"A Delirious Pile-up of Forms"

That's how professional sycophant and architectural creationist, Nicolai Ouroussoff, describes Frank Gehry's plan for Atlantic Yards in an appraisal that appeared in this morning's New York Times. According to Nick, Gehry will be "seeking first to reinvent the sports arena, and then Brooklyn." After that, he will "attempt to overturn a half-century's worth of failed urban planning ideas."

Reinvent Brooklyn?

Who "invented" Brooklyn in the first place?

Presumably it was some other, inferior god in Nick's architectural pantheon.

Nick summarizes the project as follows (emphasis mine):

Frank Gehry's new design for a 21-acre corridor of high-rise towers anchored by the 19,000-seat Nets arena in Brooklyn may be the most important urban development plan proposed in New York City in decades. If it is approved, it will radically alter the Brooklyn skyline, reaffirming the borough's emergence as a legitimate cultural rival to Manhattan.

Oh, puuuhleeeze.

First, everyone knows that Brooklyn prefers being illegitimate. Second, since when is the skyline the defining dimension of what comprises "culture" in a city? Architecture matters, but does it matter more than art, music, cuisine, community cohesiveness, language, and local traditions? Cities are what they are because of people, not buildings. The buildings should be a reflection of what makes Brooklynites special, not what makes Frank Gehry special.

Nick has more:

There are those - especially acolytes of the urbanist Jane Jacobs - who will complain about the development's humongous size. But cities attain their beauty from their mix of scales; one could see the development's thrusting forms as a representation of Brooklyn's cultural flowering.
...
A more important issue, by contrast, is the site's current lack of permeability. Because the development would be built on top of the Atlantic Avenue railyards, the gardens are several feet above ground level, an arrangement that threatens to isolate them from the street grid.

Even so, Mr. Gehry's intuitive approach to planning - his ability to pick up subtle cues from the existing context - virtually guarantees that the development will be better than what New Yorkers are used to. The last project here that was touted as a breakthrough in urban planning was Battery Park City. As it turns out, it was as isolated from urban reality as its Modernist predecessors. Conceived by a cadre of government bureaucrats and planners, it produced a suburban vision of deadening uniformity.

Any statement that begins "there are those who..." should be read as a casual dismissal of the people who fit the description that follows. A shorter version of the above would read "new urbanist geeks will whine about the impact on local communities, but Frank Gehry is all-powerful, and they should just shut their ignorant, uppity little mouths."

If you want to know how Nicolai Ouroussoff really feels about the relative importance of the voice of the public vs. the voice of the all-knowing architect, you need only read the last sentence of his article:

It suggests another development model: locate real talent, encourage it to break the rules, get out of the way.

Hear that Brooklyn?

Get out of Frank Gehry's way.

This isn't the first time that Nick has expressed such sentiments. John Massengale, a self-described "recovering architect" describes the problem with Nick:

like his predecessor at the Times, who hand-picked him, Ouroussoff is an activist advocate for a small group of Starchitects. For Ouroussoff, ideology trumps experience. The critic who writes for "the nation's newspaper" looks with blinders on. You can read more at John's blog, Veritas et Venustas.

In the meantime, I'm proud to be a charter member of the "there are those who" crowd.

Comments

[Lumi Michelle Rolley]

The very first thing that popped into my head when I saw Gehry's "architectrual sketch" (or was it "sketchy architecture"?, see http://www.nolandgrab.org/images/gehrymodel-02.jpg) was Dope on the Slope's "exclusive" on the revision of the plan.

Dope was joking — Gehry might be whimsical, but he's not funny.

[vassal in the valley]

link to images

I recommend that the good citizens of Brooklyn follow the link above and explore the range of Gehry's previous creations. If you still think that giving him a chance to remake your skyline is a good idea, well, it's your city....