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☆ For Richard Serra, Art Was Not Something. It Was Everything.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Richard Serra died yesterday, I flashed back nearly 30 years to a morning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, looking with him and with his wife, the German-born art historian Clara Weyergraf, at Jackson Pollock’s splash and drip painting from 1950, “Autumn Rhythm.”We had decided to meet as soon as the museum opened, when the gallery, at the far end of the Met, would still be empty. Taking in the painting, Serra had the air of a caged lion, pacing back and forth, moving away, to see it whole, then back in to inspect some detail. “We evaluate artists by how much they are able to rid themselves of convention, to change history,” he said. For him, art was all or nothing. Of course he wasn’t alone in his thinking among American artists of his generation, the offspring of postwar American power and arrogance, of titans like Pollock.

Persons: Richard Serra, Clara Weyergraf, Jackson, Serra, ”, Pollock Organizations: Metropolitan Museum of Art Locations: German

☆ New York Reimagined Subsidized Housing. What Happened?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-07 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This story is from Headway, an initiative from The New York Times exploring the world’s challenges through the lens of progress. “A beacon.”That was how Shaun Donovan, former commissioner of New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, heralded Via Verde, the South Bronx development, in 2011. Construction was nearly done at the time, and I chose Via Verde for the subject of my first column as The New York Times’s architecture critic. Most important, its goal was larger than itself: to reimagine subsidized housing for a new century. Engineers, solar experts, community groups, architectural organizations as well as the New York City Council pulled in unison.

Persons: what’s, Shaun Donovan Organizations: The New York Times, New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation, Via Verde, Guggenheim, Bloomberg, . Engineers, New, New York City Council Locations: New, Via Verde, Bronx, York, Paris, New York, grumbled

☆ What We Learned From Bogotá’s Buses
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-11 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The system, a rapid bus network called TransMilenio, rolled out in 2000. Its buses weren’t as big or as fast as trains, but they were up and running in a fraction of the time and at a vastly lower cost. The idea of rapid buses became the rage from Jakarta to Mexico City, and Enrique Peñalosa, the Bogotá mayor who cooked up the idea for TransMilenio, became a globe-trotting celebrity after his term ended. But there was another colorful character whose contributions to TransMilenio I had to leave on the cutting room floor. (He explained the dropping of his pants by citing the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic violence.”)

Persons: Enrique Peñalosa, George Harrison, Dalai, Peñalosa, —, TransMilenio, Antanas Mockus, Pierre Bourdieu’s Organizations: Grist, Super, Colombia’s National University, mooning Locations: Bogotá, Colombia, New York, Jakarta, Mexico City

☆ Downtowns Are Full of Empty Buildings. Universities Are Moving In.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | More About Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’ll say straight off: It’s not architecture for the ages, but it’s an interesting, high-end model of an urban quad and a good example of how struggling downtowns are finding a glimmer of hope as satellite campuses. In design jargon, the term is “adaptive reuse,” which is the same story as turning empty office towers into apartment buildings. Universities like Hopkins are not the ultimate cure-all for what now ails downtowns across America, though, especially since they don’t pay property taxes like for-profit companies. Downtowns are still struggling. WeWork, which presently rents more office space than any other company in the United States, filed for bankruptcy this month.

Persons: David Rockwell, Hopkins, Paul Levy Organizations: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, Rockwell Group, Philadelphia’s Center City District Locations: Pennsylvania, Washington, Texas, New York, America, United States, downtowns

☆ Hoboken Is Building for a Very Rainy Day
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | More About Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The city of Hoboken, N.J., once a marshy outcropping that the Lenape inhabited only seasonally, hugs the Hudson River. Some scientists have forecast that, with rising seas, a big chunk of Hoboken will be Atlantis by 2100. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy left Hoboken underwater and without electricity for days, causing more than $110 million worth of property damage. Across the river, the same storm drowned several of New York City’s subway lines and forced Brooklyn residents to wade through thigh-deep water. Television crews, returning to Hoboken early Saturday to film the usual aftermath, left empty-handed.

Persons: what’s, Hurricane Sandy Organizations: The New York Times, Hoboken, National Guard, Television Locations: Hoboken, N.J, Hurricane, Sandy, New York, Brooklyn

☆ When the Skyscraper You Hate Blocks the Skyscraper You Love
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-25 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | More About Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When I reached the plaza I turned to admire the Flatiron, as usual. But the view north had changed. The Empire State Building is gone, or almost. From much of the plaza, yet another anorexic supertall for squillionaires, rising at 29th Street, now blots it out. Ever since Henry Hudson sailed through the Narrows, change has been New York’s mantra and bugaboo.

Persons: Henry Hudson Organizations: downer, State, Empire State Locations: Madison, York

☆ A Spectacular Marble Cube Rises at Ground Zero
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | More About Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The new Perelman Performing Arts Center is the most glamorous civic building to land in New York in years. You may have noticed the building under construction if you were near the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during the past year or so. A floating, translucent marble cube, it nestles at the foot of One World Trade Center, just eight stories high, a runt in a herd of mega-tall commercial skyscrapers but impossible to miss. Back then, the city was all-consumed by grief and fear, its economy in free-fall, ground zero still a smoldering gravesite. We were reminded just this week of the toll when the names of the thousands of dead were again read aloud.

Persons: Osama bin Laden Organizations: Perelman Performing Arts Center, World Trade Center Locations: New York, Lower Manhattan

☆ Gilder Center Flies, Wriggles and Surprises
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( Laurel Graeber | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The American Museum of Natural History has always been known for creatures — just not more than a million live ones. That may change, however, as a result of its Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation. Since this new wing opened in May, almost 1.5 million people have visited the museum, and most are thought to have explored the four floors of the Gilder Center that are open to the public. But even repeat visitors like me are still discovering its many attractions, including crawling and flying animals, mostly of the small but mighty variety. But the center, which was designed by the architect Jeanne Gang and her firm, Studio Gang, has more than wiggly wildlife.

Persons: Richard Gilder, Jeanne Gang, Michael Kimmelman Organizations: American Museum of, Richard Gilder Center for Science, Innovation, Gilder Center, Studio, The New York Times Locations: Manhattan

☆ Penn Station Is a Perpetual Mess. Change May Be at Hand.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | More About Michael Kimmelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If the latest flurry of news around two dueling plans to fix New York’s Pennsylvania Station has left you scratching your head, you’re not alone. Various officials I have spoken with are also fuzzy on details. Hope has long gone to die on the 6:50 to Secaucus. At the very least, the new proposal, from a private infrastructure developer called ASTM North America, may be the disruption needed to get Albany moving. On the outside of the station, a new, porous stone facade with landscaped terraces and rows of columns would restore a measure of the architectural sensibility and civic symbolism that New York squandered in the 1960s when McKim, Mead & White’s original Penn Station was torn down.

Persons: you’re, Hope, McKim Organizations: Pennsylvania, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Amtrak, Mead, Penn Locations: Secaucus, America, Albany, Madison, York

☆ Remaking the River That Remade L.A.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Michael Kimmelman | Photographs Adali Schell | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +33 min

Remaking the River That Remade L.A.February 1938 was a wet month in Los Angeles. Reservoirs overflowed, dams topped out and floodwaters careered down Pacoima Wash and Tujunga Wash toward the Los Angeles River. The Los Angeles River was never a storybook river of the kind that, like the Hudson or the Seine, we associate with great cities. Among the naysayers is a venerable organization called Friends of the Los Angeles River, founded by the Texas-born poet and performance artist Lewis MacAdams. “With all the problems L.A. is facing,” he said, “even if it costs $50 billion to fix the river, we should just effing do it.”The headwaters of the Los Angeles River aren’t easy to find.

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