Archinect - News

McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner dissects issues with big tech and the 'blurred line' between private and public space

2021-03-11T19:35:00-05:00

In February, Amazon announced its latest design for a $2.5 billion headquarters in Arlington, "the Helix." Once visual renderings for the campus were released, the architecture community was quick to respond. Besides heavy criticism of its overall design, discussion regarding its surrounding public space was soon questioned. Architecture critic Kate Wagner addresses the long-rivaled issues between big tech corporate campuses and their intentionality behind fostering a so-called "engaged environment" with public space.

Her article in The New Republic, "How Big Tech Devours Public Space, " assesses large tech companies like Amazon and their double-sided plans to create spaces available for public use. She explains, "Amazon is presenting the Helix as a companion structure to 'the Spheres,' the indoor gardens at its Seattle headquarters. But as a space of consumption and leisure, the Helix actually resembles a lot of classic starchitecture. It is a towering, glass-clad, tree-dotted baub...

Trump Tower is blocking off the public from promised public spaces on site

2017-11-28T18:53:00-05:00

Otherwise known as POPS or POPOS, pseudo-public space is often offered up by developers in exchange for the city giving them permission to add more floors or density than the current zoning allows for. An incentive pioneered in NYC's 1961 zoning ordinance revision, today, there are more than 500 spaces in the city legally reserved for public use on privately owned and managed real estate. One of these is the President's gilded Trump Tower.

In the late 1970s, the billionaire real estate mogul made a deal with the city to add restrooms, two upper-level public gardens, and an atrium with a 22-foot long stone bench so he could build 20 more floors onto the-then 38-story building. Shortly after the building's completion, the promised bench, in Trump fashion, was removed leading to a 30-year scandal resulting in multiple fines including one for $10,000 issued by the Department of Buildings. Making matters all the more insulting, the bench's place went to a kiosk hawking the man's self-pro...

The privatization of public space in London, investigated by the Guardian

2017-07-26T04:30:00-04:00

Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves.

The abundance of pseudo-public spaces, namely outdoor, open and publicly accessible locations owned and maintained by private companies in London is alarming. To this day it's largely unclear what regulations people passing through privately-owned 'public' land are subject to, and where members of the public can view those regulations.

The Guardian conducted an investigation, contacting landowners of more than 50 major pseudo-public spaces in London, asking an identical set of questions: what restrictions are in place covering users of your land, how are these enforced, where can members of the public see a list of these restrictions, and what conditions are there in the relevant planning agreements regarding public access to your land? Also inquiring whether a series of public activities – including peaceful political protest, non-commercial photography, non-commercial artistic performances and rough sleeping – would be permitted on their site, the Guardian received responses from ...

SANAA's Grace Farms raises uncomfortable questions about the role of corporate money in public projects

2017-03-31T11:27:00-04:00

Critic Curt Gambetta brings forward an age old uncomfortable question on corporate public spaces whose main purpose is often curtailed by exemplary architecture that is hard to reject.

His piece titled, "No free gifts," carefully borrowed from the anthropologist Mary Douglas, asks the question of, what would be the return of such corporate gifts. In his article, Mr. Gambetta alludes to large tax breaks and other conservative agendas of corporate cultures. After all, “nothing in life is truly free.”

"Much as ‘radical transparency’ is demanded from senior management at Bridgewater, the openness of Grace Farms to its community feels forced, its agenda delegated from above. When I visited this winter, the library contained an assortment of suggested reading, a series of social justice greatest hits for anxious Northeast liberals to get up to speed on: Bell Hooks, postcolonialism and so on. Next to a series of flyers about the foundation’s involvement with advocacy against sexual slaver...

Why is Trump seeking private equity for public infrastructure?

2016-11-21T12:51:00-05:00

The indefatigable Paul Krugman takes a closer look at Trump's proposed infrastructure funding plans in his column for The New York Times, wondering why the President-elect would seek private equity for public projects. Is this a profiteering scheme that sneakily privatizes ownership of traditionally publicly accessible resources (like water, for example)?

As Krugman notes about Trump's plan: "Crucially, it’s not a plan to borrow $1 trillion and spend it on much-needed projects — which would be the straightforward, obvious thing to do. It is, instead, supposed to involve having private investors do the work both of raising money and building the projects — with the aid of a huge tax credit that gives them back 82% of the equity they put in. To compensate for the small sliver of additional equity and the interest on their borrowing, the private investors then have to somehow make profits on the assets they end up owning."

For more on how architects are reacting to the Presidential elect...

Uniting the idea of public art and private space

2016-07-08T00:48:00-04:00

The phenomenon is propelled largely by the same factors that are making it more difficult for artists themselves to live and work in the city: a concentration of global wealth with its eyes trained on real estate and luxury developers trying to stand out to attract a piece of that wealth.

Randy Kennedy tours some of the most recent examples of luxury commercial and residential architecture in Manhattan that incorporate "public" artworks.

Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?

2016-05-26T18:25:00-04:00

“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.”

In this piece design critic par excellence Alexandra Lange analyzes two similar Thomas Heatherwick designed-projects, London's Garden Bridge and New York's Pier 55, in the hopes of discovering why one seems to be resonating with the public while the other has inspired satiric contests to replace it. Murky funding issues, misleading renderings, Absolutely Fabulous tie-ins: it's all here.

For more on the saga of the Garden Bridge:

Who owns our cities – and why this urban takeover should concern us all

2015-11-24T12:52:00-05:00

Privatisation in the 90s has resulted in a reduction of public buildings and an escalation in large, corporate ownership

"today, rather than a space for including people from many diverse backgrounds and cultures, our global cities are expelling people and diversity. Their new owners, often part-time inhabitants, are very international – but that does not mean they represent many diverse cultures and traditions. Instead, they represent the new global culture of the successful – and they are astoundingly homogeneous, no matter how diverse their countries of birth and languages. This is not the urban subject that our large, mixed cities have historically produced. This is, above all, a global “corporate” subject."

Editor's note: the cover photo is not showing "Freedom Tower". Here is a link to gettyimages . While at it, check out their "city life" section.

Taking a stand against privately-owned public spaces

2015-08-04T12:52:00-04:00

the place where cities get “remade” is in the public rather than private sphere. Part of the problem, then, with privately owned public spaces (“Pops”) ... is that the rights of the citizens using them are severely hemmed in. [...] [Pops] feel too monitored, too controlled, to allow this communal activity to simply unfold. London, and many other cities, are failing miserably to enable diversity in people’s engagement with such spaces.

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