S K Y L I N E | Is Archtober for nerds?
Alexandra Lange, Cynthia Davidson, Sascha Delz, Karen Kubey, Daniel Libeskind
Issue 86. The only thing bigger than a month full of architecture is a year’s worth of architecture (reading). Subscribe here.
Traditionally, October’s arrival is signaled by clanging radiators reawakened by 55 degree temperatures. But it also marks the return of Archtober, the oddly-difficult-to-pronounce series of exhibitions, building tours, book launches, and parties that draw our architecture enthusiast community away from our screens and out into the street. It’s a highly visible opportunity to indulge in a very niche, but authentically shared, interest. By the end of the month, I sometimes wonder if I just dreamed it all up. Then there are nights like Tuesday’s exhibition opening at the Cooper Union that seem to touch all of us—intern and critic alike.
I’m not going to try to organize this issue of Skyline by any one theme or concern. So much went on as we ran into one another at all the different venues. But still, the fact that we—aspiring local authority on all things architecture—couldn’t score a press pass to tour SHoP’s sinister Brooklyn Tower (see photo, above) might say something about the event’s growing reach: maybe it’s not just nerds like us who are paying attention. That, or the nerd community is growing; both are welcome outcomes.
The following dispatches cut a pretty clean section through the calendar, but they only represent a small sliver. Be sure to check out our ever-replenishing events calendar below for what’s on in the coming week.
— Emily Conklin
DISPATCHES
10/2: At the James Rose House: Green River Project LLC and Object & Thing
RIDGEWOOD, NJ — Last week, I clambered into my car to make the pilgrimage to the James Rose Center, home of the late landscape architect. For all of September and a couple days of October, the house’s serene, yet complex interiors served as a backdrop for a small crafts-and-furniture exhibition, organized by the Brooklyn design studios Green River Project LLC and Object & Thing. My familiarity with the former (through their ties to fashion label Bode), plus plenty of tantalizing Instagram posts, was enough to get me on the NJ Turnpike.
Tucked behind a brace of trees in an unassuming suburb, the house is a beautiful example of one man’s vision, and how it evolved over the forty years Rose inhabited, and continuously transformed, the space. Inside this architectural collage, the curators staged their own pieces, as well as mid-century icons like an Eames bent-plywood sculpture, in conversation with Rose’s own work. Everything on display was for sale (the Eames was going for $150K), yet the exhibition transcended this retail aspect in that it brought attention to a classic, but relatively unknown designer—and the young cohort inspired by him.
— Tiam Schaper
10/3: The Mall Lives
ZOOM — The mall is not dead, says design critic ALEXANDRA LANGE, who on Monday shared excerpts from her new book. Meet Me by the Fountain makes the case for reconsidering the shopping mall, much maligned today, as one of the great technological advances of the postwar era. Lange gave virtual attendees a quick overview of the history, arguing that the mall was once at the forefront of architectural exploration and delineating its varied incarnations. It’s been decades since the heyday of the mall, and the typology has earned a bad, “anti-urban” reputation, but Lange wants everyone “to see how malls were well designed for commerce and for community.” Her timing couldn’t have been better: online shopping has dwindled since its pandemic peak, suggesting a general desire to return to physical, in-person browsing. “The mall is something that can be tailored specifically to a community,” Lange said, and it may even reprise its former social role, if given a chance.
As enthusiastic as Lange was about the subject, the Zoom presentation felt rushed and a bit flat, especially after a long day of working on a screen. All that talk about meeting in physical space made me wish we’d met by the fountain instead.
— Osvaldo Delbrey Ortiz
10/3: Co-Op Urbanism
CAMBRIDGE — For all the talk about Archtober, we forget that it’s also Co-Op Month. Speaking at the GSD, architect and urbanist SASCHA DELZ celebrated the cooperative movement (which dates to the mid-1840s) and its founding ethics and organizational models. The co-op, he argued, should be seen as a social and environmental response to the housing crisis that is people-centered, democratic, and collectively won. Ending his talk with the slogan “Let’s cooperate” (overlaid a rainbow flag), Delz highlighted the need to begin creating models of housing outside of the state or market: “Through the cooperative, [people] are gaining access to capital that they wouldn’t be able to [access] as individuals.”
— Randa Omar
10/3: UN/World Urban Forum Addresses the Right to Housing
ZOOM — What does the right to housing mean in practice? And how can architects contribute? These were the key questions posed by the AIA’s Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community in a webinar that was pegged to the UN’s eleventh World Urban Forum. Local designers and activists KATHERINE WILLIAMS, KAREN KUBEY, SIMON HA, R. DENISE EVERSON, and KATHLEEN DORGAN were on hand to offer some answers. Their well-delivered presentations, which included one about LA County’s staggering rate of homelessness (69,144 people any given night), may have varied in tone, but all exhibited signs of frustration about the lack of architectural expertise being brought to bear on the housing crisis. Many were more hopeful about possible resolutions via policy or community action.
Not surprisingly, the rigid webinar interface didn’t offer much opportunity for dialogue. Chat and Q&A functions remained the privilege of the organizers and the discussants. We departed, questions unanswered.
— Alexandra Oetzel
10/4: Model Behavior
Model Behavior, a new group exhibition curated by Log/Anycorp founder/editor CYNTHIA DAVIDSON and designed by New Affiliates (IVI DIAMANTOPOULOU and JAFFER KOLB), opened in the Cooper Union’s Foundation Building on Tuesday. Relentless rain didn’t dampen the mood on opening night, which saw the galleries chockablock with a raucous crowd of model-gawkers, well-wishers, and the designers of many of the exhibits (even Berlin-based architect JÜRGEN MAYER attended). This ambitious show gathers architectural models and other artifacts that reflect on the might and machinations of the miniature. The exhibited items vary widely; the checklist includes an exemplary orrery (a tiny mechanical solar system with orbiting planets), a set of panels from a 1970s vintage Star Wars Death Star model set, and new works by contemporary architects including MICHAEL YOUNG and KUTAN AYATA, DAVID ESKENAZI, SEAN CANTY, JENNIFER BONNER, and DARELL WAYNE FIELDS. All told, more than seventy objects are displayed in the building’s foyer and colonnade, many of them also visible from the sidewalk. But all of the works are best seen up close: don't miss the exquisite painted details of Reiser + Umemoto’s maquette for a subway entrance pavilion in Salzburg, unfortunately unbuilt. At least we have the model.
10/6: Memory Foundations
"He is critically regarded - both very well received... and sometimes criticized," said Yale School of Architecture Dean DEBORAH BERKE, introducing DANIEL LIBESKIND last night for his talk at Hastings Hall. Though it was to kick off a symposium in memory of urban planner and Yale Professor ALEXANDER GARVIN, the talk, titled "Memory Foundations," was for the most part a straight tour of Libeskind's greatest hits. While he gave each one — the Holocaust Museum in Berlin ("my first actual building"), the Denver Art Museum, the German Military Museum in Dresden — a thoughtful and compelling narrative, the undeniable and unmentioned through line was a deep affinity for sharp angles clad in stainless steel (or, in the case of Denver, titanium). He saved for last his ill-fated masterplan for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, for which he worked with Garvin. "I do not show you this out of vanity," he said of a photo of him presumably soon after winning the competition, surrounded by a pack of camera and microphone wielding reporters six deep: "I am showing you how to enter the labyrinth." With this oblique acknowledgment of the many challenges that would water down his original plan, he emphasized the elements, such as the exposed slurry wall, that did survive. "My message is this: be naive. Don't know too much. Because if you know too much, you will never enter the labyrinth." He closed, touchingly, by recounting his arrival as an immigrant by ship, "We woke up at 4:35, 5, wake up, you will see New York! And even though you have seen it in the postcards, television, the movies, the books… nothing prepares you at all."
— Nicolas Kemper
EYES ON SKYLINE
In Skyline 85, readers were interested in the resignations of SCI-Arc faculty Tom Wiscombe and Marikka Trotter from their posts.
IN THE NEWS
. . . Outdoor dining is here to stay in New York…
. . . Can you recycle a building?
. . . Billy Fleming got stuck in Greenland…
. . . Kate Wagner pointed out that Bloomberg is not the first to look at a building…
. . . On almost the same day as we published online Matthew Allen’s appreciative review of the book Inscriptions, Izzy Kornblatt skewered the book in Architectural Record…
. . . Battersea Power Station is finally complete…
. . . Kimmelman does Geffen Hall…
. . . SCI-Arc has still not released “the report”…
. . . Artist Nik Bentel released new designs inspired by an office supply icon: the Manila folder.
DATELINE
Our events listings (and the calendars of virtually every design studio, non-profit, think tank or museum) are overflowing with options for you to get out and enjoy architecture every day this month. Whether you’re in New York with us or celebrating from further afield, here are some events we’re most looking forward to:
Friday 10/7:
A New Public Program: “The Alternatives All Around Us”
1:30 PM EDT | CCA
Saturday 10/8:
“Yes, And’ Artist Talk with Nathan Kensinger
2:00 PM EDT | Staten Island Museum
Monday 10/10:
Models As Ethical Agents with Annabel Wharton, Sylvia Lavin
6:30 PM EDT | Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture
Tuesday 10/11:
Struggles over the Narcotic City: Histories of Policing Opioids and Other Drugs
6:30 PM EDT | Space for Ideas
Wednesday 10/12:
Urban Science, Pseudo-Science, and Urban Design with Stephen Marshall
12:30 PM EDT | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Thursday 10/13:
Architectural History Is Migrant History
6:00 PM EDT | City College of New York Spitzer School of Architecture
Find the whole list and submit your own at nyra.nyc/events
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
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NYRA 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.
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