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Today’s News - Thursday, April 11, 2019

EDITOR'S NOTE: After days of dealing with grumpy technology gods, we end the week with (mostly) grumpy takes on Scruton, Hudson Yards, The Shed, the Vessel, and LACMA - and, on a brighter note, some great shows and books.

Tomorrow and Monday will be no-newsletter days. We'll be back Tuesday, April 16 (we hope!).

●  Following an interview the New Statesman, Scruton is "sacked" as chair of the U.K.'s of the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission for "unacceptable comments" about Soros, Islamophobia, and more.

●  AJ rounds up reactions from the industry re: Scruton's dismissal: "It was foreseeable this ludicrous appointment would end badly."

●  O'Neill, on the other hand, says the real Scruton scandal "is the behavior of the New Statesman" and its deputy editor who "dispensed with the ethics of journalism - a transparent hit job against a philosopher whose views it doesn't like" (with link to interview).

Hudson Yards, The Shed, and the Vessel (oh my!):

●  Wainwright minces no words about the "$25bn architectural fiasco" that is Hudson Yards, and ponders why the towers "look so cheap - this is bargain-basement building-by-the-yard stuff. The hot mess starts on the skyline."

●  Hagberg Fisher explains why Hudson Yards broke her heart and made her cry (twice!): "The problem really isn't its lack of humanity, it's that it's actually kind of a perfect articulation of our late capitalist longing."

●  Huber explains "the false radicalism of The Shed - not dissimilar to the Vessel: both are oversize objects. But where the Vessel is a spectacle of redundancy, The Shed [is] the modernist dogma that form follows function adapted for the wellness age."

●  Adamson, a senior scholar at the Yale Center for British Art, finds Heatherwick's Vessel to be "emblematic of the triumph of digital spectacle over real experience - the hood ornament" for Hudson Yards - "relentlessly photogenic" and a "self-regarding phantasmagoria."

Zumthor & Govan's LACMA plan gets a green light (not all are thrilled):

●  The vote to release $117.5 million in county funds was unanimous (with "a little help" from some movie stars): "Those who spoke out against the proposed plans were less glamorous than the supporters, but they raised pragmatic concerns about the transparency of the design process, the cost, and proper vetting procedures."

●  Govan explains, in his own words, why "LACMA's new building is visionary. I think key facts about the project have been lost in the debate about curves versus rectangles, and how big a museum should be."

●  Walker & Lange stroll the LACMA campus and discuss why the museum "should scrap its watered-down redesign - it will look like a freeway overpass - limiting public information to a few renderings seems to be a new strategy for controversial public architecture."

●  Pacheco finds Zumthor's LACMA proposal "an affront to L.A.'s architectural and cultural heritage. It follows in the tradition of slash-and-burn conquests waged by powerful men who come to Los Angeles and see nothing but a blank slate - it's time for some fresh thinking."

●  Pollack breaks down the "drama" that has been a 6-year "slow moving train of controversy" surrounding LACMA's new design (a 1950s-'60s motel on Sunset Boulevard): "Even after all the not-so-subtle naysaying from California's most prominent art and architecture critics - LACMA will receive $117.5 million in county funds."

●  ICYMI: ANN feature: Rick Fedrizzi: Building Abundance #3: Abundance in Architecture Starts with Abundance in Human Health: Buildings can and must become our greatest asset when it comes to human sustainability.

Weekend diversions:

●  Not much time left to catch Brooks+Scarpa's "Salty Urbanism" at USC that "presents a case study approach for how two communities can plan and respond to sea level rise and global climate change," highlighting "low-impact development, green infrastructure, and other alternative concepts as possible approaches in urban areas."

●  NYC-based SOFTlab installs "Mirror, Mirror," a "glowing, interactive crystal" on the waterfront in Alexandria, Virginia (check out the video!).

●  The Met Breuer presents "language of exile" in "Siah Armajani: Follow This Line," the first U.S. retrospective of the 79-year-old Iranian-born artist + In Brooklyn Bridge Park, a restaging of "Bridge Over Tree," Armajani's 1970 installation, "awe-inspiring in its humility."

Page-turners:

●  Pedersen's Q&A with Nathaniel Rich re: "Losing Earth: A Recent History" - how the "controversial book came to be, how close we really were to fixing the problem in the 1980s, and how the political argument around climate change has shifted."

●  Holleran cheers MacCarthy's "Gropius: The Man Who Built the Bauhaus" that "transforms him from a dull institutionalist into a stylistic rebel - a reminder of the importance of exciting educational spaces, even those that are unabashedly utopian and outlandish, in which the end goal is social change."

●  Howard's Q&A with Kolson Hurley re: "Radical Suburbs" that challenges "architects and planners to take a fresh look at the suburbs," and "insists that history can provide surprising insight into national issues" such as segregation, inequity, and climate change.

●  Kolson Hurley offers an excerpt from "Radical Suburbs": "Clichés and misconceptions still define suburbs. Unfortunately, [they] carry a stigma among the very people who could improve them: architects."

●  Campbell-Dollaghan cheers Barasch's "Ruin and Redemption in Architecture": "'Adaptive reuse' has long had a halo, wafting the aura of sustainability - abandoned and ruined spaces can be massive economic boons or cynical attempts to cloak a neighborhood's rapid socioeconomic transformation."

●  Francis takes us on a tour of 16 designs from "Bubbletecture: Inflatable Architecture and Design" with an excerpt that "teases the 200+ works of architecture, furniture, fashion, art, and industrial design" included in the book.

  


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