Architecture and the City

Skyscraper Museum and Shanghai/Manhattan Exhibition

Look at the shiny floors and those sleek walls and glass

It was my first time at the Skyscraper Museum and what a space it was! Tiny but nice! Located in Lower Manhattan by Battery Park City, The Skyscraper Museum celebrates the City’s rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines. There is something wonderful and almost playful about a museum dedicated to skyscrapers – that innate and deep fascination and awe that comes with the experience of a tall building. Skyscrapers are looked at as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence and a study in how awesome the vertical is and how that is intrinsic and characteristic of a unique type of metropolis.

Current Exhibition | China Prophecy: Shanghai

The exhibition takes a close look at Shanghai as a model for 21st century urbanism and what a model it is!

Shanghai today is a vast metropolis, physically transformed by the twin emblems of the modern city, high-rises and highways. In the historic core, Puxi, skyscrapers of 30 to 60+ stories have replaced traditional lane housing and low-rise neighborhoods. In the new district of Pudong, on the east side of the Huangpu River, a master plan dictates taller towers rising from open green space. The climax of the Pudong skyline is a trio of iconic supertalls: Jin Mao, Shanghai World Financial Center, and Shanghai Tower (2014), expected to reach 632 meters to become the tallest building in China and second tallest in the world.

What I found intriguing was that the scale and speed of Shanghai’s rise reproduces and even surpasses Manhattan’s historic ascent in the early twentieth century. As the world’s largest city in 1930, New York boasted a population of nearly 7 million and some 200 skyscrapers –more than all other cities combined at that time. Today, as high-rises proliferate everywhere, Hong Kong holds the title with 7,200. Shanghai with its continual development and ascending status and cultural force may be a potent symbol of China and for us in general as an urban blueprint for development.

These towers are amazing. So pretty!

Skyscrapers!!!!

Oh Shanghai. What a funky, wonderful metropolitan place. I want to be there and go walk. and hide and be alive.

Cooper Union to Washington Square and NYC Center for Architecture

My dream school

So pretty. So much history…drool.

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is a privately-funded college in Downtown Manhattan, New York City. It is perfect and so splendid. Cooper Union, founded in 1859, established a radical new model of American higher education since its mission reflects its founder’s, Peter Cooper, fundamental belief that education of the highest quality should be as “free as air and water” and should be available to all who qualify, independent of race, religion, gender or social status. For 150 years, the College has admitted students based on merit alone and provided each with a full-tuition scholarship. Awesome!

The Campus is located in the East Village, again, perfect. This building, it is wonderful.

This on the other hand, is the ugliest and most atrocious thing I have ever seen. From those awful women that exited and mocked the class, from the concept of that ground street facade that was supposed to mimic what graffiti looks like. All of it is too horrible that I can not talk about it more.

This seems perfectly fine, adequate.

And the Bayard-Condict Building on 65 Bleecker St is now on my top ten list of favorite nyc buildings.
Louis Sullivan is a god.

Also, another new favorite place I never knew about:

The New York Now show was not bad at all.

And of course this:

Oh those insufferable NYU kids get all the nice things, don’t they.

Wall Street / Lower Manhattan Architecture Tour

I don’t think I have much to say about Wall Street. There are generally not very warm feelings that I have for them right now.

I mean this looks very pretty:

But on the day we visited, it had that awful yellow billboard of a corporate advertisement for what looked like a mix between an arthritis medicine and a new pedigree beef chews product.

I mean makes me want to vomit:

At least I can look at this and think about how fascinating how that this used to be a little river and now it houses thieves and criminals. At least they are nice buildings.

And oh look: Trinity Church. A nice rock of a place that has been around forever. If only those brokers and investment bankers went more often for solace and spiritual consultation and guidance. Their souls need to REPENT.

The only saving grace is that Washington was inaugurated here. We like Washington.

And Alexander Hamilton was a strong advocate for a solid, robust economy and market.

God, I love this man so fine, Wall Street, you are just borderline incredulous, but still utterly, utterly unreasonable.

The Limits of Architecture and the new “High Line” Park

Words can not describe how much I love this space. Therefore, I will just post dozens and dozens of photos.

Queens Museum of Art “Panorama of New York City” Exhibition

Field Trip Review Question: How did your visit to the Queens Museum of Art and the model of New York City alter your perceptions of New York City? What did your visit to the model show you or teach you concerning the city of New York and/or its architecture, geography, or overall appearance and design?

From the long 7 train ride into Queens, passing by Citi Field and walking through the old World’s Fair grounds, I got an immersive sense of perspective. The whole thing prepped me for that wonderful model of a panorama. How splendid and delightful and fun!

Living in New York, one is accustomed to going about their daily routine and itinerary from A to B, most often bypassing places and routes that deter from the shortest, most efficient way possible. I realized that there are huge chunks in the outer boroughs I have yet to see. And neighborhoods that I thought I knew well in Manhattan and Brooklyn look very different from what I pictured them to look like in comparison to the blocks around them. And walking around the ramp, I got a great sense of how all of the boroughs connect together into this massive amalgamation of a metropolis/cosmopolis. Amazing.

And looking at Manhattan’s grid system in this way was utterly delicious. Wonderful. Everything is so remarkable flat, planned-out, and orderly. It’s sublime but also sort of dizzying in its massive, repeated orderliness.

The Panorama is the jewel in the crown of the collection of the Queens Museum of Art. Built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, in part as a celebration of the City’s municipal infrastructure, this 9,335 square foot architectural model includes every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs; that is a total of 895,000 individual structures.

The Panorama was built by a team of 100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond Lester Associates in the three years before the opening of the 1964 World’s Fair. In planning the model, Lester Associates referred to aerial photographs, insurance maps, and a range of other City material; the Panorama had to be accurate, indeed the initial contract demanded less than one percent margin of error between reality and the model. The Panorama was one of the most successful attractions at the ‘64 Fair with a daily average of 1,400 people taking advantage of its 9 minute simulated helicopter ride around the City.

After the Fair the Panorama remained open to the public, its originally planned use as an urban planning tool seemingly forgotten. Until 1970 all of the changes in the City were accurately recreated in the model by Lester’s team. After 1970 very few changes were made until 1992, when again Lester Associates changed over 60,000 structures to bring it up-to-date.

In 2006 an up-grade of the lighting system – the first change to the model since 1992 – allowed for the Panorama to be displayed in different light conditions; highlight different buildings or areas of the City; and even recreate the sounds of the city. And, in the Spring of 2009 the Museum launched its Adopt-A-Building program with the installation of the Panorama’s newest addition, Citi Field, to continue for the ongoing care and maintenance of this beloved treasure.

Museum of the City of New York

Oh, it was my time here. I had always been meaning to go as I had oftentimes passed by on the bus when heading down. I was very upset I missed the New York-Paris exhibit this past summer. So I went in and it was all very nice.

Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York

“THE ISLAND OF MANY HILLS”

Funny as there are none anymore. Hills replaced by buildings. It would have been interesting to have buildings on top of hills. So green Manhattan was before, all those rivers, wetlands, forests, wildlife and streams. So pretty, natural and pristine. Well, at least there are some nice townhouses scattered around that are lovely.

From the exhibition text:

The exhibition will challenge visitors to view the city of today as a place where the relationship between nature and people is at its most important and to understand that the principles of diversity, interdependence, and interrelativity operate in a modern mega-city much as they do in nature.  In doing so, the exhibition will contribute something new to the history of New York—a view of its ecological origin—and in that contribution, shape the future as well.

Yes, yes it did.

This was a nice exhibit and so was the Hudson exhibit. Henry Hudson was a fascinating man, and all of those Dutch and English sailors seemed like a good bunch, all good lads.

Timescapes: A Multimedia Portrait of New York

Oh, and the Timescapes video was so nice as well. Stanley Tucci is such an awesome man and so having him narrate it was a nice touch. All those animated maps and archival photographs, prints, and paintings from the Museum’s collections were incorporated nicely. And yes, New York is the greatest city on earth. I have my reservations now and then, and fill the continual propensity to want to betray this notion, but fine, Timescapes has convinced me otherwise. I am locked down for now.

Robert Moses and the Modern City

Reading: NY: Illustrated History, pp. 394-466

Robert Moses can be summed up in points. I think it is fitting for his forward-thinking, straight-to-the point pulverizing thinking.

• The “master builder” of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, New York.
• One of the most polarizing figure in the history of urban planning in the United States.
• Arguably the most powerful person in New York state government from the 1930s to the 1950s. He changed shorelines, built bridges, tunnels and roadways, and transformed neighborhoods forever. His decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners who spread his philosophies across the nation.
• Moses’ projects were considered by many to be necessary for the region’s development after being hit hard by the Great Depression.
• During the height of his powers, New York City participated in the construction of two huge World’s Fairs: one in 1939 and the other in 1964. Moses was also in large part responsible for the United Nations’ decision to headquarter in Manhattan as opposed to Philadelphia. His supporters believe he made the city viable for the 21st century by building an infrastructure that most people wanted and that has endured.
• However, his works remain extremely controversial. His critics claim that he preferred automobiles to people, that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City, uprooted traditional neighborhoods by building expressways through them, contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams, and precipitated the decline of public transport through disinvestment and neglect.
• His career is summed up by his sayings:

“Cities are for traffic” and “If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?”

1811 Plan and the Birth of the Metropolis

Reading: NY: Illustrated History, pp. 46-67 Atlas, pp. 54-69

These people are geniuses. I love how people think in logical, pragmatic linear block grids. The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 was a proposal by the New York State Legislature adopted in 1811 for the orderly development and sale of the land of Manhattan between 14th Street and Washington Heights. The plan is arguably the most famous use of the grid plan and is considered by most historians to have been far-reaching and visionary. And if it was not for this plan, Manhattan would not be what it is today.

The plan called for a regular grid of streets and property lines without regard to the topography of the island itself. The plan called for sixteen numbered and lettered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River. Except in the north and south ends of the island, the avenues would begin with First Avenue on the east side and run through Twelfth Avenue in the west. In addition, in a neighborhood that would become to be known as the East Village, nicknamed Alphabet City for obvious reasons, there would be four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D.

There would also be 155 orthogonal cross streets. The location of the cross streets was fixed at the boundaries of 5-acre (20,000 m²) parcels into which the land had previously been divided. The basepoint for the cross streets was First Street: this was a short and inconspicuous street, which still exists, originally ran from the intersection of Avenue B and Houston Street to the intersection of the Bowery and Bleecker Street. Peretz Square, a small triangular sliver park where Houston Street, First Street and First Avenue meet marks the spot where the grid takes hold.

Each avenue was to be one hundred feet (30 m) wide. The avenues in the center of the island were to be separated by 922 feet (281 m), and the avenues along the waterfront were to be slightly closer. The operating theory was that street frontage near the piers would be more valuable than the landlocked interior, the waterfront being the location of commerce and industry of the time, and so it would be to everyone’s benefit to place avenues closer together at the island’s edges.

The numbered streets running east-west are 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets, resulting in a grid of approximately 2,000 long, narrow blocks. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide: 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 72nd, 79th, 86th, 96th, 106th, 116th, 125th, 135th, 145th and 155th Streets.

Wall Street Than and Now Opinion Paper is Your Own Reaction (no question)

Reading: Ny: Illustrated History, pp.29-46 Atlas, pp. 28-45

These people are not worth my time at the moment.

I want my own bailout money.

Reading:

1. Deyan Sudjic, The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World, Chapter 1 (pp. 1-17, available on the Blackboard site).
2. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Preface and Introduction (on Blackboard).

Opinion paper question: To what extent is Deyan Sudjic’s explanation of how architecture is produced, and who produces it, compatible with Marshall Berman’s interpretation of modernity, modernization, and modernism? Are these two readings compatible or incompatible? Why?

Sudjic, the abstract thinking grand-envisioning architect:

Top-down: The colossal egos of the powerful and wealthy determine what actually gets built and the real reasons why people build.

Berman, the mulling-Marxist of an urban intellectual:

Bottom-up:

In light of the despair, desolation, and apparent emptiness of the current landscape, the author proposes a re-examination and return to the modernism of the recent past as a way of revitalizing and transforming, an ambitious effort of socio-cultural regeneration of the present to guarantee the future:

It may turn out, then, that going back can be a way to go forward: That remembering the modernisms of the nineteenth century can give us the vision and courage to create the modernisms of the twenty-first. This act of remembering can help us bring modernism back to its roots, so that it can nourish and renew itself, to confront the adventures and dangers that lie ahead. To appropriate the modernities of yesterday can be at once a critique of the modernities of today and an act of faith in the modernities—and in the modern men and women—of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

These two readings are compatible in that they offer a sort of framework to see development and an individual’s place within this paradigm of ideas and dynamic world.