S K Y L I N E | 2 | Anti-Trust, Slarek & Greene, American Roundtable, Bedford on Po-Mo, Ngige on Streets
Week of January 18
Upcoming, 1-18-21
Some friends and I have had an e-mail thread since 2017 tracking the suffocation of small businesses in this country – how the share of young companies has declined by half over the last decade; how many of those new businesses are merely seeking rent, not creating value; and the runaway, governmentally-condoned consolidation across all industries in America. I agree with Lina Khan’s conclusion in her pivotal article on Amazon, that America needs to free anti-trust from its tunnel vision concentration on low prices. After reading Tim Wu’s The Curse of Bigness and Matt Stoller’s Goliath last year, I am convinced that monopolies stifle innovation, aggravate inequality, and – especially – that economic rights and political rights go hand in hand. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
I do not, by any stretch, see the AIA as part of this problem. Yet while private equity backed monopolies flourish, anti-trust has, for decades now, been the quiet scourge of the architecture industry, a story retold this week in Kate Wagner’s review in Architect’s Newspaper of Peggy Deamer’s book, ‘People Power’:
Of particular note is the role of antitrust lawsuits in the 1970s in gutting AIA protections such as “suggested fee schedules, the prohibition of members from discounting fees, the strict guidelines for advertising, and the prohibition of competition governing its members.” These litigious endeavors essentially triggered architecture’s race to the bottom and considering the broader role antitrust laws have played in the reshaping of so-called “learned professions,” they leave little recourse for collaboration, lest it be construed as anticompetitive.
With the help of Vittorio Lovato, some years ago Peggy Deamer treated the topic of anti-trust and architecture exhaustively (yet engagingly!) in a paper for the Avery Review. Intuition says this is anti-trust gone awry. That the AIA and private equity are fundamentally different entities. That some price schedules can, in fact, increase competition. If you have thoughts or perspectives on architecture and anti-trust, tell me about it.
The most important event this week is on Wednesday, at noon, but the week also holds an ambitious all day Anti-Racist School of Architecture Virtual Symposium (today!), another installment of Projecting Fellows (Tuesday) and a book launch focusing on solutions for climate change (Thursday). For more, see the complete list at the end.
- Nicolas
Dispatches
1/15
“In architecture I had absolutely no role model - I was happy to be the role model for those that followed” once said NORMA MERRICK SKLAREK (1926-2012). Hosted by Columbia GSAPP, professor PATRICIA MORTON presented Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926-2012), and architect and Commissioner ROBERTA WASHINGTON presented Beverly L. Greene (1915-57). This original research was funded as part of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation to correct and redress the lack of representation and study of women: 0.4% of registered architects in the US are Black women. Why? The lack of role models probably plays… a role.
A “first after first” phenomenon, Sklarek became the first licensed Black woman architect in New York, worked at Skidmore, Owens, & Merill, and co-founded her own architecture firm, the largest woman-owned firm at the time. Of Beverly Greene, she “had a way of making friends with people who were connected with newspapers,” said Washington. That — along with her preternatural friendliness, and the lucky fact that she had mentors and supporters — might be a reason we can research her today. She was a Black architect at Stuyvesant Town at a time when Black people weren’t even allowed to live there. She worked for Marcel Breuer and designed buildings in Harlem, including the funeral home where her own funeral would be held. But that same quote also draws attention to those we might have lost to history because they weren’t as well recorded in the archive. Researching these two Black women was a daunting task: Greene’s name was often spelled incorrectly, and misinformation about Sklarek proliferated. -Lisa Yin Zhang
1/13
“How does one go about understanding a place?” Introducing the Architectural League’s American Roundtable project, the League’s Managing Director NICHOLAS ANDERSON directed this deceptively simple question to the editors of nine reports centered on small towns and rural areas in the United States. The project’s intent is to look beyond the caricature and oversimplification of these communities with a desire to better understand the particularities of a place and its people. Ranging from Appalachian communities in West Virginia (“Pittsburgh is the Paris of Appalachia!”) to an Alabama town founded by emancipated slaves (where the editor “got my butt kicked” for suggesting a design competition for a history museum), the forthcoming reports, which will be released bi-weekly, promise to provide unique portraits of America and suggestions for transformative design thinking and practice. -Lauren Cawse
1/12
“We’re kinda at a moment in time when eating and doing things outside is a baseline idea,” said CLAIRE WEISZ at a discussion about rethinking streets moderated by MICHAEL KIMMELMAN. Cars can become “guests in streets instead of dominant forms,” suggested WEISZ. The panel also included MICHAEL CHEN, who with Design Advocates helped government guidance into action to aid in the creation of projects for Open Restaurants, and SKYLAR BISOM-RAPP, of PAU, who - drawing on his work with FARHAD MANJOO - discussed removing cars from the city entirely. Topics ranged from the abstract - such as reapportioning ownership of the streets and rethinking layers of publicness - to the very prosaic: who will keep these spaces out of disrepair. Nevertheless, while ideas abound, BISOM-RAPP emphasized that “the main thing preventing us from doing these kinds of initiatives is political will.” He recalled the Lindsay administration’s plan to ban cars in Manhattan, the ‘Red Zone’, which had been abandoned at the last moment. KIMMELMAN added that there is a mayoral election later this year. - Edward Palka
In the Review
In which we share some stories from the print edition
JOSEPH BEDFORD WRITES, Postmodernism is back, though not in the ways that architects such as Sam Jacob have been proclaiming. The term postmodernism has reemerged far beyond the confines of academic discussions of architecture, in public debate by the new populist "intellectuals" of YouTube.
KAHIRA NGIGE WRITES, For urban planners and civic leaders, streets are in vogue. Conversation around streets doubles down on their democratic function and universal accessibility. Street design is collapsed into slogans ("complete streets") and political campaigns ("Streets for All"). In the book Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, former New York City Transit Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan captures the spirit of the moment when she describes her compendium as "base on real-world experience, not ivory-tower idealism." But the real world is elsewhere.
In the News
Heatherwick’s Vessel shut down after three suicides. Kimmelman in The New York Times and Ian Volner of The New Yorker reviewed the new Moynihan station. Governor Cuomo proposed extending the highline. The New York Times profiles Michael Evans, the project manager of Moynihan Station who took his life last March.
Events this week.
1/18 | Monday (Today!)
The Anti-Racist School of Architecture Virtual Symposium 2021
9:30am - 5:00pm | AID | All Day!
1/19 | Tuesday
XIAOWEI R. WANG
1:15pm | GSAPP
Moshe Safdie: Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen
6:00pm | CFA
The Structure of Skyscrapers in America 1871-1900: Their History and Preservation with Donald Friedman
6:00pm | Skyscraper Museum
1/20 | Wednesday
Biden-Harris Presidential Inauguration
12:00pm | America | Free
All School Assembly
1:00pm | Cooper
Baumer Conversations, David Leven and Stella Betts with Andrew Cruse
5:30pm | Knowlton
1/21 | Thursday
The Encyclopedia of New York with Chris Bonanos
4:00pm | OHNY
BOOK LAUNCH: ALL WE CAN SAVE with JAINEY BAVISHI, KATE MARVEL, KATE ORFF
6:30pm | GSAPP
1/22 | Friday
EDWARD MAZRIA
1:00pm | GSAPP
Andrea Roberts: Reconstructing Black Worlds: Counternarrative Creation as Preservation Practice
4:10pm | CCA
1/23 | Saturday
To read the full list: nyra.nyc/events
Made it to the end reward!
A photo, taken a few years ago, by Kahira Ngige in Harlem, that accompanies his review.
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