111 First St. Tower Announced, Architect Denounced
If you haven't yet seen the renderings of the Koolhaas vision of Jersey City, the Wired Forums have them posted. A picture really is worth a thousand words, especially when those pictures depict three rectangles stacked precariously into a 52 story tower.
While 52 stories isn't particularly tall compared to world standards, or even when compared to other towers across Jersey City's skyline, the story was big enough for Curbed to mention it and even for Hoboken411 to look across their southern border. That makes sense after all, since its the folks in Manhattan and Hoboken who will have to look at this building in profile.
Now whether you love it or hate it, there is of course something to be said about having a world famous architect building structures in your backyard. On one hand, its easy to see how this tower is Jersey City's Guggenheim Museum, yet on the other side of things, it could clearly be another Miss Brooklyn.
But enough about the tower. After all, when it comes to development in Jersey City, its always personal. Which is why we were intrigued when Tris McCall posed the question, Is Rem Koolhaas an asshole?. Yes, apparently he is, least of all because he's proposed stacking three soviet style block houses on top of each other, and mostly because he has the audacity to call it art.
While 52 stories isn't particularly tall compared to world standards, or even when compared to other towers across Jersey City's skyline, the story was big enough for Curbed to mention it and even for Hoboken411 to look across their southern border. That makes sense after all, since its the folks in Manhattan and Hoboken who will have to look at this building in profile.
Now whether you love it or hate it, there is of course something to be said about having a world famous architect building structures in your backyard. On one hand, its easy to see how this tower is Jersey City's Guggenheim Museum, yet on the other side of things, it could clearly be another Miss Brooklyn.
But enough about the tower. After all, when it comes to development in Jersey City, its always personal. Which is why we were intrigued when Tris McCall posed the question, Is Rem Koolhaas an asshole?. Yes, apparently he is, least of all because he's proposed stacking three soviet style block houses on top of each other, and mostly because he has the audacity to call it art.
Labels: Jersey City, PAD
4 Comments:
he's probably nowhere near as much of a d-bag as that article makes him sound like he is. but if i was a world-famous architect and had some mojo to swing around, i think the first thing i'd do before i signed on to a project was a google search to see, you know, exactly who i was getting in bed with.
i know that giving a damn about context is not the fashion among big-money architects: look at frank gehry. he's going to help screw up park slope and prospect heights. then he'll be off to the next prado, and we'll all be dealing with the gridlock until the day we die.
Context isn't everything, or rather, a building can be its own context or create a new context, if it wasn't so awful. I don't really like the idea of building a design for the sake of building a design. It seems to me that the architect approached 111 First with the attitude: what can I do that will shock everyone, or what can I do that will be unique? rather than approaching the design by asking, what are the functions this building is going to serve and how can I make this building best serve those functions.
I think approaching architecture for the sake of creating a sculpture is incorrect; that is not contextual. What I mean is, a buildings function should define its context. A residence should be a residence and an office should be an office. A building shouldn't sacrifice itself for the sake of art. A building with no windows or doors might look like an amazing work of art, but there is no functionality to a building that can't be entered.
I think the greater issue here is the celebrity architect in general; the idea that an architect creates a building's context: This building is a Frank Gehry; that is the context of this building.
That is one of the worst, balls-out worst examples of "starchitecture" I've ever seen.
It's an atrocity. A disgrace, an embarrassment.
And it's just plain lazy. Rem Koolhaas jumped the shark.
Great article in the NY Times today on the 111 first street building and the PAD in general. Pretty exciting stuff. JC waterfront is absolutely the best investment on the NJ gold coast and is likely one of the best investments in the NY metro area in general. Here's the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/realestate/04NjZo.html?ex=1330578000&en=1bbe1acb0c6542ca&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
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