blocks away is silly in so many ways, not the least of which is suggesting that the Grand corridor is the cultural zenith of Los Angeles.

StephenHero · Jan 12, 2011

I just browsed that article ( I'm not a big fan of preemptive "reviews&quot

, but my general impression of him is that he's far too lenient on starchitects and their autonomous innovations. He reviews blockbuster institutional buildings and then does very little to advance the awareness on "background architecture" like mundane public architecture, domestic projects, renewal, planning, etc. I don't find him very interesting. I think he just sits around a desk and waits for Pritzker winning firms to fax him working drawings of whatever billion dollar scheme they're fiddling with at the moment.

gomestar · Jan 12, 2011

he has been rather critical with a lot of stuff from the starchitects and their place in society. Just browsing around the Times website I see this:

As commissions multiplied for luxury residential high-rises, high-end boutiques and corporate offices in cities like London, Tokyo and Dubai, more socially conscious projects rarely materialized. Public housing, a staple of 20th-century Modernism, was nowhere on the agenda. Nor were schools, hospitals or public infrastructure. Serious architecture was beginning to look like a service for the rich, like private jets and spa treatments.

Nowhere was that poisonous cocktail of vanity and self-delusion more visible than in Manhattan. Although some important cultural projects were commissioned, this era will probably be remembered as much for its vulgarity as its ambition.

Every major architect in the world, it seemed, was designing an exclusive residential building here. With its elaborate faux-graffiti barrier, Herzog & de Meuron's 40 Bond Street was among the most indulgent, but it had plenty of rivals, including projects by Daniel Libeskind, UNStudio, Mr. Koolhaas and Norman Foster.

Together these projects threatened to transform the city's skyline into a tapestry of individual greed.

StephenHero · Jan 12, 2011

Architecture will always exist for people to express their excessive wealth. The alternative to the design culture he's lamenting about was the development of the Upper East side from 1950-2000, where the actual design trend was little more than creating a veneer of decadent post modern ornamentalism around some cheaply constructed towers. I think the starchitect condo trend is far superior. My problem is that he facilitates what he preaches against, by using his column to focus disproportionate attention to narcissistic architecture that most people won't ever be interacting with. He has a "click" in the profession and its membership is exclusive to blowhard elitists. I think he should be spending much more time writing on architecture that people can refer to from their daily experiences.

mordecai · Jan 12, 2011

utopian modernism has been dead since Saarinen's project housing was scrapped in order to basically give Chavez Ravine to the Dodgers. bemoaning it's loss at this point should be left to bloggers.

i think i mentioned this before, but there's a great interview with jeffrey inaba where he talks about the fact that architects can't even afford custom homes as playing in to the cold, conceptual luxury of contemporary design.

gomestar · Jan 12, 2011

Ourousoff made a point to say that none of the recent starchitect work has done much to enhance the inside of the buildings, they're all standard apartments with standard layouts encased in a fancy shell. Thoughts?

mordecai · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by gomestar

Ourousoff made a point to say that none of the recent starchitect work has done much to enhance the inside of the buildings, they're all standard apartments with standard layouts encased in a fancy shell. Thoughts?
i think i heard about a Piano condo building having a 1BR-2BA option, so there. Ourousoff, wrong again.

StephenHero · Jan 12, 2011

Another thing I don't like about him is that architecture critics have a major advantage that young architects don't have in the promotion of the profession, which is the risk-free nature of criticism. He does practically nothing in his columns to promote small scale work outside of that done by established practicies, so he wastes the opportunity to alleviate some skepticism on the developer side towards the designers without much experience in building. One of the few things that critics can actually make a difference on is to help grow the workload of architects five or ten years earlier than it would take without promotion. They meed to do a better job of accelerating architects in the progression from designing conceptual projects to dog houses to actual buildings.

Developers are so skeptical of inexperience that most architects don't get any freedom or trust until they're 60, which is too old.

gomestar · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by mharwitt

i think i heard about a Piano condo building having a 1BR-2BA option, so there. Ourousoff, wrong again.

you sound more upset about the NY critic being negative on your city than on the merits of its content.

gomestar · Jan 12, 2011

Originally Posted by StephenHero

Another thing I don't like about him is that architecture critics have a major advantage that young architects don't have in the promotion of the profession, which is the risk-free nature of criticism. He does practically nothing in his columns to promote small scale work outside of that done by established practicies, so he wastes the opportunity to alleviate some skepticism on the developer side towards the designers without much experience in building. One of the few things that critics can actually make a difference on is to help grow the workload of architects five or ten years earlier than it would take without promotion. They meed to do a better job of accelerating architects in the progression from designing conceptual projects to dog houses to actual buildings.

Developers are so skeptical of inexperience that most architects don't get any freedom or trust until they're 60, which is too old.

do you think this might be because the NY Times frequently highlights small projects done by no-name architects anyways? They're mostly private homes, granted, but I never got the idea that this is something the newspaper lacks covereage of.

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