Six Ways of Looking at Supertalls
Plus, the dreariness of Columbia’s new Business School and revisiting the work of Gaetano Pesce
Help us continue to subject New York’s neoliberal shards to biting criticism by subscribing today.
The View from Up Here
Observations on New York’s sky-high columbaria of burnt money
by Ian Volner
I am of six minds, like a supertall tower that has only six people in it—this is a metaphor, but it is also more or less true. The fact that so many of the recently completed, 900-foot-plus-tall residential skyscrapers along Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan are somewhat scantly populated is common knowledge by now: recent research from firm ATTOM Data Solutions shows owner occupancy around the 57th Street corridor as much as a third below the citywide rate, a state of affairs confirmed in December by The Atlantic’s Bianca Bosker, noting in her piece “How Tall is Too Tall?” that at 432 Park, “many units have owners but not dwellers.” Completed in 2015, the Rafael Viñoly–designed 432 is the second-oldest and third-tallest residential supertall in the city, and it serves as a sort of mascot for the whole collection, which now includes some thirteen buildings, six of them in Central Midtown. That all of these have been built, even while four units inside Viñoly’s infamous white waffle iron have yet to find a buyer, is surely a sign that these projects operate by a mysterious logic of their own, one demanding either a very novel defense or a very thorough debunking. And yet, even after weighing all the competing claims, I find that I am left mostly with a diffuse, hamstrung sort of ambivalence.
The Glass and the Gray
In which we take the proverbial wrecking ball to the Columbia Business School
by I. L. Sherman
The true upheaval of West Harlem can be traced to its history of development. As Columbus has imposed his name on countless streets and cities and one country, so has one of his namesakes, Columbia University, laid claim to large tracts of the neighborhood. After decades of annexation, what remains feels like the sole province of landlords, a student neighborhood that most students can barely afford.
My appreciation of architecture is tinged with the knowledge that many of the buildings I find beautiful were built on foundations of exploitation and that many continue to harm their environment, physical and social, in tangible ways. Columbia could have been content to misappropriate, taking the beautiful buildings of Harlem and transmogrifying them from the inside out. It was not. The university’s twenty-first century expansion has seen it determined to stamp its wealth and power on the landscape, to externalize the ugliness of gentrification and, if you will indulge me, ruin the view.
Future Funky
A look at the wily Italian designer Gaetano Pesce
by Hayley J. Clark
For many years, Gaetano Pesce was a beloved but sectarian figure within the design world—a visionary supported by a small circle of loyal patrons and institutions. But in recent years he has become something of a celebrity. The furniture and homewares for which he is best known are often described as “goofy” and “wacky,” an aesthetic that is now synonymous with a resistance to the tyrannical minimalism that characterized so-called good taste for the first twenty years of the twenty-first century. Today, at design fairs, galleries, and even fashion shows, Pesce’s work has become hard to avoid. He has been the subject of profiles and interviews in outlets like T magazine and PIN-UP, where he has charmed a new audience of young people with his florid proclamations about the present state of affairs and what design ought to do.
Pesce’s architecture is undoubtedly formally progressive: he uses experimental materials and challenging shapes. We could even call him an aesthetic futurist. But he falls short of being a fully realized futurist, as he hasn’t managed to actually complete many architectural projects and, despite his persistent attestations otherwise, does not seem very serious about attending to legitimately political activity—through design or otherwise.
New York Review of Architecture reviews architecture in New York. Our Editor is Samuel Medina and our Deputy Editor is Marianela D’Aprile. 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 the work and receive NYRA by post, subscribe here.