Daniel Libeskind
Plus Ca Change
(Credit: Silverstein Properties and dbox)
... with Libeskind's revised plans from September 2003: read more »
(Via Lower Manhattan Development Corp.)
Tuesday: Everyone Always Blames the Brooklyn Jews
Hard out here for the Orthodox
- NYU says Borough Park is the most crowded neighborhood in New York, on account of big Orthodox families squeezing into small houses. Meanwhile, prices are so high in Williamsburg that hundreds of local Hassidim are fleeing for the greener pastures of upstate Scranton (an area known eerily as The Hill). And, sadly: brokers do not like "tough customer" observant Jews. (New York Post)
- Paul Goldberger disses architect Daniel Libeskind's plans for Ground Zero: "he cloaked his familiar angular shapes in patriotic rhetoric," the critic writes, before pointing out that anyway the plan "has been compromised almost out of existence." And then, for shame, he calls New York "supposedly sophisticated." (New Yorker)
- Macy's goes high-tech, building a 35,000-square-foot J&R Express store within its Herald Square flagship. The Alliance for Downtown New York has sighted the expansion at the big J&R Music & Computer World (on Park Row north of Fulton) as evidence of Lower Manhattan's rebirth. Does that mean Herald Square is hot now too? (NY Post)
- Andrew Rasiej aims to hook up New Yorkers with 25,000 free wireless routers, a campaign that took off last week with 25 gratis set-ups in the East Village. "This is a people-powered effort," he says--which means that free (or cheap) citywide Internet is a long, long way off. (Citi Limits)
- Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist Richard Ford on realty and fiction: "I was writing a paragraph about what it feels like to live in a town where housing prices are falling. And, in the process of thinking about that, I just expanded my frame of reference to include the larger human condition... We calculate our spiritual condition, in part, in terms of how and where we live. I don't think it's peculiarly American to feel that way, and yet it is American." (New Yorker) - Max Abelson read more »
Life Getting Hot For Architect Rafael Viñoly
Withdrawal Pain
"We are deeply disappointed that the will could not be found to continue the development of the International Freedom Center at this hallowed site. It is the site for which the IFC was created—at the Lower Manhatttan Development Corporation’s request, and as an integral part of Daniel Libeskind’s master site plan. We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the IFC at the World Trade Center site. We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end. read more »
"We are profoundly sorry to see: --This significant blow to the idea of a living memorial that emerged from a comprehensive public process; --The loss of a museum of freedom at the place where freedom was so brutally challenged; --The failure to accept the offer of nine great universities to offer cultural programming on freedom issues in the heart of Lower Manhattan; and --This setback to one of the most ambitious and promising service and civic engagement programs in this country.
"Hundreds of people contributed to the IFC’s development, including some of the world’s best thinkers on the subject of human freedom. To all these people we offer our profound thanks for their hard work over the past four years. Freedom is humankind’s greatest, most ennobling idea, and its surest antidote to terror and tyranny. Finally, we wish those still involved in the important work of creating the Memorial the best of luck in the months and years ahead."Bye, Bye, Summer
One of those projects with monstrous cost, the $2.2 billion Calatrava PATH station, breaks ground today, while Daniel Libeskind makes his pitch for $3,700 homes for Hurricane Katrina victims. read more »
Another big ticket item is Sen. Hillary Clinton's $1 million expansion of her Washington pad, the better to raise money.Embattled Libeskind Defends Controversial W.T.C. Museum
Slow and Steady Wins the ...
David Childs finally got his way at Ground Zero--muscling out any remaining Daniel Libeskind influence on the latest Freedom Tower revision--but he couldn't hold on in Midtown.
At a press conference, outside, in the middle of the afternoon, without a shade tree in sight, Governor Pataki et. al. announced that the design of the Moynihan Station, first drafted by Childs and his crew at Skidmore Owings and Merrill, would be taken over by James Carpenter "in collaboration with" Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum.
Childs' seashell atrium was cast away in favor of Carpenter's undulating dome to turn the present Farley Post Office at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street into a train station--of sorts.
The trains will still be downstairs--and, for the most part, across the street, on the same tracks of the subterranean Pennsylvania Station--but now you can walk up three dozen steps and through a mini-mall to get to them!
Carpenter, a glass sculptor who consulted on the 7 World Trade Center façade, sweat through his shirt and into his jacket during the announcement, proving that the seven-year-old project really has been a marathon. read more »
- Matthew Schuerman
