Frank Gehry

In an effort to gin up publicity for Frank Gehry's first Manhattan residential cloud-buster, the so-called Beekman Tower, developer Forest City Ratner will unveil the design in a ceremony on Friday afternoon.

The development will be Mr. Gehry's second in Manhattan, following his wildly succesful design for the IAC headquarters on 11th Avenue.

The Beekman Tower is slated to rise 76 stories between Spruce and Beekman streets, with 903 market-rate rental apartments inside.  read more »

Livable-city activists celebrated the latest, coolest additions to the city’s urban landscape on Thursday inside the stark white interior of Frank Gehry’s first building in New York City, the IAC headquarters on 11th Avenue.

The occasion was the Municipal Art Society’s 2008 MASterwork Awards, which, according to the program, “honor the year’s top projects for their excellence in architecture and urban design, and their contribution to New York’s built environment.”

A motley assortment of New York bold-faced names showed up for the event, including Diane Von Furstenberg, there to receive a Best Historic Preservation award for the DVF Studio Headquarters at 440 West 14th Street in the Meatpacking District.

So did developer extraordinaire Jerry Speyer, who served on the awards committee and who presented the Best Building awards; and Ann Buttenwieser, who accepted a Best Neighborhood Catalyst award for her Floating Pool Lady, that pool-in-a-barge parked last summer at the foot of Brooklyn Heights.  read more »

Lawsuits against architects must be as plentiful as plasterboard, but when the client is Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy and the architect is Frank Gehry, well, even the Boston Globe takes notice.

MIT is saying that “deficient design services and drawings” have led to leaks, cracks, mold and a $1.5 million reconstruction of the amphitheater at the Stata Center.

Most surprisingly, the construction contractor for the building, which was also sued, is publicly blaming the architect as well:

"This is not a construction issue, never has been," said Paul Hewins, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA. He said Gehry rejected Skanska's formal request to create a design that included soft joints and a drainage system in the amphitheater, and "we were told to proceed with the original design."

Forest City Ratner is looking to compete for some of New York’s scarce tax-exempt bonds to finance a Frank Gehry–designed tower in lower Manhattan.  read more »

The mission of the High Line, the future park that will rest on an elevated train platform slicing a  read more »

"Americans are frightened of density. Europe is not.”    read more »

Norman Oder uncovered a little document on his blog that says volumes about the way things get built in New York: On Jan. 13 of this year, Forest City Ratner presented the Department of City Planning with four different versions of the Atlantic Yards complex, ranging from a massive 8.76 million zoning square feet, which was the publicized version at the time, to a slightly smaller 7.96-million-square-foot version. (By comparison, the Williamsburgh Bank Building nearby is about 400,000 square feet.)

When City Planning urged an 8 percent reduction in scale, it was merely asking the developer to adopt something like Option 20B, which was the least dense of the four Frank Gehry versions that developer Bruce Ratner had shown commissioners. What's surprising isn't so much the back-room negotiations as the fact that City Planning did not push for anything substantially smaller than what Ratner was apparently comfortable with.

The planning commissioners even passed up Ratner's offer to cut the tallest tower, Miss Brooklyn, by 25 feet, preferring the reductions to come off a building that was closer to Park Slope's brownstones.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn Speaks, the moderate wing of the Atlantic Yards opposition sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and other groups, charges that the project as presented in the final environmental impact statement "has only been changed in response to comments submitted by the Department of City Planning, and not those by the general public." - Matthew Schuerman

• 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  read more »
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Our claim from July that Atlantic Yards would be the densest census tract in the country seems to be sowing some confusion, which is just as well, because we never really said that.

What we said was that Atlantic Yards would be twice as dense as the densest census tract in the country, but nothing about it being its own census tract. The 22-acre project spans four census tracts, as you can see from the map above, which we have borrowed from NoLandGrab, an opposition blog. The red parts are where Frank Gehry's skyscrapers and arena will go.  read more »

Because all of this confusion made us curious, we went ahead and calculated what effect the new population would have on the densities of those four census tracts. No, none of those tracts will become the densest in the nation, but one of them, 129.02, which will host the basketball arena and three skyscrapers, would apparently leap into the ranks of the 100 densest tracts.

This is what’s missing from so many of the restaurants I’ve been to lately: the feminine  read more »

• Steves Roth and Ross have a little $7 billion plan to move Madison Square Garden a block west. And to build the Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station, of course. And to transform Pennsylvania Station by erecting a monumental glass canopy (plus 20 Corinthian columns). And to construct five towers on top of Penn Station. "We are about making money here on a grand scale," Mr. Roth admits. (A political "battle royale" The Times declares, "seems unlikely.") (The New York Times)
• Jonathan Lethem flexes his argumentative muscles, penning a 2317-word open later to Frank Gehry. Some choice phrases: "out-of-scale flotilla of skyscrapers," "mendacious flimflam," and "slickly patronizing." (Slate, via Curbed)
• Really, our hotel industry is doing just fine: if the Hotel Association of NYC ratifies a new labor deal with the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council today, a potentially horrific citywide strike just might be avoided. (Crain's)
• Can shunning real estate brokers save sellers money? Sort of. But Prudential Douglas Elliman Senior VP Corinne Pulitzer makes a really convincing case against independence: "We don't drill our own teeth if we're a dentist, and we would go to a real estate professional--both buyer and seller--to understand the data." Exactly. (NY1)
• Weird New York beaches are all the rage: the only thing keeping Manhattan tanners from the scenic shores of Astoria, Battery Park and DUMBO are the beaches' isolation, neglect and pollution--plus the potential for drowning. (NY Daily News)
• You only have to sacrifice a nation-high $175 (per foot, of course) in order to join the so-called Country Club--a group of skyscrapingly elite Manhattan office buildings. It's really a small price to pay for hanging out with Ron "Klimt" Lauder. (New York Post)
- Max Abelson
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There was a year or two that I wanted one, and didn't spring for it, and a good thing too. Now they're everywhere. This one stared me down in my room at the Wyndham Hotel chain this weekend.

Didn't buy a Frank Gehry building either.  read more »

James Gardner in today's Sun says, "My sympathies incline slightly toward the builders," but belittles Frank Gehry's design for Atlantic Yards anyway, seeing in the skyscrapers allusions to 1930s architecture that are unsuccessfully translated into the modern day. Meanwhile, Jim Stuckey and Daniel Goldstein go at it on The Brian Lehrer Show. -Matthew Schuerman

The Times reports Richard Brodsky has dropped out of the race for Attorney General; Frank Gehry defends the Atlantic Yards project; and its Public Lives section features Kevin Keating, maker of the new documentary Giuliani Time.

The Sun reports on Brian Ellner's new job.

And the Post reports on the LMDC power struggle between Bloomberg and Pataki.

—Nicole Brydson

• Mayor Bloomberg wants more, more, more near the WTC site. And, he's willing to shell out an equal amount for it. Developer Joseph Moinian might receive $50 million in Liberty Bonds for his hotel and condo tower. (The New York Sun)
• The brick layers and asbestos cleaners have a whole new building for themselves. (New York Daily News)
• The Nets wants to move to Brooklyn to make more money. Jay-Z is their inspiration, and financier. (The New York Times)
• The Corcoran Sunshine Group has two new leaders. We know you can't wait to find out... (New York Post)
• Years from now, Larry Silverstein will be deemed correct. Meanwhile, shall we scorn? (New York Post)
• Well-heeled Upper East Siders may have to learn how to open their front door while carrying their Barneys bags. (Gothamist)
• Patricia Field sexes up the Bowery. (The Village Voice)
• Williamsburg is not what it once was. Now, it's not just Hasids in the real estate game. Prudential Douglas Elliman is opening an office in the hood. (The Real Deal)
• Brad Pitt wants to be Frank Gehry, and Gehry wants to be Jay-Z, and they all want to capitalize on this thing we like to call a boom. (Yale Daily)

- Riva Froymovich

The ultimate beneficiary of Governor Pataki’s $80 million gesture to Ground Zero seems to be Frank Gehry’s performing arts center, which had been put on the back burner because of its enormous price tag (rumored at more than $400 million).

John Whitehead, the chairman of both the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, said today, “The foundation will continue its capital campaign to raise $500 million. The excess of that will go to the performing arts center. And now the governor has announced that he will pay the cost of the Snohetta building, which would have had to come out of our total.”

Previously, it was awfully vague just how much the Gehry building would have received of the $800 million that the memorial foundation hopes to raise from private sources and the L.M.D.C. Presumably, after the memorial, memorial museum, the Snohetta, and an operating endowment, not a whole lot. Instead, the performing arts center was to be left to “a second phase” (a.k.a. never).

So was Pataki’s announcement today a mea culpa for nixing the International Freedom Center? Or was it a challenge to Mayor Bloomberg to contribute some dough from the city treasury?  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

On Saturday afternoon, architect Frank Gehry and New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff discussed architecture (and much more) before a sold-out audience at the CUNY Graduate Center, part of the newspaper’s Arts & Leisure Weekend.

For a while, the conversation glided effortlessly through Mr. Gehry’s oeuvre, complete with an introductory slideshow of renowned works--from the Guggenheim Bilbao to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

But then Mr. Ouroussoff turned his attention to Mr. Gehry’s controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. The negative reaction should not have been too surprising: Some bitter residents wore antagonistic t-shirts and stickers condemning the project (i.e. “Welcome to Ratnerville”). Also in attendance, blogger Norman Oder--a critic of both the development and the New York Times coverage--reported in depth on some of the project’s specifics that the architect tried to address.

A self-professed “do-gooder, lefty type,” Mr. Gehry spoke of the future Nets arena and, and shockingly blurted out, “First of all, it’s an empty site.” A handful of jeers followed. Admitting he was getting into “deep shit,” Mr. Gehry switched gears and said that the project will be built in an “existing neighborhood.” Pleading his case, Mr. Gehry emphasized trying to “break down the scale” of the massive development, using various materials, and dealing with residential concerns that could arise with a basketball arena nearby.

“If a guy comes home from work and he wants to cool out, he’s not barraged by imagery and bright lights,” he said.

Next, Mr. Ouroussoff brought up other less-controversial topics, but the table was set for a rowdy Q&A period, where four critics of developer Bruce Ratner’s project hurled questions at the 76-old architect. Mr. Gehry said that the developer was “politically like me,” and “if it got out of whack with my own principles, I would walk away.”

But that didn’t appease everyone.

First, a Brooklyn architect aficionado accused Mr. Gehry of operating in a “non-Jane Jacobs” manner, with superblocks destroying the “existing neighborhood.” When asked what he would build instead, the questioner ventured into a lengthy explanation that irritated some audience members who had sought a mild-mannered, 92nd Street Y sort of affair. Or at least one where the celebrity speaker gives detailed thoughts on architecture, rather than an unknown audience member.

Next, Peter Krashes, President of the Dean Street Block Association, brought up the Atlantic Yards. (Afterwards, Mr. Krashes confronted Mr. Gehry while signing autographs. Mr. Gehry said he would meet with the community group only after first getting clearance from Jim Stuckey, Vice President of Forest City Ratner).

During the Q&A, Mr. Krashes asked several uncomfortable questions. Not surprisingly, Mr. Gehry’s genial manner abruptly changed.

“It’s not fair to nail me on this here,” he exclaimed. “Let’s do it another time.” The audience, who each dropped $35 a head to hear Mr. Gehry speak, began clapping loudly and consistently, until Mr. Krashes finally sat back down. The fourth (and final) question about Atlantic Yards mentioned “eminent domain abuse,” effectively closing the subject.

“No comment,” said Mr. Gehry tersely.

Noticeably upset, Mr. Gehry even asked Mr. Ouroussoff at one point if they were almost done with the entire discussion. Finally, the architecture critic ended the unpleasant ordeal, and Mr. Gehry quickly exited the stage.

If only the audience could have stuck to simple questions, like advice to a young architect, being a guest on The Simpsons or hanging out with Brad Pitt.  read more »

-Michael Calderone

In an October speech that Bruce Ratner opponents have just unearthed, architect Frank Gehry told a Columbia University audience that he had tried to convince the developer to scale down the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, to no avail. More recently, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff suggested that the project may indeed be too big for the 76-year-old master—who has done a lot of buildings but never a minor city--to handle. -Matthew Schuerman  read more »

Last night at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, Parsons dean Paul Goldberger conveniently recited a line from designer Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth: “Don't be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black.” Wearing black pants and a button down shirt, Mr. Mau burst out laughing. "I know, I'm in a rut."

For almost 90 minutes, Mr. Mau discussed his collaborations with architects Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry (most recently on the InterActiveCorp. headquarters under construction in Chelsea), obsessive typography, Rotterdam, public space, and the catastrophe in New Orleans. There is a webcast available, but here are a few highlights:

BM: [Design] is a marginal activity. You need only go to Rotterdam to see what happens when it’s not. Suddenly, every building is attractive, and it’s terrible…. You end up with a kind of screaming ordinary, which is not very pleasant. Each building is just desperate for a 90 degree angle.”

BM: We have to get to a scale of design that we are a little bit reticent of. In Massive Change, we talk about what we are actually doing. It’s not utopian and it’s not futuristic. It’s what we are actually doing, and how we control the world now, and how we control nature and it’s capacities--sometimes successfully, sometimes catastrophically, and sometimes accidentally…. We certainly have an ambition that is comprehensive and universal.

BM: This happened with us in Seattle, which was a disaster. When we talked to Rem about how we would work, we had a fabulous… PG: The library? BM. Seattle Public Library. We had a fabulous and exciting, open collaboration about the future of the library in the 21st century. And we worked for several months on that basis. At some point, we met the people at the library who were very enthusiastic…. But they hired a managing firm. The managing firm came in and said, “We don’t have a line item for ‘open collaboration.'"  read more »

Parsons’ conversation series continues in the spring with fashion designer Donna Karan and architect (and “power geezer”) Michael Graves.

-Michael Calderone

We hadn’t thought of calling David Walentas a few weeks ago when we did a piece for the Observer on the re-emergence of superblocks at Ground Zero and Brooklyn. It turns out the King of Dumbo has some firm ideas about urban planning. When asked innocently the other day what he thought of the Atlantic Yards complex, designed by Frank Gehry and proposed by rival Forest City Ratner, Walentas delivered this treatise:

“I think the Nets are good. I think the transportation is good. I think the housing is too dense and I think the superblocks they have there is a bad idea. I think superblocks don’t work anywhere in America. I think you need streets between buildings. You need traffic and pedestrians for safety and activity and shops and restaurants. But architects like these utopian kinds of ideas. They don’t work….

“I think that it will really change and connect those neighborhoods. The railroad yards are not beautiful. They are a terrible barrier and I think it will connect those neighborhoods….

“We did a rehab on a big property out in Queens that was built in the 60s and it was a disaster because they had closed the streets and they had made these superblocks-Kew Garden Hills, 150th between Kissena and Main-it was six or eight city blocks. They had closed the streets and made these superblocks and it was a disaster. So we put the streets back in. Superblocks don’t work. People in urban areas not only need streets. You need shops on the streets. You need parking on the streets. That’s what a city is about. Whether a building is 10 stories or 20 stories doesn’t matter. It’s a big mistake.”  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

All eyes will are on the Democratic primary today—visit sister site The Politiker for updates—but Bruce Ratner and Frank Gehry aren’t far behind. Several civic groups, including NYPIRG and Citizens Union criticized the MTA for not disclosing the financial projections—i.e. expected profits—that are included in Forest City Ratner’s proposal to build a 24-acre live-work-spectator complex in central Brooklyn.

But wait! Is that area even safe for Gehry? The Daily Heights reports on a “car bomb” on Dean Street (via Curbed).  read more »

Meanwhile, another public agency is exploring revenue-enhancement deals. Consider this: companies might pay to be named the official tile-cleansing agent of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. If you live Uptown, The Sun warns luxury car owners: Watch your headlights!

A report today by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that the proposed Atlantic Yards basketball arena would net (hee-hee) the city about $1 million a year. The upshot: a little political cover for project supporters, though its opponents are claiming victory, too.

In other words, what the city loses from its $100 million donation—plus some other goodies—it would make up over 30 years in sales and incomes taxes, and then a wee bit more. (Those are taxes from all the players, team execs and spectators, mind you, not the developer, Forest City Ratner.)

Considering the developer is going to save $90 million from using low-interest bonds that the state will arrange for them, the municipal profit may sound meager. But the IBO did not investigate the impact of the rest of the Frank Gehry-designed megalopolis, which will include 6,000 condos and rentals and 1.5 million square feet or so of office space. The report speculates, however, that it would be "reasonable to conclude that the fiscal impact for the entire project would be positive as well.”

The state—in contrast to the city--makes out like a bandit: $70.5 million, plus the right to collect tax-equivalency payments in the long run. Okay, maybe not a bandit. A pickpocket?  read more »

--Matthew Schuerman

Don't miss today's story on Elizabeth Redvers, a 15-year-old model-hopeful. It's truly... wow.

Of course, last night the Observer broke the news about Rupert Murdoch installing himself as publisher of the NY Post.

And, in The Transom itself, the story of two dogs, one rich, one poor, and the assault that brought them together. Plus, the second item, on Citizens Band, explicates the new sincere downton cabaret.

The summer reading round-up is rather fantastic: Janet Malcolm is reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Daniel Harris' Diary of a Drag Queen. When asked what she liked about the books, she replied, "What's not to like?" Ah, Ms. Malcolm, always the marvel of economy. And Nicholas Kristoff is reading... Harry Potter. And from Frank Gehry: "What makes you think I read?" Indeed.  read more »

Also: Thomas Krens takes his apartment off the market. What means this for the museum director's Guggenheimlich future?

When Frank Gehry abruptly pulled out of a 2000 competition to design The New York Times’ new headq  read more »

When Frank Gehry abruptly pulled out of a 2000 competition to design The New York Times’ new h  read more »

The folks over at www.nolandgrab.com may have a point about Frank Gehry's design for downtown Brooklyn's "crystal city." UPDATE: The Gutter weighs in on what it calls nolandgrab.com's "anti-prosperity jihad."  read more »

All those protesters who have trailed Brooklyn Beep Marty Markowitz over the past 18 months chanting "Not a done deal" were right. A surprise bidder, Gary Barnett’s Extell Development Corp., made an offer today (Wednesday) on the MTA’s Atlantic Yards and might bump off Frank Gehry’s Crystal City.

Barnett--not to be confused with the Gary Barnett of college football infamy--joined with the Carlyle Group to buy out Donald Trump (and a whole bunch of other people who probably held a greater stake but who don’t count because they’re nobodies) on the West Side last month. Extell’s also building a 60-story condo building at 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue.  read more »

The MTA press office wouldn’t say how much they were offering, or what Extell had in mind, but somehow we don’t think he’ll want to put in that organic dairy farm the neighbors pitched.

--Matthew Schuerman

... for Nets arena opponents: A New York Times survey finds that just 37 percent of New Yorkers favor the plan. (Click on "Poll Watch: New York Times/CBS News Poll" for Javascript Pop-up; see questions 73 and 74.)

And, once told the development will cost $200 million in public funds, fewer than 50 percent of those yea-sayers like the idea.

The Times has yet to publish these results in its pages--61 percent against, 18 percent for, with a 3 percent margin of error--which were part of a June 21-26 poll on the mayoral race.

They didn't even make the cut in today's reaction story about how brownstoners would rather breast-feed in peace than face an influx of Frank Gehry titanium.

Opponent-in-chief Daniel Goldstein has been crying foul for months over the Times' coverage, which he says is biased because the same developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, is building the paper of record's new midtown headquarters.

An unscientific online Newsday poll is running 78-20 against the arena, part of a $3.5 billion plan to bring 17 high rises, including about 2,250 apartments for low- and middle-income households, to the borough of churches.  read more »

- Matthew Schuerman

Late on the afternoon of Dec.  read more »

"I'm not very good at talking to people that I don't know, which sounds weird.  read more »

Herbert Muschamp, The New York Times ' architecture critic, is stepping down from his post much as h  read more »

Poor baby High Line!  read more »

"Drop Tuition, Not FOIL" read a message scrawled on a white sheet that greeted guests at the recent  read more »

By now everyone's heard of the Condé Nast cafeteria, soaring above 42nd Street with its jazzy Frank  read more »

When 20-year-old San Anselmo, Calif., native John Walker headedto Afghanistan to fight with the Tali  read more »

Why is it that announcements of new art-museum construction, which used to bring cheer to so many ar  read more »

A few years after the Brazilian bikini wax tore through the city, New York women were ripe for a new  read more »

The Condé Nast cafeteria has only been open a week, but it's already clear which part is SiberiaThe  read more »

It may be too soon to speak of a pattern to be discerned in the exhibition program now in place at w  read more »