S K Y L I N E | Extremely Online
Taking in the scene at Do Not Research’s book launch. Plus: Cecilia Vicuña performs at Storefront and Matthys Levy revisits Black Rock
Issue 122. If you enjoy this newsletter, consider subscribing to our print edition.
Welcome back to NYRA’s regular helping of news and views bubbling up from the city’s architecture scene and beyond.
DISPATCHES
8/15
Rock Solid
ZOOM — Concrete is plastic, explained structural engineer MATTHYS LEVY in a talk about Eero Saarinen’s CBS Headquarters hosted by the Skyscraper Museum. Levy, who worked on the project as a young man, was referring to concrete’s conduciveness to shape-making. The skyscraper isn’t particularly willful—at least, not in the manner of that other local Saarinen icon, the TWA Terminal. The opposite of airborne, it appears steadfastly rooted to its patch of Midtown. Critics considered it abstemious. But up close, one can appreciate the careful modulations of the triangular piers that run up all four sides of the building.
The tower, which also goes by the name Black Rock, became the first concrete high-rise in New York when it was completed in 1965. Why reinforced concrete and not steel? The answer, in not so many words, was that Saarinen and Levy’s boss Paul Weidlinger wanted it. “Sometimes as engineers we try to do a good job, and sometimes, things go wrong,” remarked Levy, who is the co-author (with Mario Salvadori) of Why Buildings Fall Down. After the Surfside Condominium collapse, Levy’s expertise on the subject was in high demand. Reflecting on New York’s newest architecture, he bemoaned the super-skinnies of Billionaire’s Row, a far cry from Black Rock’s dignified stability. Of SHoP’s Steinway Tower, he spoke frankly: “I wouldn’t care to live on the top of such a fragile flagpole.” —Angelina Torre
8/12
Drop-Ins
CHINATOWN — What are “poots?” The word, which is everywhere in Citygroup’s new exhibit, felt strange to say out loud. Then it clicked: the tiny Forsyth Street gallery is situated below-grade, connected to the sidewalk by a short flight of stairs. Or a reverse stoop (though perhaps inverse is more accurate).
The Citygroup crew had publicized a Saturday “poots party,” but just a handful of guests seemed to have turned up. On the walls were proposals from the annual Poots Competition, launched in May with ambitions to take over from MoMA PS1’s erstwhile Young Architects Program in “anoint[ing] the Next Big Thing.” Only in place of a vast courtyard, Citygroup offered designers a dank interstitial wedge of space to play with. Naturally, all this was farce, and participants responded in kind; I spotted “wetscapes” and “dancescapes,” though none was as frank as a project for a “ratscape.” Some things were said about the stifling boredom of the architectural profession and the failure of institutions to deliver on their promises. But the weather outside was hot and humid, and not even cases of cold beer could persuade me to stay longer in the unconditioned space. Throughout my brief time there, Citygroupers bounced to and from a book fair organized by the Carriage Trade gallery around the block. I stopped in and found their table, which they shared with the Art Against Displacement coalition. Across them was a “tablescape” belonging to the Canal Street Research Collective and adjacently, the Anti Eviction Mapping Project, which had some really great riso-printed posters and zines on display. All these initiatives are interdisciplinary, all have a political (or at least activist) bent, and all are in Chinatown (even while maintaining a polite distance from it). Everything just clicked. —Tianyu Yang
It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity
KENMARE STREET — CECILIA VICUÑA, a Chilean poet and artist, and RICARDO GALLO, a Colombian pianist and composer, arrived at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in the late afternoon and promptly took their positions on a makeshift stage. Vicuña began emitting a wordless vocalization, accompanied by Gallo on piano with members of the Stop Shopping Choir supplying background whispers and chants. As the gallery filled up with latecomers, the ululations transformed into growls and bird calls. The music—an uncategorizable mix of new age, folklore, and South American influences—layered in depth as it intermittently mingled or was drowned by the clamor of the street. When the performance came to an end, Vicuña spoke for the first time in a soft, unassuming voice. The wisdom of indigenous heritage has been forgotten amid acts of environmental destruction, she said. “The first one was breath, the second one was mist. Because with the disappearance of mist, moisture leaves the Earth, and everything goes up in flames.… As we lose humidity and moisture, we are also losing our humanity. We breath, we languish in the earth, so that’s how we become human.” —Layna Chen
8/10
Extremely Online
FiDi — “There really isn’t another place for writing like this,” remarked JOSHUA CITARELLA about Do Not Research, the private Discord server-turned-blog he founded in 2020. Citarella, an artist and connoisseur of the esoteric corners of the internet, had convened a young and engaged crowd at Fulton Street project space Dunkunsthalle (a former Dunkin’ Donuts, hence the name) to celebrate the release of Do Not Research: 2022–2023. As its unadorned title indicates, the 402-page volume aggregates all entries published on the blog in the past twenty-odd months. Among the contributors are musicians, artists, scenesters, internet theorists, video artists, meme page admins; the content is similarly eclectic. Across the collection (the second Citarella has put out), the modes of voice oscillate from allusive to aloof, solipsistic to arch, conspiratorial to checked out. But time and again, the essays return to a common theme—really, a hermeneutical flourish. Channeling Mark Fisher, the DNR gang parses online interactions, memetic trends, and fringe or concocted ideologies to find evidence of political fragmentation and decline.
Do Not Research: 2022–2023 is almost an object of irony, translating a digital forum that analyzes digital realms into a physical medium. The novelty was not lost on the crowd, as nearly everyone had lined up to buy a copy or already had one tucked under their arms. “The community was initially formed to discuss the role of political messaging, specifically through memes,” Citarella explained as he welcomed new arrivals escaping a summer rainstorm. Web designer and contributor SARAH CHEKFA told me that “DNR is research-heavy cultural analysis. A lot of the writing is niche subculture stuff that requires you to be Really Online to even notice it.” Chefka’s contribution to the anthology proves her point: a smart take on the “crying selfie” genre that namechecks Bella Hadid and Susan Sontag and unspools with disarming quickness. —Emily Sandstrom
What’s the Damage?
ZOOM — The mission of Tokyo’s Window Research Institute (founded in 2007 by the manufacturer YKK AP, Inc.) is almost breathtakingly prosaic. As a bulleted list of aims published on its website indicates, the WRI both provides funding to individual researchers and cultivates a serious tenor around the bogus-sounding field of “windowology.” This it does through awards, fellowships, exhibitions, and panels—often in partnership with institutions like the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. Last week, the WRI and CCA concluded its “Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet” fellowship program with a few fascinating, if myopic, excursions. ANDREA ALBERTO DUTTO elaborated on the discursive role of windows in countercultural earth shelters, which he described as radically “disloyal” to existing building codes, and OXANA GOURINOVITCH inveighed against the “undermining urbanism” of uranium mining towns in the Northwest Territories. Despite the event’s theme of illumination, the Q&A took a dark turn when Gourinovitch observed that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were assembled with Canadian uranium. And again, when Atelier Bow-Wow’s YOSHIHARU TSUKAMOTO (who is a member of the CCA-WRI committee and acted as a respondent during the presentations) compared Dutto’s desert-dwelling analysis to the underground meth labs in Breaking Bad. “You can have a perfectly conventional building with respect to code for a methamphetamine lab,” Dutto replied, much to the audience’s amusement. —Paul Mosley
In Plane Sight
EAST RIVER — “It’s moving pretty fast,” said the elderly gentleman next to me. Here we were, two strangers standing a few feet apart on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, taking in a classic New York moment. Out on the river, a tugboat guided a British Airways Concorde toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it was due to receive a restoration. In its heyday, the passenger plane would have made the four-and-a-half-mile journey from Pier 86 to Brooklyn in a mere twelve seconds, what with its cruise speed of 1,350 miles per hour, double the speed of sound. I later gleaned that the trip took over four hours to complete, substantially longer than the aircraft’s average Transatlantic flight time.
The Concorde’s first successful test flight in 1969 marked the culmination of the Jet Age, with commercial flights launching seven years later; although sonic booms were a real disturbance, it was ultimately a combination of technological, economic, and political factors that permanently grounded the fleet of twenty operational planes in 2003. It may have been the end of an era for fans such as BERNARD TSCHUMI, who told the Times that the decision represented “a loss of nerve.” “A loss” is somehow right. I was engrossed in a book when my new friend approached me and asked for the name of the twentieth-century relic, which had escaped him. We watched the Concorde’s gleaming, unmistakable fuselage slide by the familiar backdrop of lower Manhattan with the steady deliberateness of a dolly shot. It occurred to me to try and get a closer look down in DUMBO. The anonymous tipster wished me luck as I dashed to the nearest Citi Bike station. I had a plane to catch. —Ray Hu
IN THE NEWS
RIP
The architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen died on August 7, aged 74. Evidently, the cause of death was a severe allergic reaction to a hornet sting. Tributes from colleagues and former students poured in on social media, with many commenting on Cohen’s formidable erudition and scholarly generosity. He could be just as attentive to journalists and was always ready to offer his considered perspective on an issue that overlapped with his interests. Which is to say, nearly everything. He was a polymath, his reading omnivorous, and he seemed to have an encyclopedic recall. Many obits noted Cohen’s expertise on Le Corbusier, and while he was indeed one of the Franco-Swiss architect’s greatest critical interlocutors, his work encompassed so much more. Karel Teige and Andre Lurçat are among the modern movement’s “minor” dramatis personae whom Cohen rescued from obscurity. He authored numerous influential studies on the Russian avant-garde and the Transatlantic phenomenon of Americanism. He curated several important exhibitions, most recently a retrospective of the great Brazilian modernist Paulo Mendes da Rocha, whom he counted as a personal friend. His view was global, far-ranging, genealogical. These same traits can be seen in the work of historians such as Vanessa Grossman, Christina Crawford, and Enrique Ramirez—all former students and supervisees of Cohen’s. Among his active charges is Anna Kats, who in March delivered the Womxn in Design and Architecture Conference keynote at Princeton. Cohen’s contributions to the history of twentieth-century architecture and aesthetics were monumental, but they, too, are an important part of his legacy.
New (Acting) Dean, Meet the Old (Acting) Dean
It’s been nearly two years since the Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture began its search for a replacement for Nader Tehrani, who stepped down as dean in 2022. This week, the school announced it had come to a decision: acting dean Hayley Eber, who stepped in after Tehrani’s departure, will remain in that position for another two years.
Fraying Fabric
Our fondness for Harlem’s mid-block churches is well-documented. There is a grace and at times, quiet grandeur in the architecture of St. Philip’s Episcopal (204 West 134th Street), Abyssinian Baptist Church (132 West 138th Street), and Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion (140 West 137th Street). None are easily visible from Malcolm X Boulevard or Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, and yet all are essential to the neighborhood’s fabric and cultural identity. But a dramatic decline in church attendance and escalating gentrification have left these places in a parlous state, without plans for the future. Only a dozen or so congregants regularly attend Sunday service at Mother Zion, the oldest active church in New York state. “Mother Zion,” senior pastor MALCOLM J. BYRD told the Times, “lives week to week like the people on the block.” A $200,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation is appreciated but does little to address the root problem. It isn’t clear what would.
SPONSORED: M.Arch Merch.
High-quality prints and products of seminal buildings from Adam Nathaniel Furman with specific collections for Brutalism, Postmodernism, New York, London, LA, and Chicago.
DATELINE
The week ahead…
Wednesday 8/23
The Other Architects of Oak Park with Ron Becker
12:00 PM CT | Chicago Architecture Center
Thursday, 8/24
Recent Work by Alberto Kalach and Carlos Zedillo Velasco
6:30 PM ET | Yale School of Architecture
Friday 8/25
Exhibit Columbus 2023: Public by Design Exhibition Opening
9:00 AM ET | Exhibit Columbus
Saturday, 8/26
Performance by Ricardo Gallo and Amirtha Kidambi
5:00 PM EDT | Storefront for Art and Architecture
Our listings are constantly being updated. Check the events page regularly for up-to-date listings and submit events through this link.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Write us a letter! We’d love to hear your thoughts.
New York Review of Architecture reviews architecture in New York. Our editor is Samuel Medina, our deputy editor is Marianela D’Aprile, and our publisher is Nicolas Kemper.
To pitch us an article or ask us a question, write to us at: editor@nyra.nyc.
For their support, we would like to thank the Graham Foundation and our issue sponsors, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Thomas Phifer.
To support our contributors and receive NYRA by post, subscribe here.