[...] MoMA has said it would detach and preserve the facade’s 63 textured copper-bronze panels.
One might suppose that salvage is preferable to annihilation, but before we get too comfortable with such piecemeal preservation, it is worth noting that the panel-by-panel disassembly and storage of an architectural treasure’s metal facade has been tried before in New York City, with comically disastrous results.
Who around here remembers the Laing Stores?
— nytimes.com
5 Comments
This is an excellent essay.
Architecture is not static, least of all urban architecture, which jostles daily with its environment and the multifarious humans who work and play in that environment. Once torn from the living city — the streetscape of which it is an organic part — a building loses its lifeblood.
Wonderful.
Maybe they could make an exhibit about the Folk Museum out of the old panels.
Reincarnate the architecture in a different art form. Melt down the panels and commission an artist to design and cast a bronze sculpture for permanent exhibition at MoMA.
What's ironic about this is that right now MoMA-rt is killing the Folk Art Museum, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Folk Art Museum eventually kills MoMA.
we'd probably never see it because it would get squashed in-house, but wouldn't it be excellent to see a PS1 proposal that uses the bronze panels?
what are the requirements?: shade, fountain...
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