Modernism in the City/Gehry in Brooklyn
Charles Taylor’s review in the journal Dissent of From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter with the American City, by Nathan Glazer, is worth a read. Glazer looks at how the ideals of modernism have been usurped by the making of starchitects, whose personal vision for a building outweighs the consideration of the…
Charles Taylor’s review in the journal Dissent of From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter with the American City, by Nathan Glazer, is worth a read. Glazer looks at how the ideals of modernism have been usurped by the making of starchitects, whose personal vision for a building outweighs the consideration of the building’s context or a social agenda. “When architects are regarded chiefly as artists, discussion of their work is reduced to a question of their personal vision,” Taylor writes. “Questions of whether a building serves those who use it or the larger community, of whether it honors or ignores the style and scale of its surroundings, of whether it adds to or damages the life of its neighborhood, are treated as quaintly prosaic and utilitarian, akin to reducing any consideration of a work of art to its social relevance.”
That’s his zoomed out theorizing, which translates this way when talking about Atlantic Yards. “Introducing his design for Atlantic Yards, Gehry spoke about trying to understand ‘the body language of Brooklyn.’ But the only language Gehry has ever been interested in is the language of Frank Gehry. To say he is defiantly noncontextual is to imply that context enters into his thought at all.”
Gehry may have been ousted from the Theater for a New Audience building, but his vision for Atlantic Yards, which, no matter your opinion of it, seems pretty noncontextual considering the neighborhoods around it, remains.
A Wrench in the Machine for Living: Frank Gehry Comes to Brooklyn [Dissent]
Photo from the Atlantic Yards Web site.
I think drivel refers to polemicist’s post. I loved Krypton by the Bay, montrose! (Now I need to clean up the coffee spray- thanks)
“It is not the function of an architect to… consider context.”
What drivel.
frank gehry must have stolen this guy’s girlfriend or something.
If there was any connection between kids’ toys and future buildings, how did we end up with architectural masterpieces when the kids from those days likely had not much more than plain wooden blocks to play with? Having said that, I still think Arkady might be on to something; recent generations seem to rely less on creativity and imagination and more on recreating what’s already done before. I’m sure the full screen version of Laverne and Shirley is being pitched to Hollywood execs as we speak…
Sometimes I think the object of some of these starchitects is to be so innovative, so state of the art, and so utterly new, that the ultimate desire of their design is not to enhance a piece of the city, or serve a need, but to leave the viewer with his/her jaw on the ground at the amazing genius of it all.
Bilbao, which I think is Gehry’s finest work, did all those things, but it also was a perfect venue for what it is – a museum. The curse of a success like that is that you are called on to top yourself on every projct after that, and I think the man is running out of ways to reinvent himself. His designs for AY are just awful.
While I’d love to see something better than a Starrett City plopped on the site, I think we need a design that relates in materials and form to its surroundings, while meeting the practical needs of housing, business, transportation, etc, etc. Krypton-by-the-Bay is out of context and just not right. I welcome a modern design that is worthy of Brooklyn, and also worthy of looking at and building for th next hundred years, too.
Anyone surprised? I thought the falling down look of Gehry’s design was a sly slap at what he thinks the future of Brooklyn is.
What drivel.
It is not the function of an architect to set or interpret a “social agenda” or consider context. That is the function of the government with authority granted by the citizens of the city. I am no fan of Gehry, who is by the way the epitome of postmodernism and is almost anti-modernist, but the criticism in this snippet is incomprehensible.
Reading the review more thoroughly, we can see the author is at best uninformed and possibly deranged. His repeated attempts to associate modernist architecture with fascism borders on the comical. Does this man know nothing of history? Has he never read anything by Ezra Pound, one of the more famous authors of the 20th century? Has he not seen buildings constructed in the formerly fascist nations?
His rantings against the Atlantic Yards is also ill informed. He tells us the development will have 8,000,000 square feet on 22 acres of land – a figure that indicates an average FAR of 8.0, very low for a county as populous as Brooklyn and much lower than probably half of Manhattan. He also doesn’t seem to acknowledge the presence of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Building or the proximity of AY to downtown Brooklyn or even several high-rise housing projects. He only mentions the townhouses to the east, not the city to the west. He obviously doesn’t realize that many of the buildings nearby actually have much greater density than the AY development. The Williamsubrg Savings Bank alone is built to an FAR well above 20.0.
The author also can’t seem to use the census bureaus website. How on earth has come to the conclusion the neighborhood is mostly black?
The rest is just alarmist. The buildings, given their height and low FAR – will absolutely NOT block the sun permanently anywhere. This is the very reason they are designed this way. The development will not destroy the surrounding neighborhoods, but they will be reborn. Retail will thrive from greater population density.
I think his understanding of Jane Jacobs’ work is also based on anecdotes and not her books. I could go on, but don’t have the time.
The review is well written, but the author doesn’t know anything about the topics of which he has written. He knows about Moses, he thinks anything he doesn’t like is fascist, and he thinks Jane Jacobs wants the whole world to be 3-story brownstones. Foolish and naive. The guy has to spend more time reading, and less time practicing is ascorbic writing style.
Looks beautiful. Can’t wait for Miss Brooklyn so long as Modells & PC Rick gets torn down and turned into a park, plaza, pavillion or something aestheically pleasing.
The next group of kids is playing with K’nex…this is not going to be pretty! But it’ll do really fun stuff! 😉