Why should so many care so much about someplace intended for the use of so few? Apparently, it's inevitable. The compulsion to dwell on dwellings you'll never inhabit could be the inverse of the Marxist axiom regarding club membership.
Two weeks ago, nightclub owner-turned-hotelier-turned-real estate developer Ian Schrager control-released detailed renderings of the stratospherically expensive 40 Bond Street condominium in lower Manhattan, via a by-application-only website and an article in the New York Times (full-disclosure: that I wrote). The 27-unit luxury condo, designed by Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron, instantly became hot bait for swarms of real-estate piranhas on the Internet. Good? Bad? Both Schrager and his architects revealed degrees of ambiguity about contributing to the feeding frenzy.
First, remember that the building is just a hole in the ground. The only "there" there is a swank sales office around the corner with full-scale mock-ups of a window frame, a bit of decorative wall treatment for the lobby, a sink, and some models loaded up with bunches of miniature trees that would never in reality flourish as shown. But, boy, does it do the trick. A personal favorite: the "living room" with Herzog & de Meuron's sleek cast iron hearth and fireplace. In front of it, a white leather couch from Peggy Guggenheim's villa in Venice. Why? Because Schrager — by the way, Rick, Humphrey Bogart's nightclub eminence supreme, wouldn't have been caught dead developing condos, but somehow this former velvet-roper gets a pass — thought it looked cool on a visit last summer and documented the sofa closely enough with his digital camera to have it replicated. See how easy it is for fabulousness to rub off on all that it touches?
Even if it's only virtual contact. The website offers a tantalizing glimpse of what's in store for initiates but the rest of us can only turn to information boot-legged by bloggers. And no detail seems too minor to rehash. Curbed gave comparative readings to the floor plans closer than most students would give to Hamlet's soliloquies. The Gutter ran down the hors-d'oeuvres served at the press opening of the sales office. And Triple Mint's hermeneutical analysis of structural detailing gave balanced consideration to the cast glass façade as well as the Jasper Morrison bathroom light fixtures and Miele appliances. (Someone break it to the talented industrial designer Konstanin Grcic that his hardware fell short of being mentionable.)
Naturally, it's all pulse-perfect gorgeous. But what else could it be when you've got $2,800 a foot to play with? (Pace Donald Trump.) Still, a creeping squirm factor is beginning to infuse all this coverage of luxury condos. It seems like we went from bemoaning junky construction to whinging about excessively good design in one fell hiccup. Even Jacques Herzog, when discussing 40 Bond, felt compelled to try to put some kind of perspective on what he designed there, and what he believes is the right thing for architects to do. Knowing most people will never get into the building, he told me that he and partner Pierre de Meuron at least tried to make the place look interesting on the street for the pedestrian hoi polloi. Thus, a fence that looks like graffiti scribbles recalls the groovy glory days when the city was too bankrupt to clean itself. Cool, but its real job is still to block access to the so-called good life.
Schrager also rails happily against starchitecture, the phenomenon by which shrewd developers attach name-to-conjure-with architects to projects far from being built in order to stir up press attention and attract speculative money. Schrager told me on cue that he hates the idea of celebrity architecture, called it "totally repugnant." Kenneth Frampton, the Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University, would probably second that. He told a crowd at the Municipal Art Society in Manhattan in late January that architectural "icons are determined by surface, a star system, a pecking order that the media either over or under criticizes...the Bilbao effect: hire Gehry because he's 'it' — it's not about the architecture."
To rehash: Once, not at all too long ago, a lot of buildings — especially condominiums — were thrown up without regard for anything, particularly design. Then architects got hip, and started to design everything in sight. And now it's pissing people off. Is it really bad for architecture that great talents like Gehry and Herzog & de Meuron are so in demand, so flush with work? Obviously, it's the exclusivity that grates. Nobody knows yet if all the design amenities stocking luxury condos today will filter down to the betterment of our own domestic lives tomorrow. Unlike prospective owners at 40 Bond, I have no essential desire for my own wet room, whatever that is, or even for the "effortless living" Schrager is promising. And yet, perhaps we can agree on one thing: the democratic standardization of 11-foot ceilings would be nice.
Julie Iovine is the architecture critic for The Architect's Newspaper and features director at Elle Decor magazine. Following a 12-year stint as a reporter at The New York Times, Iovine still contributes to the paper on architecture and design.
Comments [24]
Schrager, he doesn't seem to be hurting too much from Philippe Starck having renounced the boutique hotel concept they, together, catalyzed.
And yes, I'd fancy a couple of extra feet above my head, though without complimentary design decisions, the additional volume of air would take more energy to climate-control.
02.23.06
01:46
Writing two articles about overexposed but underaccessible design projects goes a long way towards undermining the hammerlock that a limited number of mostly retread (albeit their own aging portfolios) and uninspired fetishists and their publicity toadies have over the design community. Fight the power!
02.23.06
06:11
02.24.06
10:46
What's interesting to me is that there is none of this tortured ambivalence among critics when discussing commercial projects for rich multi-national corporations or museums funded by socialites, or even detached houses in the palm springs desert. But when it's urban housing everyone gets weirded out.
02.24.06
11:16
Sorry about that. Spelling mistake now fixed. Thanks.
02.24.06
12:19
02.24.06
03:22
Link this phenomenon to the clan identification of recent branding programs and you have a frenzy on your hands. Its unfortunate that the vision of the Bauhaus, good design of all for all, has been relegated to the elite. Then again, weren't the elite the only ones who could afford Bauhaus' designs?
02.24.06
05:56
I started to read this and discovered I'm not so interested.
I skipped to the comments and... the same thing.
Who says there's a lot of interest in this?
02.25.06
01:31
I've stayed in a few Schrager hotels, and their competitors many times. And I've often had the same thought -- this makes a nice change for a few days, but I wouldn't want to live this way.
It's not unlike the fact that sure, I had to go to Studio, and I liked the experience, but I only went once.
02.25.06
01:40
However, if you don't think that there is an inordinate amount of interest in real estate in New York City at this moment whether you approve of it or not, I mean, specifically, luxury real estate you must get a different version of the Times real estate section than I do.
The Richard Meier buildings started the whole thing. They were not just intended to be a design coup, but a marketing and publicity coup. You may disagree on the success of the first point but I don't think it's possible to argue with the second. With that as the template, we now live in a city where enormous amounts of talent, money and attention are being lavished on buildings that relatively few people will ever experience firsthand: the oddity of this, I think, was Julie's point.
02.25.06
01:56
And definitely "so many" does not mean everybody... However, I personally throw myself into the "so many" camp. I have been totally enthralled (if not obsessed) with real estate development since buying a condo last September. And since I got hooked on Curbed and Brownstoner. It's a fascinating phenomenon supported by an equally fascinating (and bafflingly rich and somewhat insane) target audience - seriously, who buys a studio in DUMBO for a million dollars?
02.25.06
06:31
Divorced, just for a moment, from the subject of real estate, buildings have an impact on many people who may never set foot inside them. Streetscapes, skylines, light, air, density, aesthetics are all in play (and maybe at risk) in this current building boom and deserve attention. Hopefully more attention than money, quite frankly. Mies's Lakeshore Drive apartment houses are in every college-level modern architecture text even though they are essentially luxury housing.
New York is being transformed right now, maybe even more than people realize. There are so many projects that are not on anyone's radar right now. I think eventually people may look back on this period with mixed feelings (the city's Landmarks commission is asleep at the switch right now, for one thing), but entire neighborhoods are being transformed by this development. These buildings are going to be with us for a long time. Michael is right that Meier's buildings were key. A lot of the glass everyone is talking about is simply fashion right now. Most developers are spreadsheet guys who never gave a rats ass about design. All the press may be causing them to at least abandon the tired old Battery Park City "Ye Olde New York" brick-and-punched-windows formula for a little glass, steel, and modern lines. Probably a good thing. Is it important to the grand narrative of the history of architecture? Of course not. But I think all the attention has been important, it's made what we're getting a little bit better than it would have been.
02.25.06
07:52
Can we extend that to say that "so many care" about Schrager's apartment building? His PR agent would have us think so, and so would professional chicariests. But I don't think there will be much interest.
One of the reasons for the success of Curbed is that it doesn't buy into the chicaria hype. So far Curbed has mildly ridiculed Schrager's building (and the NY Times' admiring story on it), and dumped on Gwathmey's Sculpture for Living, Tschumi's Blue, and usually the Meier buildings.
On the whole, the Times buys into the view that Modernism is the only style, and that its "stars" must be admired. Many of the blogs like Curbed take a very different view: sometimes we like Modernism, sometimes we like traditional, Starchitects are some of the silliest and most pretentious people around.
BTW, and FWIW, I've owned three houses and one apartment. All four were built in 1928 when there was an enormous amount of pre-Crash building going on. Are we now seeing deja vu all over again?
If so, be aware that New York co-ops didn't regain their 1928 prices for 50 years.
02.26.06
10:19
Curbed said: "And bonus points go to the not-so-under-the-surface snarkyness that runs through the entire article, including a development corporation's director of planning calling the marketing of architecture "played out," and Iovine herself totally and utterly serving Schrager right at the end. Genius."
To sum up: I'm probably one of the few people on the list who's been to see Herzog & de Meuron buildings (plural), and I've enjoyed Schrager hotels. Even so, there are a few hundred things I'd rather think about more than Schrager's apartment building at $2,800 psf. We're approaching the level of the obscene with all this real estate porn -- a point on which Julie and I probably agree.
When will we see a Times story on the Katrina Cottage (designed by a New York architect)?
PS to Michael: I tried to link "Katrina Cottage" to the Google search on the cottage (18,600 hits), but received a Comment Submission Error because of the link to google dot com. Why is that?
02.26.06
10:43
02.26.06
11:11
To quote from my favorite book of the moment, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood by David Thomson:
"As Gary Cooper once said to a young screenwriter struggling on a Cooper script: 'Look, it works best if you just make me the hero.'"
02.26.06
12:35
On the other point about the design press, I think it says a lot about the media that a handfull of hobbyist bloggers have filled this void of coverage about the changing city and now everyone's playing catch-up. It shouldn't have happened this way.
02.26.06
01:12
Perhaps this is where historical knowledge is important: one of the seminal works that (architecture) students were encouraged to study (for style and somewhat design) were renderings by Hugh Ferris, someone who managed to make zoning a fascinating subject.
Given the computing power of google maps & earth, the monies being dumped into services like Zillow, and the skill of dozens, if not hundreds, of information designers in this city, that we don't have something as compelling as Ferris (and, given what interactivity could do, be even more transformative for designers and residents) today is embarassing.
02.26.06
01:20
Your question seems to imply that journalists would find subjects like, say, zoning more interesting if designers could make the issues more vivid and dramatic. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so? It would help, however, if there were more strong voices in the press who were willing to get beyond money, celebrity, and the two or three default story types that have long dominated what little design news gets published at all.
02.26.06
01:43
02.26.06
01:48
Kim: I think regional planning regardling office space is an important issue, but people have been doing shady live/work spaces in midtown since the 50's. But there isn't much in the way of evidence that small business occupancy is negatively affected by conversions that much. I had an office in the Garment District in the late 90's. When the demand was there, a huge amount of space was absorbed by Internet businesses (which as quickly retreated) -- it's a shame that Garment manufacturing is disappearing, but it will be pretty much gone in the next ten years. The Flatiron building just aren't that much space. 555 Eigth Avenue (a recent conversion), can hold two or three buildings' worth of clients from the Flatiron. As someone who hosts a blog that showcases almost exclusively high-end residential real estate, you're going to tell us now that you are concerned about protecting small businesses? That horse isn't even in LIC anymore; it's in Jackson Heights.
02.26.06
08:26
02.26.06
08:35
My only excuse is that when I read these celebrity stories I do get bored and start skimming -- so I can certainly say we're not all fascinated by celebrity architecture stories.
2) is there a single design blogger -- who would get linked here -- that took an architectural history or urban studies class?) er, miss r, I took them, teach them, and was nominated for a national book award for a book dealing with both.
As for journalists, art history classes 20 years ago advocated exactly what Herb Jr. and much of the Home section advocate today -- that Modernism is the only style and that the Genius Architect is the one we're supposed to pay attention to.
If you take a class with Vincent Scully today, he'll tell you that he was wrong all the years he was saying exactly that.
02.27.06
05:24
You have a group of leading architects focused on solving a particular problem of dwelling as a collective effort. OK, granted the limits of current architects' collective efforts amount to peeping each other's work through the architecture media and other realms of scuttlebutt, it would be difficult to deny that they are not riffing off of one another as far as this design issue is concerned.
Times change, ideology vacillates, as does architecture and the social mechanism guiding architectural thought and building turns its attention to dwelling for the monied classes.
That's why i'm with Julie on this one, I don't think it's fair to knock architects for focusing on a problem of dwelling just because at this given moment the problem of dwelling is for a bunch of rich people and there happens to be a lot of money and marketing attached to the whole gig. The history of modern architecture since the 18th century is full of examples of housing for rich people as precedent for later strains of architecture for the masses. No need to knock our crew of Masters just because our hypermodern machine of marketing and media overexposes the whole thing.
03.27.06
05:52