Neuehouse from June 2013 to Jan

POWER 100 SURFACE 108 POWER 100 You grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is in many ways why it’s more sophisticated and your parents’ house was filled with [than 2-D arts], but also why fewer people André Balazs quite a bit of midcentury modern furniture. understand it. It’s sort of why even architec- PRESIDENT AND CEO, Did this upbringing get you thinking about ture, despite the big push given to it by various ANDRÉ BALAZS PROPERTIES design, architecture, and the urban experi- economic interests, is still poorly understood. ence at an early age? That may be also because either architects INTERVIEW BY SPENCER BAILEY Yeah. Because my parents lived in Sweden for don’t know how to describe their work to PORTRAIT BY PASCAL PERICH 20 years, when they moved to Cambridge, non-architects, or because the media gen- they brought with them this complete immer- erally struggles to make architecture more In the middle of the living room of André sion in what we now call midcentury modern. accessible. Balazs’s stylish, immaculately conceived apart- They moved to Sweden in 1941, so the ’40s and ment in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood there’s ’50s totally informed their life. My family’s Do you think so? a custom-designed bright red ping-pong table. house was, by far, among the most modern Not surprisingly, the spritely and fit Balazs has in Cambridge. My mom just moved out, but Well, one problem seems to be architects a pretty mean serve. The game, which requires when I would take people there, they’d go, not communicating the complexities of finesse, attentiveness, and a light touch, makes “Oh, this is the coolest thing!” That was the what they’re doing in a clear and under - a fitting metaphor for the 58-year-old’s business environment in which I grew up. standable fashion. acumen and design sensibility. Born and raised I also had a wonderful, inspiring ceramics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Balazs later stud- teacher in sixth grade. That led me to sculp- Well, if you asked Renzo [Piano] what the ied the humanities at Cornell University and ture. We had a very unique program in high fuck was going on over there [points to the journalism at Columbia. He may be known for school; you’d spend the last half of your new Whitney Museum building out of one of his work as a hotelier and developer, but he is, senior year doing a project, and I did some the bar’s south-facing windows], I don’t think at heart, a storyteller. In his real estate work, large-scale outdoor steel sculptures. Then I he’d have trouble discussing it. I think people constructing the actual buildings is secondary; went to college at Cornell, and was in a very might have difficulty understanding what narratives come first. unusual program that allowed me to approach he’s saying. But it’s not that he’s not speak- His company, André Balazs Properties, oper- any professor in any of the multiple schools ing articulately about it. It’s that he’s speaking ates eight hotels in the U.S., including the Mercer they had on campus. I then studied architec- a language that very few people understand. in New York and Chateau Marmont in L.A., ture, along with political science, literature, You can’t really be accused of being a bad poet as well as the new Chiltern Firehouse hotel in and economics and everything else. It was a if the people trying to read your poetry don’t London. He is the founder and chairman of the really eclectic liberal-arts program. Most of have a command of the language. You may Standard hotel brand—an almost ironic name, my friends there were architects. Cornell’s be a bad poet, but that’s not necessarily the considering the collection of properties is, well, architecture school was a five-year program. conclusion. I wouldn’t blame architects for anything but—with locations in Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time with the school’s students. the lack of understanding of architecture. New York, and Miami Beach. (A Standard That’s when I started getting into journal- London is in the works.) This summer, from ism. I started publications and became very Part of it may be the media grabbing onto June 16–21, Balazs will showcase his storytelling involved in graphics. That’s why I ended up certain “trends” in architecture, but maybe skills and design know-how in an entirely dif- at Columbia [Journalism School], because I ignoring some of the more substantive ferent way: as the curator of the Design Miami/ thought I was going to go into publishing and things about it. Basel fair’s “Design at Large” program. With an magazines. architectural focus, the presentation will include That’s part of it, too—journalists trying to a Jean Prouvé prefabricated filling station, a So you were basically training to be a write about it. I wanted to be an art critic Shigeru Ban paper teahouse, and an Atelier Van bridge builder between architecture and for a while. Clement Greenberg was my big Lieshout poolhouse. Earlier this year, Surface storytelling. hero. And Harold Rosenbloom. I wrote an met with Balazs at the Top of the Standard bar art column in the Cornell Daily Sun. That in New York’s Meatpacking District to discuss Only later, looking back at all the things we was interesting, because the language of art everything from how Soho has transformed in currently do—whether it’s graphics or, when criticism—I was a big fan of Baudelaire—to the 30-plus years he has lived there to why the I moved to New York, I wanted to be a fash- me was, “Oh, you use that language.” How word “sustainability” is B.S. ion designer for a while—does it make sense. you write about art is a whole separate thing When you’re doing it, you’re convinced you from the art. Similarly, how you write about have no idea what you’re doing. Which may architecture is not the same as architecture. be the truth. Everything I did then relates to Whether an architect is articulate also depends what we do now, including starting businesses. on the writer and whether they’re articulate. I always appreciated the excitement of creat- It’s hard because a writer can get into the ing something from nothing, which is what, whole semiotics of it, and it can get really at the end of the day, starting a business is fucking boring. It can be dry. Which I think all about. is the biggest complaint against architects in general. What led you to not become a sculptor or fashion designer? It’s a classic conundrum of architecture publishing: How do you make it exciting? What was really frustrating about sculpture was exactly what I like about what we’re One of the biggest problems, I find, isn’t doing now. It was a very, very conscious aban- even the writing. I think the photography is doning of that pursuit. I felt very frustrated what’s really disturbing to me right now. With with the inability of most people to under- the limits of 2-D photography, how do you stand the vernacular of sculpture. Graphic convey what architecture is—or even interior design, painting—they’re much more readily design? I always read design magazines upside André Balazs in the living room of his graspable by most people, even today. The down. Because then you immediately see how Manhattan apartment. three-dimensional vocabulary of sculpture fucked up the design is. It’s like, “My god, 109 POWER 100 another fucking white floor with fucking places that fall flat, I think, are because some- holes in it.” [Laughs] body along the way cut off the design process Then there’s travel writing—I’m essentially and presumed it was done when it was only 20 in the travel business. You get some journalist percent done. Developers do this kind of shit writing that they went to the Ritz Carlton in to designers and architects all the time: “Give Maui, and that it was really “hip” and “cool.” me the plans. I want them on April 1.” Then Then you go, “Now what?!” If “hip” and whatever they get on April 1 they take and “cool” have been used to describe the Ritz in presume it’s a building. But it may or may not Maui, then— even be a tenth of the way there. Next they’ll use “chic” and “unique.” Then there’s the whole “sustainability” kick developers are on these days. [Laughs] Yeah, those are already gone now, too, so what the fuck else is left? You’ve got What does that even mean? That the architect this tremendous dilemma. It applies to the lan- can sustain himself? guage of design reportage and criticism, architecture reportage and criticism, and travel To me, sustainability is more about build- writing. It’s becoming harder and harder to ing something that’s high quality and long know what anything means. lasting, not necessarily because it’s made I think with design photography, meaning- of “green” materials. fulness is one of the really difficult things. You can kind of snazz up everything. In the end, That’s interesting. Think of how many things it’s not even the design, but peoples’ reactions you can apply “sustainable” to. It’s sustaining to the photos of the design that then becomes the integrity of the concept; it is, as you say, a part of the dialogue.

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