SKYLINE | 51 | So What Was It All About?
"How sad and bad and mad it was—but then, how it was sweet."
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Salutations, readers!
We have reached the end of 2021, and this issue of SKYLINE will be all about looking backwards. Attempting to find meaning in a year’s worth of lectures and events, news scandals, deaths and debuts is a trite undertaking in our postmodern society, but there is something worthwhile in the pursuit of it. Now more than ever, I believe, it’s important to take stock of just where we have been, as a community of professionals, peers, aesthetes, and activists. Time will take on a plastic characteristic as we nosedive into another COVID winter, but we cannot let ourselves be swept away by that familiar current of fatiguing horror. We must stay rooted in the reality of a coming future worth fighting for if we are to affect change in the built environment.
We will be back in your inboxes very soon. Until then, Happy New Year!
—Anna Gibertini
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
When we published the first issue of SKYLINE, on January 11, I noted how impotent architecture felt that week, with a literal coup underway. Nevertheless, we set forth to bear witness to the cornucopia of discussions around the built environment. Each week, SKYLINE looked forward and back. SKYLINE looked forward through our calendar, to events in the week to come. This year, thanks to the weekly dogged efforts of our editors, we listed over 750 events, spanning groups and institutions united by their passion for architecture if otherwise often siloed from one another. SKYLINE looked back through our dispatches, with write ups primarily covering the events in the week just past. In 2021, the newsletter featured more than 200 dispatches, an average of four a week.
In a year marked by backsliding on almost everything that matters—from environmental action and family reforms to fights for racial equity to the collapse of democracy and women’s rights in Afghanistan to the ever shifting pandemic—it can be easy to lapse into a “lazy pessimism,” a term I take from the author and diplomat Rory Stewart, in an event hosted by the World Monuments Fund on May 6 covered for SKYLINE 18 by Harish Krishnamoorthy. Don’t.
Reviewing the conversation around architecture as we captured it here, the theme of the ‘discourse’ that rings out clear is just how engaged this community is with the challenges that face society. From the work of Architect’s Declare to the Architecture Lobby’s architecture beyond capitalism series to efforts to find new ways to build to the just-launched unionization drive at SHoP—to name just a few examples—the architects and academics we follow have not treated the shortcomings of this world as inevitable.
2022 is going to see some critical tests for the sort of world we want to achieve—perhaps most prominently the American elections in November, but also in a thousand smaller trials that in their aggregate may be the more impactful.
We plan to tell the stories of those tests in 2022, but it will be incumbent on all of us to step up and engage, if we are to pass them.
— Nicolas Kemper
THE YEAR IN…SKYLINE DISPATCHES
For the first time in SKYLINE’s history, our team of writers and editors contributed content to the weekly newsletter for a full calendar year. Below, we’ve picked out some of our favorite dispatches brought to our readers’ inboxes over the twelve months that made up 2021.
“[ED] Mazria made the case in his chart-intensive and acronym-laden lecture that the built environment is both cause and cure of the climate crisis” Louise Harpman noted in her SKYLINE 3 dispatch.
Jack Murphy wondered: “What if awards promoted good actions instead of beautiful photography? What if they had the influence and invisibility of gossip? What if they were the start of greatness, not the deadening finality of its conclusion?” in SKYLINE 4.
In SKYLINE 9, Anna Talley had high praise for D.I.R.T. Studio’s unpretentious approach to design: “D.I.R.T. has brought life back to landscapes that were once acid and fallow—proof that a modest methodology can ground an exceptional practice.”
Natalie Dubois’ SKYLINE 15 coverage of Professor Gregory Cajete’s lecture on Native Science laid out a fundamental difference between Western and Indigenous systems of knowledge: “whether architecture, astronomy, or fishing, knowledge is an ecology—integrated across time and space through intimately connected relationships.”
The plight of architectural criticism was laid bare by Marianela D’Aprile in SKYLINE 20 (and NYRA Issue #19): “Criticism—already flimsily held together prior to COVID—becomes splintered into hundreds of floating heads talking past each other. Everyone is reacting and responding, though the exchanges are often fleeting and temporary, and rarely all that substantial. Sometimes it feels like much of the “dunking” energy previously reserved for particularly galling displays of elitism is now directed horizontally, critic to critic.”
“Change was the silver lining of the pandemic for Bruce Mau,” explains Abubakr Ali in SKYLINE 24. “He argued for a life-centered design approach (focused equally on all forms of life), a movement in which architects could be the ideal leaders.”
In SKYLINE 28, Anna Gibertini laid out architect Barry Wark’s fundamentals on eco-centric architecture: “Humans need to consider the aesthetics of ancientness—irregular masses, patinas, craggy facades—not as an immutable feature of the past but as contemporaneous a look as any monolithic, all-glass supertall.”
“As [Beirut] has rebuilt itself over time, a pattern of trauma urbanism has become more apparent,” says Nicolas Fayad in SKYLINE 32 (and NYRA Issue #20). “In the aftermath of crises, rupture and obliteration have prevailed over transparency and inclusivity…The effect of trauma on Beirut’s urban fabric provides context for addressing successive waves of conflict and catastrophes. But in order for this to be successful, it is crucial to confront the past.”
Charles Weak, a native of the Great Plains, had this to say about architectural practice outside the Eastern Seaboard in SKYLINE 38: “Our region does not need acknowledgement, much less validation, from the coastal institutions. We have everything we need to do great architecture right here.”
Tobi Fagbule and Whytne Stevens, students at Harvard GSD, reported on the school’s Black in Design Conference in SKYLINE 41: “As students, we’re studying to become practitioners in fields where many of our counterparts may not look like us or understand our cultural and sociopolitical experiences. Spaces like BiD give us a place to complicate what we learn in our coursework while also dreaming of alternate futures where new realities and typologies can exist.”
Nicholas Raap’s SKYLINE 46 dispatch covering LOG’s Confronting Carbon Form 3: The Suburb pondered this: “In thinking about how to successfully address necessary changes in our built environment, the question of meeting people where they’re at, and moving forward from there, will be a crucial one.”
Finally, in SKYLINE 49 (and NYRA Issue #25), Jack Murphy had this to say about Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch: “Seeing the city (or history) as a staged tableau reduces our chances of understanding it as a set of power relations — politics — which establish the conditions of appearance within. Lately, we're still postmodern, as we haven’t advanced beyond its paradigms of neoliberalism, irony, and referentiality. The French Dispatch might be to real life as Portoghesi’s Strada Novissima was to any actual city.”
THE YEAR IN…NEW BUILDS
A (subjective) list of proposed and completed buildings that caught our eye…
In New York, the Moynihan Train Hall opened in January to much fanfare and a somber remembrance of its champion…An alliance of public and private interests brought Thomas Heatherwick’s Little Island to life in May…Snøhetta’s Summit One Vanderbilt, an observation deck found within the similarly named KPF tower, debuted in September…
Elsewhere in the United States, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in September, nearly 100 years after it was first proposed…Multi-billionaire Marc Lore and BIG unveiled plans for America’s newest city: Telosa…
There was a lot of work done in Paris and it seemed everyone had an opinion. SANAA’s renovation of Parisian department store La Samaritaine was likened to a shower curtain…Herzog and de Meuron’s Tour Triangle—which has compared to a wedge of Toblerone or a slice of brie—broke ground…Tadao Ando’s concrete rotunda within the Bourse de Commerce was likened to a dog marking its territory. Clearly, Paris has not ceased to inspire.
Finally, the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion was designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by Sumayya Vally. Vally is the youngest person commissioned to design a pavilion and the fifth woman in the program’s 21-year history.
THE YEAR IN…PRIZES AND AWARDS
Here we celebrate the winners of the architecture industry’s most prestigious prizes…
AIA 2021 GOLD MEDAL: Edward Mazria; AIANY 2021 DESIGN AWARDS WINNER: ikon.5 architects; AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS: Julie Eizenberg + Hank Koning of Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Dwayne Oyler + Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collaborative, Ersela Kripa + Stephen Mueller of AGENCY, Justin Garrett Moore, and Marina Tabassum; ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE PRIZE: Tei Carpenter of Agency, Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman + Ricardo Roxo Matias of APRDELESP, Liz Gálvez of Office e.g., Ilse Cárdenas + Regina de Hoyos + Diego Escamilla + Juan Luis Rivera of Palma; Germane David Barnes of Studio Barnes; Lindsey May of Studio Mayd; ARCHITECTURE MASTER PRIZE: VTN Architects; JANE DREW PRIZE: Kate Macintosh; OBEL AWARD: Carlos Moreno; PRITZKER PRIZE: Jean-Philippe Vassal and Anne Lacaton; ROME PRIZE: Mireille Roddier and Keith Mitnick; RIBA GOLD MEDAL: Balkrishna Doshi; RIBA STIRLING PRIZE: Grafton Architects; VENICE BIENNALE 2021: United Arab Emirates, raumlaborberlin; WHEELWRIGHT PRIZE: Germane Barnes
THE YEAR IN…NEWS AND SCANDALS
What got us furiously talking, tweeting, sharing, and memeing in 2021…
…Billionaire Charlie Munger proposed a nearly windowless nightmare dorm for students at UC Santa Barbara…A condo in Surfside, FL collapsed, killing 98 residents and calling into question the safety of similarly constructed properties…New interior plans for fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral vexed traditionalists…Prison and jail design firm HDR moonlighted as government spies…Central Park Tower finished construction, becoming the world’s tallest residential building…Princeton ousted architecture professor Alejandro Zaera-Polo and he was upset about it…The world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood will be built in Austin…Preservations had a rough year, losing two Paul Rudolph building, two icons of Tokyo architecture, and an Art Deco masterpiece…New York City approves CLT construction up to six stories…The Farnsworth House has been amended, and is now known as the Edith Farnsworth House… employees at SHoP took the first steps towards joining a union…
THE YEAR IN…MOURNING
An appreciative acknowledgment of the architects, landscape architects, and designers we lost in 2021…
Virgil Abloh, Oriol Bohigas, Gottfried Böhm, Charles Cassell, Basak Cengiz, Pauline Deltour, Alexander Garvin, M. Arthur Gensler, Barry Goldsmith, Lance Hosey, Helmut Jahn, Richard Ingersoll, Owen Luder, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Cornelia Oberlander, Terence Riley, Richard Rogers, Thomas Gordon Smith
EYES ON SKYLINE
(The most-clicked link from Skyline 50)
In St. Petersburg, a sports and concert arena by coop himmelb(l)au intrigued our readers with its contemporary take on constructivist aesthetics…
DATELINE
The week(s) ahead...
Thursday, 1/6
FF – Distance Edition: FUTUREFORMS with Nataly Gattegno, Jason Kelly Johnson, Jesse Reiser
6:00pm | The Architectural League of New York
Friday, 1/7
Paul Rudolph First Friday
6:00pm | Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation
Monday, 1/10
2022 AIANY Design Awards Announcement with Molly Heintz
6:00pm | AIANY
Thursday, 1/13
ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN: CREATIVE SALVAGE, 1981-1991 with Gareth Williams
10:00am | Friedman Benda
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Would you like to share your thoughts? Please write to us. Simply reply to this e-mail or write to us at editor@nyra.nyc.
Four desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey & Nicolas Kemper (who also serves as the publisher). They rotate duties each month.
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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