The Trump card

In a previous post I briefly alluded to my dislike of the Gwathmey building at Astor Place (445 Lafayette) by expressing a desire that we don’t see anything more of its ilk in my neighborhood. And even though much has been written about it, I will throw my own rant into the conversation because the building offends me daily (don’t forget, anyone who suggests therapy, will get punched in the neck).

I wrote about it in one of my SVA MFA application essays that explored why some buildings in NoHo work and some do not. This building does not. I will reprint part of the essay here:

"It struts arrogantly out of nowhere, so inconsistent to the vibe of the neighborhood that it seems as though the building is screaming an obscenity at it. It is defiant and has no reason to be. As I watched it go up, I experienced actual anger. Noho is a very inclusive and welcoming neighborhood. All this building ever said to me is “You don’t belong here. You can’t afford it. We don’t want you”.

I have heard it compared to a swimming pool because of the shape and the blue glass of its construction resembling water. I prefer to think of it as an amoeba. However neither a swimming pool nor an amoeba work as a door to the neighborhood. When a piece of modern architecture is situated side-by-side with handsome 19th century buildings it must be majestic, soaring, inspirational. It must lead. Paul Goldberger called the Gwathmey building “an elf prancing among men” with a “garishly reflective” façade channeling not Mies but Trump. (The New Yorker May 2005)

Mr. Gwathmey said, “This design is about the facets reflecting what is there” - that it reflected the neighborhood without it bowing down to the late 19th century environment. Because of the curve and the single glass frames, it appears we are looking at the building through the lens of his favorite toy (NYT, May 2004), the teleidoscope, rendering the reflection cubistic and not at all like the neighborhood.

On the ground floor of the Gwathmey building resides another urban blight: a bank, adding to the recent spate of bank branches on every corner. While this is technically a public space, it adds nothing to the public space. Pamela Puchalski, who created the Center for Architecture, told me that “architecture IS the public so it absolutely has a responsibility to a community beyond the individual - be it the owner who developed the building or the occupant” - that it needs to provide a nice experience for the people who are walking by. Sadly, the bank simply retains the coldness of the rest of the building and does not provide a nice experience. Ms. Puchalsky did dig more deeply into environmental and economic responsibility but those topics are for a wider discussion.

I have been in two of the apartments and they are cold, impersonal. The windows offer no privacy (much to the surprise of DS and DS). The rooms ramble on. There is no center. No core. No heart. The materials for the walls, doors, windows, drawer pulls, and doorknobs seem shabby."

Part of the offense lies in the time in which it was built. Had it been built in the financially aggressive (and finally destructive) 80’s, there may have been more applause for it. But in 2004, that sort of excess in New York belonged to the vulgarity of a Trump building and had no place in NoHo.




Hee!