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13 Jul 09

Inside the Exteriors of the Architect Toyo Ito - NYTimes.com

Profile of architect Toyo Ito, who tries, in his work, to capture qualities that (it seems to me) relate to embodiment (“I sometimes feel that we are losing an intuitive sense of our own bodies" - Ito). Ouroussoff describes the following aspects, really resonant:
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His career can be read as a lifelong quest to find the precise balance between seemingly opposing values — individual and community, machine and nature, male and female, utopian fantasies and hard realities.

His ability to find such balances consistently has made him one of our great urban poets, someone who has been able to crystallize, through architecture, the tensions that lie buried in the heart of contemporary society. It makes his work especially resonant today, when much of the world is drawn to one form of extremism or another.
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toyo_ito architecture japan tokyo embodiment nicolai_ouroussoff nyt

10 Jul 09

Architecture - Kisho Kurokawa’s Future Vision, Banished to Past - NYTimes.com

Ourossoff raises some important question regarding heritage and preservation - who gets to decide (and why) that something should be preserved, and why is 20th century modernism still neglected?
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How old does a building have to be before we appreciate its value? And when does its cultural importance trump practical considerations?
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www.nytimes.com/...07capsule.html - Preview

tokyo architecture modernism kisho_kurokawa nicolai_ouroussoff metabolism capsule_tower

How old does a building have to be before we appreciate its value? And when does its cultural importance trump practical considerations?
Those are the questions that instantly come to mind over the likely destruction of Kisho Kurokawa’s historic Nakagin Capsule Tower.
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- A rare built example of Japanese Metabolism, a movement whose fantastic urban visions became emblems of the country’s postwar cultural resurgence, the 1972 Capsule Tower is in a decrepit state. Its residents, tired of living in squalid, cramped conditions, voted two years ago to demolish it and are now searching for a developer to replace it with a bigger, more modern tower. That the building is still standing has more to do with the current financial malaise than with an understanding of its historical worth.
- The Capsule Tower is not only gorgeous architecture; like all great buildings, it is the crystallization of a far-reaching cultural ideal.
- Founded by a loose-knit group of architects at the end of the 1950s, the Metabolist movement sought to create flexible urban models for a rapidly changing society. Floating cities. Cities inspired by oil platforms. Buildings that resembled strands of DNA. Such proposals reflected Japan’s transformation from a rural to a modern society. But they also reflected more universal trends, like social dislocation and the fragmentation of the traditional family, influencing generations of architects from London to Moscow.
- The Nakagin Capsule Tower was completed as the movement’s influence was beginning to wane. Composed of 140 concrete pods plugged into two interconnected circulation cores, the structure was meant as a kind of bachelor hotel for businessmen working in the swanky Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo.
- But the project’s lasting importance has more to do with its structural innovations, and how they reflect the Metabolists’ views on the evolution of cities. Each of the concrete capsules was assembled in a factory, including details like carpeting and bathroom fixtures. They were then shipped to the site and bolted, one by one, onto the concrete and steel cores that housed the building’s elevators, stairs and mechanical systems.
- In theory, more capsules could be plugged in or removed whenever needed. The idea was to create a completely flexible system, one that could be adapted to the needs of a fast-paced, constantly changing society. The building became a symbol of Japan’s technological ambitions, as well as of the increasingly nomadic existence of the white-collar worker.
- But the issue is not just the fate of this one building; it is why certain landmarks — in Japan and throughout the developed world — are preserved, and others are not. Dozens of private houses, after all, from Palladian villas to late Modernist masterpieces, have been lovingly restored over the years, some in worse condition than the tower. Government agencies and nonprofit groups have also put significant amounts of money toward the restoration of important civic works.
- But when an aging Kurokawa pleaded with the apartment owners to save his masterpiece, he got nowhere. And after his death two years ago, few preservationists rallied to the building’s defense. There’s been no serious effort to look into what exactly it would cost to retrofit the 140 units. Nor has any institution, public or private, stepped up with a viable plan for how to save it.
  Why is that so? Partly it is because all over the world, postwar architecture is still treated with a measure of suspicion by the cultural mainstream, which often associates it with brutal city housing developments or clinical office blocks. Partly, too, it has to do with the nature of housing blocks in general. They are not sexy investments; they do not feed an investor’s vanity or offer the cultural prestige that owning a landmark house does.
  But another concern is that all too often, private developments like the Capsule Tower, no matter how historically important, are regarded in terms of property rights. They are about business first, not culture. Governments don’t like to interfere; the voices of preservationists are shrugged off. “Want to save it?” the prevailing sentiment goes. “Pay for it.”
  Until that mentality changes, landmarks like Kurokawa’s will continue to be threatened by the wrecking ball, and the cultural loss will be tremendous. This is not only an architectural tragedy, it is also a distortion of history.

21 Dec 07

Governors Island - Architecture - New York Times

- description of "the winning design for a 40-acre park that would unfold across the southern half of Governors Island" (Diller Scofidio & Renfro, etc.)
- personally, I liked "The Mollusk" best

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governors_island nicolai_ouroussoff nyc urban_parks

The park’s informal landscape of undulating hills and voluptuous marshes is a refreshing departure from the crass commercialism that infects so many public projects today. At the same time, the designers have avoided tired period elements like cobblestone paths and bishop’s crook lampposts.
- - yup, the Scilla and Charybdis of public spaces: commercialization and nostalgic kitsch - on 2007-12-21
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Roughly a half-mile to the north is the dense cluster of Wall Street towers, Manhattan’s answer to the entrance of the Grand Canal in Venice.
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- The design’s most seductive feature, however, is an intriguing mix of natural and created landscapes. The architects envision a lush saltwater marsh at the island’s southern tip, an effort to recapture the natural beauty that was partly lost when the Coast Guard built housing after assuming control of the island in 1966.
- Leslie Koch, the president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, says the project could unfold in several stages. A free bicycle program could be in place by next summer, encouraging New Yorkers to familiarize themselves with the island and its haunting beauty.
  - - great idea re. free bicycles - on 2007-12-21
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- Given that the money for large-scale public development dried up long ago, the current strategy in most American cities today with projects of this scale is essentially to hand them over to developers and watch what happens.
  The Governors Island plan, by comparison, is humble in scale but big on ambition. What is more, by developing the island bit by bit, the city is enabling the public to appreciate what it has gained, which could help prevent overdevelopment.
- How refreshing to see government not only take back some responsibility for the public realm, but also to do so with such care.
  - - indeed - on 2007-12-21
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17 Nov 07

Jean Nouvel Tower Near MoMA - Architecture - New York Times

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architecture jean_nouvel nicolai_ouroussoff nyc

If New Yorkers once saw their skyline as the great citadel of capitalism, who could blame them? We had the best toys of all.
But for the last few decades or so, that honor has shifted to places like Singapore, Beijing and Dubai, while Manhattan settled for the predictable.
Perhaps that’s about to change.
A new 75-story tower designed by the architect Jean Nouvel for a site next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation. Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights. It brings to mind John Ruskin’s praise for the irrationality of Gothic architecture: “It not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle.”
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- Commissioned by Hines, an international real estate developer, the tower will house a hotel, luxury apartments and three floors that will be used by MoMA to expand its exhibition space. The melding of cultural and commercial worlds offers further proof, if any were needed, that Mr. Nouvel is a master at balancing conflicting urban forces.
- Like many of Manhattan’s major architectural accomplishments, the tower is the result of a Byzantine real estate deal. Although MoMA completed an $858 million expansion three years ago, it sold the Midtown lot to Hines for $125 million earlier this year as part of an elaborate plan to grow still further.
  Hines would benefit from the museum’s prestige; MoMA would get roughly 40,000 square feet of additional gallery space in the new tower, which will connect to its second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries just to the east. The $125 million would go toward its endowment.
- To its credit the Modern pressed for a talented architect, insisting on veto power over the selection. Still, the sale seems shortsighted on the museum’s part. A 17,000-square-foot vacant lot next door to a renowned institution and tourist draw in Midtown is a rarity. And who knows what expansion needs MoMA may have in the distant future?
  By contrast the developer seems remarkably astute. Hines asked Mr. Nouvel to come up with two possible designs for the site. A decade ago anyone who was about to invest hundreds of millions on a building would inevitably have chosen the more conservative of the two. But times have changed. Architecture is a form of marketing now, and Hines made the bolder choice.
- As you ascend through the building, the floor plates shrink in size, which should give the upper stories an increasingly precarious feel. The top-floor apartment is arranged around such a massive elevator core that its inhabitants will feel pressed up against the glass exterior walls. (Mr. Nouvel compared the apartment to the pied-à-terre at the top of the Eiffel Tower from which Gustave Eiffel used to survey his handiwork below.)
- And what of the Modern? For some, the appearance of yet another luxury tower stamped with the museum’s imprimatur will induce wincing. But the more immediate issue is how it will affect the organization of the Modern’s vast collections.
  The museum is only now beginning to come to grips with the strengths and weaknesses of Mr. Taniguchi’s addition. Many feel that the arrangement of the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries housing the permanent collection is confusing, and that the double-height second-floor galleries for contemporary art are too unwieldy. The architecture galleries, by comparison, are small and inflexible. There is no room for the medium-size exhibitions that were a staple of the architecture and design department in its heyday.
  The additional gallery space is a chance for MoMA to rethink many of these spaces, by reordering the sequence of its permanent collection, for example, or considering how it might resituate the contemporary galleries in the new tower and gain more space for architecture shows in the old.
  But to embark on such an ambitious undertaking the museum would first have to acknowledge that its Taniguchi-designed complex has posed new challenges. In short, it would have to embrace a fearlessness that it hasn’t shown in decades.
  MoMA would do well to take a cue from Ruskin, who wrote that great art, whether expressed in “words, colors or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again.”

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