After three daredevils decided to climb the giant ladder that is the Renzo Piano designed NY Times building, it was time for the Times to try and make it a little more difficult. The Times set forth a crew of deconstruction workers to remove the low lying rods that make up the buildings facade. The hope is that the lack of the low ladder rungs with be all the pest repellent the building needs from future spider infestations.
No, he is not a character on Family Guy, instead Walter Burley Griffin (1876 - 1937) is one of the greatest architectural minds of the 20th century. Griffin was an architect with a background in landscape design. He is closely associated with prairie school design, like that of Frank Lloyd Wright. Griffin even worked under Wright for many years until they parted ways. While working under Wright, Griffin met his wife Marion Mahoney. The two forged an impressive resume in their 28 years of partnership, designing over 350 buildings together. The apex of their career was the designing of the capital city of Australia, Canberra (pictured above).
I have planned a city that is not like any other in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city - a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.
See more images of Walter Burley Griffins work after the jump.
Dan Witz has been a busy little boy lately, covering NYC with his eerily realistic and freakishly twisted “Ugly New Buildings”, a commentary on well the ugly new buildings being erected all over the place.
Dan explains to Wooster Collective:
This year’s series, “Ugly New Buildings”, addresses how in the past few years much of my neighborhood in Brooklyn has been torn down to make way for luxury housing. Personally, I can’t say I like the new modern architecture very much. For the most part it’s sterile and alienating and so arrogantly disconnected with its surroundings sometimes it seems like giant alien space ships have landed in the night. But resenting gentrification in New York City is futile, like complaining about the weather or other forces of (urban) nature. For this year’s project I decided to work with it.
These are photo-based, heavily re-painted stickers, mounted on plastic and glued to the walls of the Ugly New Buildings. In May I put up around 30 and about half are still there.
This is def something I am feeling and appreciating after seeing the death of Williamsburg and other parts of BKLYN!
First I must say that I love playing Tetris as much as the next nerd, but I prefer to keep my block building challenges in the arcade and not on the streets. However, the folks at Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov, LLC disagree with me and brought the Ruski video game style to Hell’s Kitchen with this hideous example of style wars. Check out the way the glass and cheap metal just blend naturally into the classic brick and cement styling of the existing building, that is being given a virtual noogie by this monstrosity. I can’t even put how horrid this is into words other than WTF?!? On that note, I will let this image do the talking for me…
The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced today that Manhattan’s Lower East Side has made their list of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places“. The Lower East Side has long been a home to immigrants and their families, many of whom entered through Ellis Island and later moved all over America, but is now falling victim to over development and the same gentrification policies that are killing all of NYC. Now that SoHo and other parts of downtown Manhattan have been destroyed of any character the money hungry, soul-less developers have moved on to the L.E.S., with the help (and hand in pocket backing) of the Bloomberg administration, who issued permits to level a dozen buildings last year, compared with just one in 2006. No one wants the crack heads and violence of old NYC back (see video below) but a Gap and Starbucks on every block is not what NYC is about or needs either!
Mayor Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty “Marky Mark” Markowitz announced a five day celebration planned to honor the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. The event will be held between May 22nd and 26th. Surprisingly the celebration will not include the addition of tolls on the Bridge to further hurt NYC’s middle and lower class, but rather concerts, films, bike tours, fire works and a special lighting of the bridge through Memorial day. I’m still weary that this event is only happening to distract the people from some evils about to occur like Commodus did with the 100 days of games in Gladiator, but I will try to put my paranoias aside and wish the greatest of all bridges and city landmarks a Happy 125th!
