Tuesday: Gehry & Foster, 'Law & Order', Castles & Schools

Stormin' Lord Norman

• Paul Goldberger calls Frank Gehry's new West Side Highway building "serene," "swooping" and "daring." The critic forgot the adjectives "frosty" and "hideous" because he was saving his ire for Mr. Gehry's Atlantic Yards plan. But even at his bitchiest--he says the development isn't "palatable"-- Goldberger remembers his manners. (New Yorker)
• Speaking of manners, Nicolai Ouroussoff gives a full-body massage to Lord Norman Foster's "bold" plan for a 30-story residential tower atop 980 Madison Avenue. Doesn't that rendering look "ingenious"? (NY Times)
• Let's party with city schools like it's 1979! NYC has granted the World-Wide Group a 75-year lease of 1.5 acres at East 57th and Second Avenue--in exchange for a whole lot of dirty work. WWG will raze the two public schools there, replace them with two bigger ones, then develop a 59-story apartment building and plus four wide stories of retail space. (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is designing the tower, which helps make the deal a "win-win.") (NY Sun)
• bartha bartha, coming to a television near you. (Curbed)
• Do New York communities have a genuine say in big-business development? They do in the Bronx: Proposals for developing the kingly Kingsbridge Armory will be "responding to an outline shaped by community organizing and people power." People power is big, and so is the armory--it's 575,000 square feet. (City Limits)
• - Max Abelson