As soon as the vented metal panels came up on the new Columbia University science building on Broadway and 120th Street, it was clear to many what the building was forming into. We pointed out way back in May 2009 that the newest addition to Columbia's century old campus was starting to look like a giant air conditioning unit sittng on the street corner. New York Magazine just had a critique of the structure this week and here's what they had to say:"But if the architect is solicitous toward the future, he turns a stone shoulder to Broadway now. A street-level palisade of granite (fronting a preexisting structure) ensures that the sidewalk will remain perpetually dead. In other projects, like the Los Angeles Cathedral and his addition to the Prado, Moneo has proved himself a poet of the blank wall. He is the anti-showman, concealing intricacy in austere shells, making his buildings at once generous and forbidding, glamorous and dour. In his New York debut, that balance comes off wrong. The outside resembles a cooling unit, another depressing entry in Columbia’s unproud tradition."
The Diana Center down the block designed for Barnard is turning out nicely as we previously mentioned and the NY Magazine article is also in agreement. Maybe the dean at Columbia should be using the Barnard folks to make some decision going forward seeing that most of the modern structures on campus have been universally panned. Read more about it in the article: LINK or our past post: LINK. Photos by Ulysses
This is the worst kind of architecture for New York, dead sidewalks. It may benefit the architects vision but permanently makes for a comatose city block. I really hope this is not the street life Columbia has planned for us, like the sterile streets of Columbia around 168th street. I guess this architect just does not understand New York.
ReplyDeleteThis building looks about as welcoming as a toxic logo. Also, it would do New York Magazine good to come up with some original metaphors.
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be nearly as bad had they just done horizontal grills instead of adding the random diagnoal ones. They are visually distracting and add a sense of disorganization and chaos.
ReplyDeleteKinda looks like a giant cheese grater gone wrong.
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