Cooper Union's new building by Thom Mayne of the Morphosis, completed late last year, is an 9-story block with a gash in the middle. It is a "Le Corbusier for New York", a monument of the 20th Century Modernism, a fine exemplar of what I call "erectional architecture," asserting its external presence in command of the environment, the last of the breed, so to speak, of which Frank O. Gehry represents messier examples. The interior is dominated by the grand stairs that go straight up to the fourth floor, much too steep for sitting on, even for stepping up and down, existing more as a showy display than for daily circulation, for which monumental volume, classroom, studios, and offices are shoved around it along mundane double-decked corridors. The Lincoln Center development by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro is an effort in piecemeal assemblage, which accomodates the surrounding urban fabric more sensitively and perhaps better looks forward to the architecture of this century.
Mr. Minoru Mori who is a head of Mori Buildilding, which did "Roppongi Hills", the famous new development in Tokyo, is an admirer of Le Courbusier, but I think he's missing the point. Many architects and urban planners seem to dislike what he does. Mori Building made a super tall building in Shanghai too.
ReplyDeleteFrom my translation work, I learned that social segregation is vertical rather than horizontal in San Paulo, Brazil. Rich people live in the top part of a high-rise residential building which stands in the middle of slums, and they commute by helicopter!
I like the Lincoln Center.
つまり、雲の上の山人、足地につかず、ですね。１９世紀のパリーではその反対で、屋根裏は貧人の住処でしたね。
ReplyDeleteIn short, hermits above the clouds keep their feet off the ground. In 19th century Paris, by contrast, the poor lived in the garrets.