Philip Johnson

• Mr. Goodbar's bombshell Tuesday Weld is selling her oceanfront Montauk home for about $10 million. She says, "It's like being on a yacht." [WSJ]
• Critic and architect Peter Blake is dead at 86. His books include the well-titled "Form Follows Fiasco" (subtitled "Why Modern Architecture Hasn't Worked"!). He collaborated on Philip Johnson's Glass House, and, out in Water Mill, he built for his family the gleeful 1955 Pinwheel House. [Metropolis]
• It's another sign of Manhattan's swift descent into evil postmodern chaos, brought upon simply by the tough real estate market! Peter Marigold is selling fancy "transportable, modular shelving... perfect for renters who must leave the surfaces of their homes undisturbed." And here's this: "They're available in expandable polypropylene that will expand to fit your space exactly." [Apartment Therapy]
• Babylon, NY, goes green. [Multi-Housing News]
• West 51st Street's essential Le Bernardin has introduced a new surf and turf menu. For shame, sirs! In other news, Jay McInerney's new wife "never met a pork belly she didn't like." [House & Garden]
- Max Abelson
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How do you like your steak? Corn-fed or grass-fed? Grilled or roasted? Aged 28, 42 or 56 days?  read more »

• We've been stirred from our week-long beauty sleep with the news that the 110 apartment buildings of Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village are on the block for $5 billion. The Times coverage is a joyous string of zingers: the sale "would be the biggest deal for a single American property in modern times" and "This is the ego dream of the world" and "They have to raise the rents or convert it to a condo." Ego dream indeed. (New York Times)
• A State Supreme Court justice has refused to stop construction at the 26-story New York University dorm going up on East 12th. Greenwich Village activists retort: "NYU has been the worst neighbor in every respect possible." Sadly, bad neighboring isn't illegal yet. (Newsday)
• The late Philip Johnson's partner Alan Richie will be converting a 12,778-square-foot office building at 5 East 44th Street into--(wait for it)--luxury condos. But first, of course, the old Grand Central neighbor will be demolished. (The Real Deal)
• The Post reports some very hard facts on 7 World Trade Center: The big deal (or "Big One") is Moody's lease for 700,000-plus square feet. When will that deal be done? It "won't be done until it's done." Right. (New York Post)
• Ex-senator real-estate drama! D'Amato has been hired to lobby against Pataki's plans to turn the Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. The Dolans and MSG are tangled up in this, as are the nightmare egos of the world. (New York Sun)
- Max Abelson  read more »
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Any day is a good day to celebrate the life of the sleek Philip Johnson, but July 26 will be perfect. The developers of his final project, The Urban Glass House, are throwing a soiree "to celebrate the building's completion." And, lest you've already forgotten, it will be the late Mr. Johnson's 100th birthday.  read more »

If the Giorgione hors d'oeuvres at 330 Spring Street don't make you feel good, then surely the $50,000 donation for the restoration of the real Glass House (up in New Canaan) might do the trick.

- Max Abelson

Last night, roughly 100 people attended the unofficial Tribeca Film Festival screening of Sketches of Frank Gehry, director Sydney Pollack's documentary on the famous architect (who also happens to be his friend, too).

Every seat was taken in the DOLBY screening room (formerly the MGM room). But a handful of invited guests snagged director's chairs that were placed along the sides of the small theater.

Regis Philbin, Ken Burns, and Morley Safer were amongst the notable names in the crowd--which was comprised mostly of film industry types.

Mr. Pollack addressed the audience prior to the start of the 82-minute film by saying, "one thing I've never learned is how to introduce a film."  read more »

Nevertheless, Mr. Pollack began by discussing his first visit to Guggenheim Bilbao several years ago. Unfortunately, it occurred under less than ideal circumstances.

It was with mixed results that Gabriel Brewer, of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, quoted Philip Johnson: "I am a whore and I am paid very well for high rise buildings," the line attributed to the late, great Johnson goes.

Brewer, whose firm has had its hand in projects commissioned by Disney, Rice University and Harvard, was speaking at a panel discussion at the Dahesh Museum of Art on Friday on the topic of architecture and patronage; Steven W. Semes, an architect in his own practice since 1999 and author of The Architecture of the Classical Interior, moderated.

The question, as Semes put it, was: “How do you cultivate a good patron?”

But it started to sound as though the question was really, “are today’s patrons cultivated enough to choose good architects?”  read more »

The “enlightened patron,” Brewer said, is one who chooses an architect other than Frank Gehry or Richard Meier, who are already marketing points in New York real estate.

“I think it is a departure from the ordinary developer buildings that are hailed as luxury,” said architect Annabelle Selldorf. “I feel strongly that this is going to be an exceptional residential building in lower Manhattan.”

Today at noon, roughly 40 topping out party-goers donned hardhats and braved the windy rooftop of the new Urban Glass House, the last residential commission of the late Philip Johnson. Architect Alan Ritchie was on hand, along with developer Charles Blaichman, who has profited nicely from a previous high-end, modern condo project—the first two Richard Meier buildings.

And like the the Perry Street fishbowl, marketing is king. For the Urban Glass House there have already been giant billboards, and promotional materials stressing the connection to Johnson's iconic home in New Canaan.

“He was the one who supported calling this The Urban Glass House. What he was thinking about—I venture to speculate—was not so much that it is identical to the Glass House in Connecticut, but he was referring to the light and space and air that he afforded this building, introducing these floor to ceiling glass partitions.”  read more »

After the coffee and sandwiches, everyone left the event with a hardcover promotional book that included a short Johnson biography and, of course, full-color interior shots of the building's super-sleek amenities. And even if you can’t afford your own modernist residence (prices expected to run from $1.6 to $10 million), the gift bags emblazoned with close-ups of the architects still makes quite the fashion statement.

-Michael Calderone

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  read more »

Philip Johnson, the dean of American architecture, will turn 95 on July 8.  read more »

The friend who drove me to Brasserie for dinner was not in great shape.  read more »

In Wall Street , Oliver Stone's smarmy take on 1980's-era greed, there's a scene in which his haples  read more »