Dear Friends of the Review,
We’re wrapping up No. 13, and we look forward to sending printed copies out to our readers soon. Make sure to subscribe to the Review to receive a copy of the next issue.
We have been watching and reading (and signing) as coalitions of students, architects, and alumni of U.S. architecture schools have put pen to paper to demand structural change to confront racism. We’re reporting on those efforts at ten schools in this month’s Skyline column and planning a conversation between many of the organizers. If you are an organizer who would like to participate, and we have not yet reached out to you, please reach out to us at editor@nyra.nyc.
To further support current letter writing campaigns and organizing efforts, one Review reader suggested that it would be helpful to detail past activism concerning racial justice in architecture schools. To that end, we’re asking writers to pitch articles that ask such questions as: Why are we still where we are? What were the demands of past campaigns? What were those victories? And why have these changes not happened? Please send all pitches to editor@nyra.nyc.
A few events we’re looking forward to this week:
Today, Sunday, July 12
1:30 PM. Priyanka Jain and artist Supermrin discuss their work on FOIL Architecture Chats, hosted by Mark Acciari and Waqas Jawaid.
On Tuesday, July 14
12:00 PM. David van der Leer and Nico Wheadon of NXTHVN, discuss “The Future of Museums”; organized by AIA NY.
On Wednesday, July 15
7:00 PM. David Eskenazi of d.esk, and Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic of HANNAH, recipients of this year’s Architectural League Prize, present their work in back-to-back lectures. Kutan Ayata will give an introduction and moderate a discussion.
On Thursday, July 16
6:00 PM. AIA NY hosts “The Transformed City: Mobility Now,” a panel discussion on transit and access for architects, urban designers, and planners.
Finally, we’re proud to share Can Vu Bui’s contribution to the upcoming issue, a review of the SHoP Architects-designed Barclays Center, recently a meeting place and venue for ongoing anti-racism demonstrations, and to some, “Brooklyn’s Church.” (Subscribe today to read Rosana Elkhatib’s article “Care to Comment?” on SHoP’s refusal to speak about the Barclays Center plaza’s role in the protests, in No. 13.)
– Phillip Denny
BROOKLYN’S CHURCH
Can Vu Bui
Stadiums are not good neighbors, and Barclays Center at Atlantic Terminal is no exception. It is a huge and unrelenting mass the size of a city block. And while I would earnestly defend its sweeping parametric weathered steel, its black interiors and distinct herringbone-patterned floor, the light of this moment has clarified what has always been true. Barclays’ most significant feature is the clearing outside the building, the triangular plaza at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.
It had not been part of the plan. In the original Forest City Ratner proposal for the site, Frank Gehry designed a cluster of towers surrounding the arena. At the corner, squashed below the marquee tower, Gehry proposed a glass-enclosed Grand Central-esque “Urban Room.” It would serve as a multiuse lobby to the new Brooklyn Nets arena and act as a soaring open community space to be filled with art, music, and public seating, lined with restaurants, retail, and subway connections. Ambitious and costly, following the 2008 financial crisis, it was deemed too risky since it could not be phased. The subsequent masterplan was parceled, and SHoP Architects (partnered with Ellerbe Becket) designed Barclays Center. John Cerone, a project manager for SHoP, tells me that from the beginning they pushed for an outdoor public plaza, even if the developers had initially imagined a tower on that site. Functionally the space was necessary, but in recognizing that the size of the building was working against them, SHoP conceived of a “new public realm with its cantilevering swoop and oculus as an embrace to the community.” In effect, they would turn Gehry’s Room inside out and crown it with a cinematic cantilever.
The most impressive part of the plaza’s design, however, may be its lack of design. Unlike Union Square or Washington Square Park, no narrow curving paths dissect the plaza, no central figure breaks apart gatherings. Unlike the High Line, it has no controlled entry and exit access. Unlike other “urban rooms,” like Grand Central or the Oculus, there is no pesky design program, and its public space is not barricaded. The lack of design conventions emboldens Barclays plaza. Its uninterrupted blandness, elevated with an iconic cantilevered halo, is unburdened from having to be a Room or anything, really, other than a space of congregation.
When I started to write this review, I had asked a friend, Justine, what Barclays Center means to Brooklyn. Justine is an architect and a member of the Brooklyn Nets BK Block superfans. She pointed to the building and its triangle-shaped plaza and said, “It’s church.” Here, in the heat of these past weeks, we have mourned George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we gathered to protest countless others, we shut down roads and made space for prayer and music and vigils, we screamed defiantly against barricading police officers, and, in this space, we gripped with catharsis and heartbreak.
Perhaps, in times when we violently oscillate from social distancing to social disruption, an empty space is enough.