The recent news that the developer Forest City Ratner had scrapped Frank Gehry’s design for a Nets arena in central Brooklyn is not just a blow to the art of architecture. It is a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city.
The recent news that the developer Forest City Ratner had scrapped Frank Gehry’s design for a Nets arena in central Brooklyn is not just a blow to the art of architecture. It is a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city. What’s most offensive is the message it sends. Architecture, we are being told, is something decorative and expendable, a luxury we can afford only in good times, or if we happen to be very rich. What’s most important is to build, no matter how thoughtless or dehumanizing the results. It is the kind of logic that kills cities — and that has been poisoning this one for decades.
N. Ourasseff via NYT
4 Comments
Comical how Ouroussoff blames Ellerbee Beckett for not adding "other buildings" without which the arena "lacks the sense of mystery and surprise" that gehry design had. Also implies what the community knew all along... That the Gehry project was a Trojan Horse.
I appreciate what Ouroussoff is saying: the public doesn't value architecture quite enough. I agree on that point. But there does come a point when a building (and particularly one of Gehry's) is simply too expensive. Many architects have the attitude that a client should be willing to spend their millions on every pointy pointless shard—on Libeskindesque concatenations of spiky forms that house only half the gallery space of a normal building. But the present financial situation seems to suggest that the flamboyant, insanely expensive titanium architectures of the last ten years will give way to cheaper but perhaps more inventive strategies.
Not that Ellerbee Beckett's proposed box is that inventive. It looks like a mausoleum.
I like the Trojan Horse theory-- Rattner was never going to go with a real Gehry building-- and who would if there is an actual budget (especially in NYC)?... the design fees were a downpayment on co-opting the Powers That Be (the Times being one of them) to get this massive neighborhood teardown going... that said, Gehry has been out of control for a while and Brooklyn didn't need him-- or any of this but there you go. Done.
Mr. Ouroussoff should not be so quick to dismiss cornfields ... I have seen some of the most gorgeous modern buildings amongst cornfields. Actually, a I hate Gehry in so many ways, but his designs may be Brillliant in the midst of cornfields, it wouldn't bully everything else like many of his projects in urban contexts do. Think of it, nice corn at the base of that titanium, I think this could finally solve the Gehry's omnipresent, unavoidable dillema of how to get these damn forms to meet the ground gracefully.
In any case, I digress. There is certainly a design to be considered that is much more appropriate than EITHER of these options ... I really have to blame it on Ratner at this point, there should seriously be a shortlist or competition for this sort of thing. The public deserves it.
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