In 1908 the great Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudí was retained to design a grand hotel for New York City. The location chosen was the site upon which the twin-towered World Trade Center would eventually be built between 1962 and 1974....

According to the architectural critic Charles A. Jencks, the heroic first phase of modernism died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 5:32 P.M. central daylight time when Minoru Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe public housing project was demolished for its negative social impact. In a final paroxysm of irony postmodernism ended with the destruciton of an other building by Minoru Yamasaki - The World Trade Center in New York City, 09/11/2001 at 8:45 - 9:03 am edst.

The Bauharoque is the third phase of modernism, sometimes called post-post-modernism, trans-modernism, or neo-modernism - the word means the utopian impulse of the bauhaus is united with the theatricality of the baroque. This period in history transcends science-fiction... and all technology will be actual living structures.

Another example of the "bauhauroque" might be the nanotechnological "grown buildings" in post-earthquake Japan that William Gibson discusses in Idoru. Gibson never actually describes them--only characters turning away from them with a queasy feeling--but I imagine them to be somewhere between Gaudi and HR Giger, giant complex structures made of organic compounds resembling living tissue. [cue eerie synthesizer sounds]
- tom moody 2-20-2002 6:33 pm

Probably Laffoley's most famous piece (although not very visually representative of his other work) is Das Urpflanze Haus (the primordial plant house) which he describes as a technological attempt at creating a primordial plant - not by finding it in nature, as Goethe attempted in his younger years - but by creating it through grafting technology. This primordial plant (containing characteristics from every other plant) would then be "trained" through established cultivation and genetic engineering techniques to grow into a housing unit. Or at least that's how I understood the project. This was featured in one of the big art magazines (Art Forum?) many years ago. I think there was a model of a finished "house" which served as the art piece. But as always, Laffoley's art pieces are serious (although wackily far out) designs intended to benefit mankind. I'm pretty sure he sees Das Urpflanze as a genuine solution to the housing problem. Just sprinkle the seeds around, and boom! free housing for everyone. He reminds me of Buckminster Fuller in this way: amazing artist, architect, engineer who is genuinely (naively?) trying to solve all of humanities problems. Of course when I heard Laffoley speak he admitted that this was just a practice run for the grand plan, which is to convert every atom of matter in the universe into some sort of giant computing device, so I'm not saying any of this would work. And I haven't even mentioned the plan for the time machine which he insists would work today (although we'd have to drill a hole through the center of the earth and put this enormous contraption into orbit....) And I specifically skipped over the alien implant in his brain stem found by dental xrays. But it is all so fascinating, if hard to swallow. Or maybe it's fascinating because it's hard to swallow.

I actually haven't read Idoru. I should probably clear up that gap. I'm sure Laffoley would consider those buildings bauhauroque. One might even assume Gibson is familiar with his work.
- jim 2-20-2002 6:59 pm

Here's a couple Gaudi sketches for the hotel.
- jim 2-23-2002 10:32 pm

Let me introduce you the project that we have been developing since 1999, starting our work in the CADA (center for advanced digital applications, New York University)...We have made an interactive interface (CDROM) in wich you can access to the whole construction original plans, virtual 3D animated model, difernts locations for the building in the city( including and starring it the ground zero). Antoni Gaudí’s Project for the Building of a Skyscraper in New York is an unique project. This activity consists of the publishing of a CD with a compilation of ambience music and a final interactive track where 3-D images of the building (created by myself) can be seen, as well as Gaudí’s original sketches and the drawings of Joan Matamala, both from the Reial Càtedra Gaudí. There will also be a web site (www.hotelattraction.com), a travelling exhibit with reproductions of computer graphics of the buildings on canvas will be held. Organization and production: Marc Mascort i Boix and Reial Càtedra Gaudí It´s a way of making PUBLIC this project who has an extended net of contribuitors like Gaudí 2002 International Gaudí's year 2002 is Gaudí Year. The 150th anniversary of his birth is being commemorated with a full programme of activities which take us inside the fascinating universe of a creative artist who was much more than just an architect. Thanks to the numerous exhibitions, lecture cycles, publications, festivals, and theatre and dance spectacles, we will have the opportunity of discovering Gaudí the architect, designer, urban planner, thinker and mystic, observer of nature and researcher. Gaudí leaves no-one indifferent. Unique, controversial and enigmatic artist, author of a fascinating, admired and unique oeuvre, he is an inextinguishable source of inspiration. During 2002, the culture industry also pays homage to Gaudí in a great many ways. like the edition of this CDROM also supported by Spanish Ministry of Education, Arts and Sport, with the participation of a great many other institutions,entities. Gaudí International Year is organised by the Ajuntament de Barcelona, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Spanish Ministry of Education, Arts and Sport, with the participation of a great many other institutions and entities. Antoni Gaudí’s Project of a Grand Hotel in New York 1.10.2002 - 31.10.2002 Reial Càtedra Gaudí and Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB) In 1908 Gaudí designed a hotel for the city of New York, in the form of an organic skyscraper. This enormous building –with the shape of a tower similar to those of the Sagrada Família– was to be about three hundred meters high, and was to have rooms on all of the facades. In its immense interior, there were to be five enormous, overlapping dining rooms, where the culinary culture of every continent would be represented. Joan Matamala, Gaudí’s disciple, later recovered this project that was never carried out and redrew it, thus showing how at a very specific moment the metropolitan energy of New York at the beginning of the century coincided with Gaudí’s visionary delirium. The present exhibit focuses on the construction of the model of this hotel-temple on a large scale by the ETSAB. Also, the different parallel documents are shown (original drawings, photographs, recreations, etc.) which the work itself has generated. The model will be shown at the Reial Càtedra Gaudí and the drawings, photographs, and complementary material, in the exhibition hall of the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona. The timetable is the same as that of the Càtedra Gaudí. Organization: Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Reial Càtedra Gaudí I would like to show it all to you asap, if it is of your interest and Paul laffoley´s ´s too. please visit the following URL for an extended and more grafic explanation of our project. Wich will be exhibited next October A project is been developed for Gaudí´s project for New York.project started...1999! more info; http://www.hotelattraction.com/publicitat.htm http://www.hotelattraction.com/mostratot.htm http://www.gaudi2002.bcn.es/english/programa/prot_14.htm proposal for replace WTC at : http:/www.buildthetowers.org/designs/design.asp?di=mmascort
- marc mascort (guest) 5-08-2002 3:43 pm

I'm an Englishman, who greatly admires Gaudi's work. Unfortunately, I don't think this included a Grand Hotel for NYC, the only reference to which (that I can find) is in Laffoley's article. I suspect the "design" and the story of Gaudi's failed involvement is actually by Laffoley himself. It is certainly consistent with his style, and a work of art in its own right. Nevertheless, WHAT A GREAT IDEA! whoever thought of it. To a foreigner, that image is a magnificent memorial, and an uplifting riposte to evil. Go for it New York!
- malcolm (guest) 8-07-2002 3:33 pm

A Grand Hoax would be consistent with Laffoley's literary forebearer's; along the lines of Borges in
Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote.
- frank 8-07-2002 5:30 pm