S K Y L I N E | Fooling Around
On post-sustainability, Srdjan Jovanović Weiss, public housing in Addis Ababa, Anne Lacaton, Queer Spaces, friction at Sci-Arc, and Moshe Safdie’s favorite drink.
Issue 63. For more serious play, subscribe to our print edition.
Brutally Post-Sustainable
NEW YORK (1 EAST 60th STREET) — “The client told me, ‘Let’s go beyond sustainable—let’s make it post-sustainable,’” said Pritzker-recipient TAD OWOANDO, addressing guests at the Metropolitan Club, “and I thought: ‘this man might really have a point of view.’” The occasion was a gala to unveil his long-anticipated David H. Cock Memorial Foundation Library and Contemporary Gallery and Fountains (DHCMFLCGF), commissioned by the eponymous businessman and philanthropist before his death in 2019.
The seminal design for the compound—an oversized concrete cylinder nestled against two shorter, fatter ones described as evoking a gigantic corn silo and two grain bins—attracted vocal praise from the assembled party. There was also a video rendering of a fountain atop the tower, spewing gasoline so that it continuously dripped down the main shaft. Delmonicos were served well-done.
“When he insisted on refrigerating all the DHCMFLCGF buildings instead of using central air, and on building a massive coal-burning furnace below for heat, I realized we were using the same words to signify different things.” Owando said, a tinge of sadness in his voice. “But he’d already paid me. And really, for me, it’s just another use of the circle, isn’t it?”
The foundation has bought Damrosch Park from the city so that DHCMFLCGF can face the David H. Cock Theater at Lincoln Center. “It’s going to be his Taj Mahal,” said Cock’s weepy brother Charles.
Maybe the gasoline will drip down into the furnace…
— Zander Coté
Fooling Around Is Hard Work
Seriously. When I heard the sad news that architectural theorist and designer SRDJAN JOVANOVIĆ WEISS died last month, I remembered the last time I saw him. It was in the conference center of the New York Times Building, during a coffee break at the first World Around summit in January 2020. I asked Srdjan what he was up to. He casually mentioned a few writing and teaching projects, then said wryly, as if to sum up his intellectual labor, “Just fooling around.”
I took it both as a self-deprecating joke and a statement of method: writers, no matter how serious, inevitably find ourselves at play, tinkering about with language as we cajole the reader to hang in there for one more line. Architects, too, often arrive at “solutions” through games of formal and material manipulation, even if they frown while explaining it. The line between goofing off and standing up for what you believe in can actually quite thin. Just ask Dank Lloyd Wright. We have to make space for play, for fooling around, even in our serious endeavors, to escape the rut of the status quo. And to persevere in the face of tragedy. In a world ravaged by war and inequality, bombs are dropped and buildings are built without asking our opinion.
Rather than look away or shout into the void, Weiss explored the awkwardness of the in-between. In his works on postmodern, post-war, and post-Yugoslav design culture, he paired copious documentation with a mischievous sense of irony. He showed how absurdity can be a tool of critique. Weiss may have been fooling around, but he also spurred us to think differently about design and power.
On this April Fool’s Day, let’s share a laugh at our own expense—at architecture, at criticism, at the billionaire clients who keep the architecture machine running—and polish our critical tools. We write about architecture because it’s fun, sometimes, but that’s not enough. We keep doing this work because we think it matters. You never know when a critique will catch fire.
— Gideon Fink Shapiro
P.S. Oh, and we also extend a warm welcome to the fans of the New York Racing Association, who accidentally subscribed to NYRA and are now discovering the thrills of architecture.
DISPATCHES
3/25: Housing Addis Ababa
Presentation on A New Public Housing Model — Addis Ababa’s Urban Transformation at the Jain Family Institute
NEW YORK (ZOOM) — Sixteen years after the government of Ethiopia launched a public housing program to construct hundreds of thousands of condominium apartments in and around Addis Ababa, a report on the project by CUNY professor NAOMI ZEWDE and VIVIAN SCHWAB, an independent researcher, is spurring debate. Residents are awarded units by a random lottery, with mortgage and down payment subsidies of up to 90%. The multistory buildings, segregated by subsidy level, are typically constructed on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital, where there is limited infrastructure.
Many families have generated income by renting out their units and operating small businesses. Designer MIRIAM HILLAWI described how these buildings have spawned informal economic activity, like “vertical delivery systems,” where non-residents order food on the ground floor from residents. Designer AREEJ AL-MUSALHI presented speculative housing module designs that cleverly delineate a vertical divide between public and private life.
When asked how this model could be improved, BROOK HAILESELASSIE, an architect and scholar, suggested participatory design because “the units are a mismatch to the way people live.” GSAPP faculty member EMANUEL ADMASSU favored replacing the individual ownership model with a collective ownership one that could address “forms of codependence that are outside of the purview of the architect or urban planner.”
The event was moderated by Zewde and Schwab, the authors of the report, who outlined the compelling aspects of Addis Ababa’s public housing model while acknowledging the flaws in how it addresses income inequality.
— Kira Walker
3/28: French Swiss Army Knife Urbanism
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture: Anne Lacaton at the GSD
CAMBRIDGE, MA (ZOOM) — “We must reconstruct the city by means of the smallest scale, that of the inhabitant,” architect ANNE LACATON began, speaking from a giant screen in Gund Hall. Just over a year since receiving the Pritzker Prize with her partner Jean-Philipe Vassal, Lacaton offered thoughts on urban design from the perspective of an architect who appeals to the senses—as well as tight footprints and budgets. After an introduction by RAHUL MEHROTRA, GSD Chair of Urban Design, she went over ten projects in France and Switzerland, including their well-documented Grand Parc Bordeaux, where they modified 530 units with precast balconies and winter gardens, and replaced the existing facades of the apartment blocks with sliding glass partitions.
Lacaton’s post-occupancy photos ran together as a continuous domestic dream scroll, light streaming onto clusters of plants, residents’ rugs and chairs spilling between the opened partitions. Like a Swiss Army Knife, the selected projects displayed a myriad of sublime utilities in economical packages. She described a practice of building on, around, and over existing structures and landscapes to avoid destruction where possible. She advocated for density, but not by vertical expansion. Instead, she described urban design as happening “inside the city, on the ground.”
Back in the Gund building, a student asked how architects could convince developers to renovate rather than demolish aging buildings. In response, Lacaton said the French housing authorities allowed their office to use the allocated subsidies for renovations rather than new construction, but that the studio has refused to work with clients who insisted on tearing down salvageable buildings.“If you say no to someone, you are not black-listed,” she said. “You lose the work, but you gain a kind of confidence for many others.”
As one of Lacaton’s final slides proclaimed:
“INTENSIFY, DENSIFY, TRANSFORM THE CITY FROM THE INSIDE”
— Angie Door
3/29: Queer is the New Normal
Pratt Futures: Queer Spaces in Architecture and Culture at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture
BROOKLYN — Pratt Futures, a student-led lecture series, opened its panel on queer spaces with a quote from the historian GEORGE CHAUNCEY: “There is no queer space; there are only spaces used by queers or put to queer use.”
REGNER RAMOS, a designer and researcher at the University of Puerto Rico, presented his latest exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in San Juan, which is part of his ongoing project, Cüirtopia, a mapping exercise of queer spaces in Puerto Rico. Designer and researcher LUCAS LAROCHELLE then presented their platform, “Queering the Map,” a database of queer stories pinned on amap of the world—and an initial inspiration for Regner’s research. “Its structural opacity renders it a queer dataset,” said LaRochelle, who is using the database to train an AI called QT.bot.
Activist JANETTA JOHNSON observed, during the Q&A, that the idea of “queerness in architecture” may be discernible “in the cracks in our buildings and floors.” Johnson, the CEO of the San Francisco-based Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), discussed intersections of queer and Black-trans narratives in her work rehabilitating homeless, formerly incarcerated and disenfranchised LGBTQIA+ people.
In sharing their diverse experiences in academia and activism, Ramos, LaRochelle and Johnson showed different ways to think about architecture and culture. Perhaps queer space can be understood more as a search than as a fixed condition—an exercise in “specificity and finding specific applications of what works where,” as LaRochelle put it. The discussion wrapped up with calls for exploring “multiplicity” and hosting more interdisciplinary discussions like this one.
– Ekam Singh
IN DEFENESTRATIONS
LOS ANGELES — SCI-ARC is abuzz with controversy as TOM WISCOMBE Undergraduate Chair, and MARRIKA TROTTER, History Theory Coordinator, were placed on administrative leave Wednesday. This follows a recent panel discussion titled Basecamp: How to be in an Office, where fellow faculty MARGARET GRIFFIN of Griffin Enright Architects and DWAYNE OYLER of Oyler Wu Studio joined Trotter to present advice on working in the profession. Students and alumni condemned many of the comments as out of touch, and organized a counter-panel, How to REALLY be in an Office, on Wednesday evening, where they spoke out against labor exploitation in the profession and at the school, and testified to other ways of working. So far, a petition has circulated calling for Wiscombe and Trotter to be fired, Instagram’s Dank Lloyd Wright has posted 78 memes (to date) on the topic, and Twitter’s Vitruvius Grind led a close reading of the event. AN is investigating the controversy. More coverage to follow.
— Nicholas Raap
NYRA ON THE TOWN
Exhibitions, parties, and other IRL delights
MOSHE SAFDIE’s preferred nightcap involves cognac and chocolate, but that wasn’t what he was here to discuss, mainly. “Design has to come out of some joint concern of development issues, profitability, and public interest,” the AIA Gold Medalist winner said to curator DONALD ALBRECHT, his co-panelist and drinking buddy at the AIANY’s Cocktails and Conversations dialogue last Friday night. The event, the sixty-second of its kind held at the Center for Architecture, was a lively affair featuring a custom-made cocktail designed by TOBY CECCHINI and DAVID MOO.
After opening remarks by the AIANY chair and co-chair, the audience were treated to a live mixology lesson featuring the much-talked-about cocktail, a spin on a gin sour with cognac and crème de cacao—inspired by Safdie’s DIY construction.
Amidst cheers from the audience and the sound of ice clicking against glass, Safdie took to the podium. Remarking on the passing of the infrastructure bill last fall, he reiterated the disenchantment he expressed in an article he wrote for CityLab: “With all the money in the world, unless we change our ways, we are not going to see much now.” He then led the audience on a short tour of his megaprojects in Singapore and China: Marina Bay Sands, Raffles City Chongqing, and the Jewel at Changi Airport.
In talking about these projects, Safdie emphasized the speed and quality with which they were realized. “They were building faster than we could draw,” he said. With a slew of diagrams and drawings, he attempted to distill a mix of sky decks, atriums, “streets in the sky,” indoor parks under a steel-and-glass toroid roof, multi-floor retail and “magic gardens” into a cocktail he called “the public realm.” He ended his presentation with an image of Hudson Yards, “just to provoke” the audience, who responded with laughter.
Harkening back to the time of the New Deal, the Hoover Dam, and grand public works, Safdie called for infrastructure to be managed much like vaccines in the pandemic. He also indulged questions about his legacy, his previous work, and even his music choices, while plugging his forthcoming memoir, If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture. But the event concluded on a sober note as an audience member remarked: “Architects need to become civic leaders.”
— Ekam Singh
EYES ON SKYLINE
In Skyline 62 readers were most interested in reading about the legacy of the late Christopher Alexander (1936–2022).
IN THE NEWS
Foster+Partners have begun work on their $250m renovation of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid…
Jeanne Gang led a tour of the American Museum of Natural History’s newest expansion…
Activists and politicians protest New York Governor Hochul’s plan to extend a pro-developer tax break, claiming the policy fell flat on its promise to deliver much-needed affordable housing…
Life at 20 Exchange Place can only be described as a “high-rise Hell”, according to residents…
Architecture critic Lee Bey joins the Chicago Sun-Times as a columnist for the paper’s Sunday Edition…
Additionally, the Windy City’s Architectural Biennial will feature a new exhibition space at the Chicago Cultural Center…
Some new, tantalizing information about Harry Styles’s upside down sofa…
Akon’s former business partner accused the singer’s eponymous, futuristic Senagalese city of being a ponzi scheme…
— Anna Gibertini
DATELINE
The week ahead…
Friday, 4/1
Conversations on Social Justice and Design with Darren Walker, Maddy Burke-Vigeland, Jeffrey Mansfield, Elaine Ostroff, Valerie Fletcher, Victor Pineda, Susan Schwelk, Christopher Downey
1:00 PM | University of California Berkeley
FF – Distance Edition: terrain-nyc landscape architecture with Steven Tupu
1:00 PM: The Architectural League of New York
Opening Reception: Edge Effects, Post-Professional M.Arch Thesis Exhibition with Ai Teng, Beidi Zhang, Daniel Hall, James Wood, John Mikesh, Manuel Zermeno, Tyler Armstrong
6:00 PM: Princeton University School of Architecture, a83
Monday, 4/4
The Work of Rodney Leon Architects with Rodney Leon
6:30 PM | Yale School of Architecture
Tuesday, 4/5
When Statues Fall: What Ukraine's Decommunization Means for American Cities with Brent D. Ryan, Yegor Vlanseko
12:00 PM | Morgan State University School of Architecture & Planning
A Better Place to Live with Jeff Speck, Shelley Poticha, Marc Wouters
5:00 PM | The National Arts Club
An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City with Phillip James Dodd
6:30 PM | The National Arts Club
Variations on the Museum Idea with Fuensanta Nieto
6:30 PM | Rice University
Wednesday, 4/6
Baumer Lecture, The Possibilities of Infrastructure with Zelig Fok
5:30 PM | Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture
Thursday, 4/7
Towards Another Architecture with Adam Nathaniel Furman, Joshua Mardel
12:30 PM | The Farrell Centre
Current Work, The Architect for the Poorest of the Poor with Yasmeen Lari
6:00 PM | Spitzer School of Architecture
Design, Environment and Re-naturalization: A Critique with Douglas Spencer
6:30 PM | Yale School of Architecture
How Software Eats Architecture with Leland Jobson
6:30 PM | AIAS Pratt SoA Chapter
Our listings are constantly being updated. Check the events page regularly for up-to-date listings and submit events through this link.
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