S K Y L I N E | "Pandora's Box Dumpster Fire"
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Issue 93. We set a new record for new print subscribers in September. We broke it in October. And again in November. Please help us break it again?
Well, we took Thanksgiving week off, and absent the steady eye of SKYLINE, everything went to hell. Three controversies roil the commentariat:
IN THE ACADEMY, specifically up at the architecture school at Cornell, an anonymous group went public with reporting an attack on SAMIA HENNI, a history of architecture and urban development assistant professor. A burglary of Henni’s university office in September went unremarked upon by the administration there, and as Henni is outspokenly pro-Palestinian and had been threatened before, a letter circulated by Palestinian advocate and NYRA contributor DIMA SROUJI suggests both the burglary and the silence to be political. Srouji tells me the letter writers waited so long after the attack to start the pressure campaign so that Henni could find a place safe and away from Cornell. In the meantime, Cornell did not reply to a request for comment, and in the four days since the campaign began has yet to release a response. While the group behind the letter is anonymous, the signatories, at 1,011 and counting, are not. DANK LLOYD WRIGHT has even called for a protest, asking its 74,000 followers to crash a December 12 Zoom event. You can read the full letter here.
SPEAKING OF PROTESTS, the 1,821 adjunct professors at the Parsons New School continue to give their suspiciously well paid administrators hell. One of the strikers, JOSHUA MCWHIRTER, tells me that just yesterday morning “a vote by the part-time faculty to accept or reject the university’s ‘last, best, and final offer’ resulted in a resounding rejection (95 percent of us voted no).” McWhirter said the university had left the bargaining table and was trying to impose its own deal: “Wild (union-busting) stuff. Rejecting that deal, the union hopes, will bring the administration back to the bargaining table, and there’s hope of getting a federal mediator involved as well. What happens next is basically a giant question mark, but the strike continues until further notice.” A few hours after we talked, it worked: the administration agreed to resume negotiations. You can follow the action on the union’s Instagram and Twitter accounts, and its Bargaining Blog. Or, at 63 Fifth Avenue, where there is literally a picket line today from 11am to 4pm.
IN PRACTICE, after Brooklyn firm Solid Objectives (SO-IL) posted a job listing on its Instagram account, it opened up a “pandora's box dumpster fire,” to quote architect and sometimes NYRA contributor STEPHANIE JAZMINES. Her quip is one of 601 comments to adorn a second apologetic post after SO-IL received intense criticism about the original, promptly deleted, listing (screenshot above and still viewable on a twitter thread). The outrage centered on the mismatch between the experience required (5–8 years) and the pay offered ($55–$65,000). Unlike Cornell, SO-IL is trying to post through it, sharing all sorts of information, like its 2022 revenue ($4 million) and break even rate (2.5). They have not had much success in winning the internet’s sympathy. Full disclosure: I wrote a pretty enthusiastic review of a SO-IL building, 450 Warren, and we hosted an event with one of SO-IL’s partners, FLORIAN IDENBURG, at said building last June. I reached out to Florian yesterday, who, in addition to sharing a lot of context, said the blowback is leading to some fundamental changes—to be spelled out in a forthcoming essay.
I am not going to offer unsolicited business tips (though if you want some of those, jump on into that comment thread), but will note, as many others have, that the whole controversy ties back to the recent enactment of New York’s new salary disclosure laws. That is why they had to post the salary, and that is why the public could throw so many higher salaries back at SO-IL. Mandatory salary disclosure might make coordination between architecture firms (at least those in New York) much easier than before, creating an upward pressure across the profession, which in turn should create an upward pressure on fee schedules, too, ideally making it easier for even the smallest firm to charge more. That is, the law could provide an end run around the antitrust rulings that have made it so difficult, in fact illegal, for firms to work together to better their lot. There is of course also another way to coordinate salaries without breaking antitrust laws, one I wrote about in January: the employees of SO-IL could follow Bernheimer Architecture’s lead, and join a union.
—Nicolas Kemper
DISPATCHES
11/8, Broken Models
COOPER SQUARE — It was no coincidence that it was a stressful Election Day and that it had dropped from 75 to 45 degrees overnight and that KIEL MOE delivered a lecture on how architectural practice and education “remains a shared form of climate change denial.” At least, none of this struck me as a coincidence. The lecture marked the last piece of programming in the “Model Behavior” exhibition curated by the Anyone Corporation, which closed on November 18. As Moe flexed his vocabulary and led the audience through an epic philosophical reading list, he presented five topics–Hylomorphism, Abstraction, Enabling Stability, Fuel-Centricity and Pedagogy–which together constitute architecture’s “elicit and illicit” practice toward our “broken world.” The talk turned on the subject of extraterrestrial space—that unseen territory from which all the atrophied material and energy exuded by, say, the Seagram Building (the subject of Moe’s 2017 book, Unless) comes. Confessing to having “no interest in architectural solutions to the climate crisis,” Moe favorably cited the political theorist and historian Andreas Malm, who has advocated for the strategic sabotage of oil pipelines. Moe called on the architects in the room to “blow up your pipeline, blow up your pedagogy, question how you work, abandon accreditation.” But my favorite—“give up your tenure”—was perhaps the hardest thing for this set to contemplate.
—Zazu Swistel
11/17: All Over the Map
WEST HARLEM — “Enjoy it. Find out how you enjoy it,” was the advice of ARTURO ORTIZ STRUCK to young architects in his lecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture. Ortiz Struck, who heads up the multidisciplinary research center Taller Territorial de México, found joy by stepping away from architectural work to pursue a looser, less rational agenda in the visual arts. The terminology he deployed was at once precise and a little hazy, particularly his use of the concept of the territory. For instance, his artistic practice starts with “putting [his] body in territorial complexities,” e.g., migrant routes, social housing, or even the site of a murder; in doing so, he tries to connect the tactile qualities of sometimes abstract sites and situations with the fine grain of personal experience. The results, he said, hopefully “provoke by creating metaphors of a devastated territory.” See what I mean?
—Alma Hutter
11/29: Food for Thought
COOPER SQUARE — On Tuesday night, principals from MASS Design Group offered up a different, uniquely tasty slice of the firm’s robust-and-hearty practice. Excuse the food metaphors—abundance was the theme of the night, and being so close to Thanksgiving, it was hard not to read a gustatory dimension into the presentations (all seven of them). The whole family — all 28 principals — were together for the event and a principals’ retreat, their first such gathering post the departure of founder MICHAEL MURPHY two months ago.
MASS, of course, is best known for its work for developing nations, particularly in the field of healthcare. But much else, from food systems to memorials to aging, was on the table. (Last one, I promise!) CAITLIN TAYLOR spoke about agriculture, JHA D AMAZI detailed her work as the director of the firm’s in-house Public Memories and Memorials Lab, and CHRISTIAN BENIMANA discussed the many Rwandan projects he’s overseen in his time at MASS. QUILIAN RIANO, who later moderated a conversation with the group, marveled at the seemingly effortless way these diverse people and interests gelled. “How is it that you all can work together so well with twenty-six principals across two-hundred-some employees?” he asked. “I think it’s the shared values that MASS has that keep us grounded,” replied PATRICIA GRUITS. “Architecture’s influence extends well outside the bounds of the building.”
—Charles Weak
EYES ON SKYLINE
In Skyline 92, our most clicked link was about the strike at Parsons.
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STAYING UP WITH THE TOOTS
Tables remain our favorite social platform, but we now have a Mastodon account. We are honestly not sure what to make of the place yet.
A GOOD CAUSE
Want to support an architecture school where the tuition is just $7,000 a year? City Tech’s Building Blocks benefit was last night, and having worked with their dean, Sanjive Vaidya, on the piece The Case for a Public Design Education (later published online on Metropolis), we can say whole heartedly theirs is a good cause to support.
IN THE NEWS
…or you could spend $8 billion building a mega yacht shaped like a… turtle?
…the Beirut architect Lina Ghotmeh is going to design the 2023 Serpentine pavilion…
DATELINE
Everyone is powering down for December, but there are still some real jewels out there this week.
Friday, 12/2
Debate: Architecture Responds with Citygroup
6:30 PM EST | AIA New York | Center for Architecture
Monday, 12/5
The Scale of Urbanism with Emily Talen
12:30 PM EST | MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Tuesday, 12/6
How Research Helps Address Milwaukee’s Housing Challenges with Joe Peterangelo
12:00 PM CST | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture
New Practices New York with Bryony Roberts, Alexandra Lange
6:30 PM EST | AIA New York | Center for Architecture
Wednesday, 12/7
Giuliana Bruno: Atmospheres of Projection with Jane Bennett, Martino Stierli
6:00 PM EST | AIA New York | Center for Architecture
Mindful Places with Thiago Arzua, Rodney Leon, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya
6:00 PM EST | Urban Design Forum
Thursday, 12/8
Building, Land, Coal with Lucia Allais, Aleksandr Bierig, Zeynep Çelik Alexander
12:00 PM EST | Columbia GSAPP, Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture
Institutional Regimes and Land Inequities: A Network & Systems Approach with Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah
2:00 PM PST | U. of California Berkeley College of Environmental Design
New Practices New York with Michael Abel, Nile Greenberg
6:30 PM EST | AIA New York | Center for Architecture
Parallel Rules In Conversation
7:30 PM EST | a83
Friday, 12/9
WORKac's Ludlow Street Exhibition Opening
6:00 PM EST | 156 Ludlow Street
New York Review of Architecture is a team effort. Our editor is Samuel Medina. Our deputy editor is Marianela D’Aprile. Our editors-at-large are Carolyn Bailey, Phillip Denny, and Alex Klimoski, 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.
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