Look Up - NYC

We were in NYC to meet up with our friend, Roopa, for lunch and then to spend the afternoon wandering around. As we were walking, I remembered my father’s words, to look up. Several months ago, I talked about the importance of looking up when you’re in a city. You often see details of the original architecture that have been eliminated or obliterated on the street level. Here’s some of what we saw.

The charming Puck, who stands over the entrance to the Puck Building. Who can resist a fat guy in a top hat?

Looking south to a building decorated a la Louis Vuitton.The front of the New Museum on Bowery Street.

The Bowery Savings Bank from the frontand the side. The incomparable E. Vogel, Custom Made Shoes & Boots. I had a pair of paddock boots from Vogel that were just stunning. Unfortunately, they were jettisoned when I moved to the UK. This building’s curved corner reminded me of the HQ of the National Trust in Washington DC. What you can’t see in the image were the amazing fluted columns on the second floor, which we could see through the beautiful huge windows.Sometimes you have to look down to see the unusual. Girl Props is one of my favourite places for funky and inexpensive costume jewelry.

And in NoLiTa, we saw a reminder of the area’s Italian heritage in mosaics on the doorstep, and also in the beautiful tile-work inside.

We saw this lovely gal hovering above an entrance just to the north of the huge Ralph Lauren store in Soho. All in all, a great trip up to NYC, a wonderful lunch with a dear friend, and lots of walking and talking with a pal.

National Trust (US) Walking Tour

The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the US has just announced a walking tour of once-endangered buildings in Washington, DC on Saturday, November 21.

“Begin with a stop at 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., the Beaux Arts headquarters of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Uncover the stories of Decatur House -- designed by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, whose prior work includes a wing of the Capitol -- on an insiders' tour. Lunch on your own at Barracks Row, a thriving, revitalized community in the Capitol Hill Historic District and the oldest commercial area in Washington, D.C. An architectural walking tour through the Embassy Row neighborhood features grand 19th-century mansions. Stop at the Georgian revival home of Woodrow Wilson -- now a house museum -- that showcases a collection including gifts of state from around the world. Attend an elegant tea at the Mayflower Hotel, considered the grande dame of luxury hotels by Washington's elite when it opened more than 80 years ago. Conclude with an exterior look at the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building, currently closed for renovations.”Architectural historian, author and National Trust employee Dwight Young will lead the tour and tickets can be booked here.

Housewerks on Daily Candy

Congratulations to my dear friends Tracey and Ben and their business, Housewerks, for the great piece in DC Daily Candy today.  I write about Housewerks frequently, because Tracey and Ben have such a great eye for unusual pieces and they put them all together in such a striking way. I am so pleased to see Housewerks getting the recognition it deserves!

A Lecture: When Buildings Try Too Hard

Icon (n) An important and enduring symbol.

I attended a lecture sponsored by the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, entitled “Buildings That Try Too Hard”. The speaker was Witold Rybczynski, the architecture critic for Slate magazine, author of more than fifty articles and papers on the subject of housing, architecture, and technology in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. So, he’s got some credentials!The main take-away point is that the public chooses what’s an icon, not the architect or the client. They are buildings which have a meaning beyond their original purpose, a symbolism. Today, so many clients are asking for an iconic building, but many fail miserably. Generally, a new apartment building is not an icon.

The lecture was divided into four parts: Icons, Instant Icons, Failed Icons and Anti-Icons.

Some of the icons were the Eiffel Tower which was built as a temporary structure, the Empire State Building, long the tallest building in the US, and the Washington Monument. Often these structures were not successful when first built, but gained a stature over the years. One question to ask about an icon is “Can you get the building in salt & pepper shaker form?”.Instant icons are buildings that are purpose built to become an icon. Many times, there is a competition for the building and the most outrageous is selected. Think about the Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the recent Beijing Olympic Stadium. For both Sydney and Bilbao, the buildings basically put these cities on the map. Failed Icons are buildings that really illustrate the point of trying too hard. The client figures that the Bilbao Guggenheim attracts millions of visitors, so if we do a titanium-skinned building, with all sorts of swoops and angles, then the visitors will come flocking to the space. Some of the examples of failures are the Millennium Dome in London, the Denver Art Museum, with all of it’s angled walls which are bad for hanging art! Anti-icons are buildings that are simple, classic and fully serving the purpose for which they were built. They function as they should, they are not full of jarring elements and pretensions and will continue to look timeless through the ages. Some of these include Seiji Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, The Sainsbury Center in Norwich, England and The Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, Texas.What are your iconic buildings, and what are the ones that you consider failed icons?