R Pogrebin chronicles the complex story behind Eric Owen Moss being dropped from the Queens Museum of Art project. A replacement firm is to be selected by end of March. | nytimes
There will be no competition for Mr. Moss's successor; an architect will be chosen by the museum and the city from a preapproved list of eight architects compiled by the Department of Design and Construction for projects of $5 million or more. They are Fox & Fowle Architects, a finalist the first time; Mr. Viñoly; Polshek Partnership Architects; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Arquitectonica; 1100 Architects; the team of Ammann & Whitney and Grimshaw Architects; and Gluckman Mayner Architects. Mr. Burney said he expected to name an architect within six weeks and to start work on the museum by midyear.
"Eric is a very good designer," Mr. Burney said. "Sometimes you get to a point where it's just appropriate to make a switch."
8 Comments
congrats to the queesn museum for making what i would see as a very easy decision about my least favorite architect in the world.
de-con is dead moss, expecially when treated it like a veneer material and 'look'! move on my brother. and get some meds for that anger thing / early alzhiemer thing you got going on!
what a pile of poo that thing is.
OK TED, I'd rather have moss than just about half of those firms they've got going on now.
2 wrongs dont make a right! agreed!
perhaps the museum has just had enough with big headed guys. this was moss's project to loose and i sense it was his attitude-- not his architecture forced the breakup, they just realized said 'enough is enough!'
and i think museums have re-evauated the necessity of having a so called 'star' to design their facility -- may bring in some capital campaign money, but the $$ of the bigness isnt appreciated or valued by some designers with regard to the long term finances. one only needs to look at milwaukee which greatly overextended their budget for the calatrava and now barely hold the museum together.
i dont like anything moss has done and after hearing him lecture, he is only about himself, he know nothing about his building specifically and he is so overrated. hence my sense the guy really does have early onset alzhiemer. it was extremely distrubing the 'pregnant pauses' in his presentation and his extreme arrogance to the response to questions. [he told one questioner 'that was a stupid question but what can i expect from people in the midwest]
that not to say anything wrong with his regard to leadership at siarc or from an education sense. i think the 2 are independent.
can we call this a bursting of the bilbao bubble?
i think. we have danny and the v&a.....
i will always have a special place in my heart for the stealth. it simply just kicks ass. i do think he has gone waaay overboard with the glass experiments. they are self-serving...
i gotta say though, i am not sure that the bilbao bubble has burst at all. we'll have to see what happens, first of all, at the guggenheim itself and tom kerns on his own w/o paul. zaha has just landed a few tony museum commissions. and even if it has burst, it's only temporary. museum leaders will come and go, and a new crop will want to leave their medici-mark.
i will say that of any of the moss project i think the queens is the strongest. very strong, passionate idea with the spacial aspects of the building to site.
i still feel strongly, this idea as others on moss's table were not generated nor even authored from him. that project has a certain well groundedness and sensitivity that were beyond eric o's comprehensive. he has someone[s] with talent in that office.
self-reflection and self-serving is great but i dont sense its moss; he stumbles too much over the simple ideas that exist in his projects.
i had never seen anyone present and respond to questions in the manor he did. i truely walked out of the presentation thinking the guy was bi-polar or such. i felt pity and sorry for him. i cant and wont ride it off as just a bad day.
within the art community, very self reflective high art always can have a voice. but architecture being more complex, working within this reflection, is a dangerous path if you dont or are not percieved to work the budget at some point in time. its not that hard to do. zahah learned early with cardiff some 15 years ago and had a very long road to rebound from that experience. DL had 10 years + with V&A to design a great building and the jesture of 'shift in fractals movement' wasnt convincing enough to the banker trustees.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.