[...] historians were dumbstruck last week when Chase announced plans to demolish the 52-story glass-curtain-wall skyscraper, which opened in 1961, and replace it with an even bigger structure.
The news prompted two immediate responses. The first was an outcry by preservationists. That part was predictable; what is surprising this time around was their wistful sense of resignation.
News of the Union Carbide building's demolition a little over a week ago has incited commotion, yet there is a level of resignation to many of the outcries. Jeffrey Lieber takes a deeper look into why this relinquishment may exist around the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill skyscraper.
The building is not protected by landmark status and protestors grow weary of fighting for preservation and loosing time and time again. While these are key factors Leiber acknowledges, he also delves into the misattribution of the building and how this plays into its perception. Leiber explains, "...the architect remained invisible. This made it seem as if the building had arranged itself around the corporation’s internal drives. The corporation was de facto the architect."
26 Comments
Fuck Union Carbide:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ph...
What does that have to do with the building that they don't even inhabit anymore?
First, why does the loss of this building, which looks like 1,000 others inspire any sadness... Second, how much can they cram into midtown? Bigger than this?
What you don't see in the above image is that half the site is a 10 story building and there is virtually no plaza. With the proposed new building it will be taller and denser but also provide for a plaza giving folks some open space at street level.
I don't care one way or the other as far as historic preservation is concerned, but this seems like an absurd waste of material and energy.
was this before or after the new price of steel and aluminum?
MAGA
How can a high rise even be demolished in the middle of mid-town? The building itself does not even matter, but the effect to all of the businesses surrounding seems totally unreasonable. And honestly, for another skyscraper that looks identical to all of the other horseshit that’s coming up around the Hudson yards.
These kind of buildings are turning every city into a carbon copy of each other, yet we can't learn from any local traditions to build on and enrich our cities because of some stupid prohibition that say's they are fake historic replicas. Except that you could say that about every building that people have ever loved. Meantime, developers continue to lay this crap down because it's 'modern'. Way to go Ohio.
When Chase Bank says, “Trust Me” the McUrbanists bow down.
There seems to be a corner of sadists and McUrbanists that say “i don’t like Modernism, it’s boring” Guess what, the replacement will be McModern, not Classical Modern. The fact that there is no replacement design is kind of a declaration of Chase Design Intent.
Also, there are plazas everywhere on Park Avenue. It’s probably the most important stretch of Classic Modern Architecure (and American Power) in the world, which is why it’s being torn down for another Hudson Yards reflected glass McUrban to house more shady Russian mobsters and Mid East princes.
I find myself agreeing with this article:
SNOOZE TOWER: The Union Carbide Building Should Be Torn Down
https://archpaper.com/2018/03/...
I went in extremely skeptical, but this article convinced me.
Its a good thing the purpose of architecture is to personally entertain this guy: “Matt Shaw is the founder and co-editor of Mockitecture, a half-manifesto/half-satire collection of architectural debauchery.”
Great article. Besides many of the criticisms you don't usually hear, this one explains a lot.
"The Union Carbide Building is an offender of the high modernist co-optation of the guiding principles of Modernism—a movement originally fueled by a socially progressive agenda (better, cleaner, more egalitarian cities) and made possible by radical innovations in building technology, most notably machine precision and mass production."
It's a little romantic to think that progressive values where the leading edge of modernism's motivations. The "radical innovations in building technology" had been happening since the middle of the 19th century. If this is how the style plays out in the hands of practitioners, I'm not sure it works very well.
"it represents the worst of midcentury American corporate architecture, something that at the time was totalizing, banal, repetitive, and dogmatic"
The article fails to convince me, Donna. The author seems to be advancing counter-arguments to his own arguments. To paraphrase:
Union Carbide was an evil capitalist corp, who only built this boring building to advance their corporate agenda without regard for the impact on the city and the discipline. But hey, I'm not trying to say that JP Morgan isn't exactly like that, I'll even kind of hint that they're merely a 21st century version of that business model!
Let's let the market logic that produces scores of derivative soul-sucking buildings run to it's conclusion and demolish this capitalist POS, there's so much to be learned from that exercise! But also, let's just keep letting the same market decide how cities grow and die.
Blind optimism may be more in vogue than sober pragmatism or any sort of criticism, but I'll agree with the Zago quote - show us that what you're proposing is better, then go ahead with the demo (which I agree, can be quite a case study in material re-use, but somehow doubt that's how it will go). Why would you cheer for this as simply a sign of modernism's failure in the complete absence of a vision for the replacement? What if the replacement is just as bad, if not worse than the building being torn down? Sure, JP Morgan has the resources to hire a great architect, but the author himself acknowledges that they're not likely to do so without external motivation, such as NY DCP "holding their feet to the fire".
The article for me has echoes of Charles Jencks' triumphal cheering at the demolition of Pruitt Igoe housing, and his conflation of modernist planning deficiencies with the failure of American social housing policies. We know things aren't as simple as that.See: https://www.theguardian.com/ar... and https://www.city-journal.org/h...
It's only too predictable that the usual suspects on these forums start trotting out tired arguments against modernism as a whole in light of such articles...
I don't disagree with you, threadkilla, I just can't get real worked up about the demolition of this building. Too tired from all the other obscenities in the world.
threadkilla, the only reason those tired arguments against modernism come out is because they are still valid. I'd be happy to hear you answer those arguments but I have a feeling you'll pass. At least the media is starting to get it.
Thayer-D, I tried to engage you in debate about this stuff exactly three years ago, to the day. You chose to pass. I have nothing else to say to your empty nostalgia-based anti-modernist rhetoric.
https://archinect.com/forum/thread/122390799/the-battle-of-the-ancients-and-the-moderns-sequel-______
plenty of wonderful modernist projects in guess the plan, btw
While these preservationist causes may seem unimportant when compared with “bigger issues” in the world, they do reveal some interesting things about the state of media and how many bad-faith actors, narrative lobbyists and McUrbanists lurking. CHASE is a bad faith actor (there are other options). AR has become a bad faith PoMo lobbyist. Like much media, it has little to do with reality, but cynical trolling.
Just because you don’t prefer Classical Modernism, there’s no chance Chase will replace it with the PoMo of your cynical dreams anyway. And so the entire premise is bad faith all around.
Whether you think this massive glass box is worth preserving or not, whether it is perhaps remarkable only as a legacy of one of many women architects who went largely uncredited for their work during their lifetime or if it has other merits as architecture - it's a bit more than ridiculous that JP Morgan put in all the effort for renos and getting it LEED certified, only to immediately want to demolish it entirely with a goal of building an even more massive building. SUSTAINABILITY! YAY!
Moves like these coming from one of the biggest contributors to the 2008 financial meltdown are quite worrisome, and can hardly be just about buildings. My gut tells me that all of it is probably just a great way to move some money around...
Here's some light reading about JP Morgan's corporate track record for all those who think that this building deserves the wrecking ball because of it's past association with Union Carbide, or those who think the building's current owner deserves blind faith in building something better:
https://medium.com/@blairerick...
https://www.rollingstone.com/p...
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2017/02/what-jpmorgan-and-citigroup-have-in-common-when-it-comes-to-crime/
https://www.corp-research.org/...
"So I understand this disciplinary autonomy business as being an important part of what constitutes modernism. Far more important than leaky flat roofs, shear glass facades, or anything else you lot seem so quick to dismiss as the glaring failures of modernist style. I take exception to your use of the term style, but perhaps we can have more on that later.."
Right, how could I forget about Kant's 'autonomy'. You might not like the term style, but it's a perfectly useful word the whole world uses. Even Alfred Barr and Hitchcock dispelled that nonsense in their introductory defense of modernism's aesthetic. Maybe less Eisenman and more history, assuming one's autonomy allows it.
keep reading... I have nothing against history, in fact I rather like it (as did many modernist architects)
There isn't one modernism. A movement or an ideology is more than a style.
Do you know the difference between logos and lexis?
One's a marketing image and the other a nice car?
Odd that so many architecture critics are OK with demolishing what appears to be a beautiful building but are aghast when someone proposes to demolish a brutalist building which are almost universally despised by the occupants who have to work in them.
With respect to the JP Morgan Chase building what to the people who work there think? The owners have a say, the bought-off Mayor has a say, but the actual occupants aren't consulted?
And calling it the 'Union Carbide' building in an effort to taint it's image is just too transparent.
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