ARCHITECTSNEWSPAPER I5 9.2I.2OO4
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ARCHITECTSNEWSPAPER i5_9.2i.2OO4 WWW.ARCHPAPER.COM $3.95 GWATHMEY SIEGELS U.S. THE AGA KHAN TRUST FOR CULTURE RESCUES ANCIENT MUSLIM CITIES MISSION TO THE UN PROCEEDS ARCHITECTS LIGHT UP MISSION O O NOW BOARDING: STATEI^IENT DESTINATION, JFK After five years of planning, politics, and simple procrastination, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations is finally replacing its UTA FOCUS aging home at 45"' Street and First Avenue. The 98,000-square-foot Brutalist struc• ture, built by Kahn & Jacobs and Kelly & SAVE HISTORIC Gruzen in 1961, is set to be demolished over the next four months. In its place will HARLEM rise a 23-floor, 141,000-square-foot, high- security structure designed by Gwathmey CURBSIDE Siegel & Associates. The new building is DIARY scheduled to open in 2008. In the mean• CLASSIFIEDS time, the 160 U.S. continued on page 2 When What Went Wrong?, this simplistic perception. conducted in this country. venerable Islamic .scholar Such misreadings make it all Not well known in the U.S., Bernard Lewis' take on the the more satisfying to report the AKTC is an agency HOUSE CHOMPS AT history of Islam's clash with about things gone right. With established by the Aga Khan, PENN STATION BUDGET modernity, was published in imagination and sensitivity the religious leader of the 2001, many Americans felt to people and place, the Shia Imam lsmaili,to im• confirmed in their opmion Aga Khan Trust for Culture prove built environments in Another Detour that something was indeed (AKTC) has overseen two societies where Muslims wrong with Islam. Horrific recent urban revitalization have a significant presence. for Penn Station? images of terrorism and projects that could well The first project is the $30 civil warfare from across the serve as exemplars for the million tran.sformation of a A year and a half after his death. Senator Islamic world have reinforced way urban renewal .should be continued on page 4 Daniel Patrick Moynihan has been proved right about the vulnerability of his decade-old pet plan to rebuild Penn The National Museum of the American Station. He often referred to the $800 WILL CONTROVERSY OVER CREDIT Indian, which opens to the public on million project—an ambitious design by BLOW OVER WITH TIME? September 21, is big in every way. The Skidmore, Owings and Merrill that moves $200 million building sits on the last the station from Madison Square Garden's site along the National Mall in dingy basement into the grand James A. Washington, D.C., houses the largest Farley Post Office next door—as "a fat collection of artifacts of the native pop• porpoise in a sea of sharks." In July, the ulations of North, Central, and South transportation subcommittee of the U.S. America, and represents an attempt House of Representatives voted to divert at a recognition and reconciliation of $40 million of Penn Station's funding their complex histories. The opening toward the MTA's East Side Access ceremonies will last for six days and SUPERSIZED MEGAPHONE IN project, which extends the Long Island include a procession for which 15,000 FOLEY SQUARE ENCOURAGES Rail Road into Grand Central Terminal. people have already registered. And PEOPLE TO SPEAK THEIR MIND "Now that Senator Moynihan has yet, in this age of celebrity architects, passed away, it's continued on page 3 no one is racing to claim credit for the building as a whole. The architect SHOUT IT OUT originally hired to design the building, The nonprofit public arts organizadon Ottawa-based Douglas Cardinal, has Creative Time, deciding which public art publicly disowned the building, and projects to reprise this year as part of its one of the firms brought in to bring 30''' anniversary celebrations, felt that the project to completion, the Polshek l^urie Hawkin.son, Erika Rothenberg, and Partnership, politely demurs. "We John Malpede's supersized megaphone. acted more as continued on page 2 Freedom of Expression continued on page 3 o THE ARCHITECT'S NEWSPAPER SEPTEMBER 21, 2004 CO Hundreds of architectural monuments of the future are on view at the continued from front page Diana Darlinq Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened last week, but a less visible facilitators than anything else," said o attraction is the Italian government's presentation of the last 50 years of Aislinn Weidele, publicity manager at Cathy Lang Ho I- Italian architecture, located in the Venetian pavilion. The show includes Polshek. William Menldng M Giancarlo De Carlos megastructural College of Urbino (1973-78) and The reason for this is that the process of the building's design has not always Martin Perrin LU Aldo Rossi and Carlo Aymonino's public housing in the Gallaterese been a pretty one. When the Smithsonian quarter of Milan (1969-73), which, lil<e the nearby Italian pavilion that Institution agreed in 1987 to take over the Anne Guiney was steadily improved by Carlo Scarpa from 1962 to 1968, are in decid• collections of the Museum of the American edly precarious states. Still, the exhibition demonstrates the govern• Indian (in New York City), they planned to Deborah Grossberg ment's recognition of these pro jects' importance to the nation's built re-house the collections in a new museum and cultural landscape. along the mall in Washington, D.C. In Jonathan Chaffin In the United States, by contrast, it seems that we have learned little 1993, the Smithsonian selected Cardinal and Geddes Brecher Quails Cunningham since the destruction of McKim, Mead, & White's grand Pennsylvania Keith James (GBQC) of Philadelphia to design the Station in 1964. Though it spurred the country's preservation movement building. The conceptual plans they pre• and first landmark law, many of our major monuments are still under sented to D.C.'s Commission of Fine Arts Paul Beatty threat, for a variety of reasons. (CPA) in 1996 were unanimously accept• As historian and activist Michael Henry Adams observes in our ed. By 1998, relations between the institu• Protest column (page 15), historic buildings in Harlem enjoy less pro• tion and the architects had grown so sour tection than their counterparts in more affluent neighborhoods of over scheduling, scope of work, and fees, that the Smithsonian fired both Cardinal the city. He argues that Harlem's historic structures must be part of its and GBQC, and replaced them with the renaissance, not a victim of it. Meanwhile, Cuba's architectural legacy, Polshek Partnership, Tobey + Davis (now on view in an exhibition at the Storefront Center for Architecture SmithGroup), and the Native American (see Uiary, page 12), has suffered gravely as a result of the country's Design Collaborative. The Smithsonian economic and political turmoil of the last four decades, wrought in no credits Cardinal with completing the con• small part by the U.S. embargo. Further, a potential political decision to ceptual design of the building, or about PHILIPPE BARRIERE / ARIC CHEN / divert funds from the rebuilding of Penn Station in the James A. Farley 25 percent of the project, and having done MURRAY FRASER/RICHARD INGERSOLL / that, asked the new firms to bring the JOE KERR/LIANE LEFAIVRE / JAMES PETO/ Post Office, also a McKim, Mead, & White design (page 1), might weak• drawings to completion. LUIGI PRESTINENZA PUGLISI/KESTER RATTENBURY/ en the ambitious plan to turn a white elephant into a dynamic gateway D.GRAHAME SHANE/PETER SLATIN / The story gets muddy from here, with into the city. Lastly, the inability of the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA GWEN WRIGHT / ANDREW YANG/PETER ZELLNER Cardinal claiming that the work he did in terminal to accommodate the increasingly complex demands of airline the subsequent year (with the financial travel was partially responsible for its own demise. The fate of the 1962 backing of several supporters, done in PAOLA ANTONELLI/RAUL A. BARRENECHE/ M. CHRISTINE BOYER/PETER COOK/ landmark remains uncertain, though the Port Authority is intent on hopes of being brought back onto the job) WHITNEY COX/ODILE DECO/TOM HANRAHAN/ finding an adaptive reuse that will allow it to thrive as a public com• was appropriated by the new architects SARAH HERDA/CRAIG KONYK/JAYNE MERKEL/ after he presented it at a meeting with the LISA NAFTOLIN/SIGNE NIELSEN / mercial space, as it once did. Whether a church, a post office, or an air• CFA. He did so after the Polshek-led team HANS ULRICH OBRIST/ JOAN OCKMAN / port, functionality is clearly a crucial element of a structure's survival. KYONG PARK/ANNE RIESEL8ACH/ had shown its own revisions, which were TERENCE RILEY / KEN SAYLOR / MICHAEL SORKIN Contemporary architectural works are particularly vulnerable to rejected by the Commission. After another deterioration or loss. Many don't qualify for landmark status, which round of revisions, which brought the GENERAL INFORMATION; INFOcfARCHPAPER.COM prompted the Municipal Art Society to compile a list of 30"friture land• scheme closer to its original design, the EDITORIAL: [email protected] plans were approved, and the project DIARY: [email protected] marks," buildings that deserve protection in the future (page 6). Another, ADVERTISING: [email protected] more complicated reason for the difficulty in preserving modernist works broke ground in 1999. Cardinal doesn't like SUBSCRIPTION: [email protected] is their inability to garner popular sympathy. For example, as Storefront it, and while he says that he doesn't harbor any personal animosity, he speaks warm• PLEASE NOTIFY US IF YOU ARE RECEIVING board member Belmont Freeman observed, the Cuban government DUPLICATE COPIES. ly about the building. "Polshek and his tends to apply federal preservation funds to tourist-pleasing Spanish Indians were asked to carry out my THE VIEWS OF OUR REVIEWERS AND COLUMNISTS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF THE STAFF OH ADVISORS OP colonial architecture rather than the country's modernist treasures.