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Ground Zero in 288 Pages
An annotated look at Libeskind’s opinionated new memoir.
By Boris Kachka ny metro
Ground-zero architect Daniel Libeskind, subject of blanket local coverage, hopes to fill in the remaining gaps in his new memoir, Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture. One of the biggest adventures, of course, has been his very public battle with architect David Childs, chosen by lease-holder Larry Silverstein to execute Libeskind’s master plan.
An index
Childs, David
Compared to the Jabberwocky (243)
Gives Libeskind “a warm hug” (244)
Ground-zero takeover plans compared to The Brothers Karamazov (249)
Libeskind’s “forced marriage to” (243–266)
Power-sharing arrangement compared to North–South Korea border tensions (255)
Treats wife Nina and female Libeskind CEO “like dogs,” says Libeskind lawyer Ed Hayes (255)
Storms out of a meeting (263)
Early employment
Constructs whalebone corsets for his mother, sees them as “applied Euclidean forms” (58)
Asked to perform “mindless, robotic action” as assistant for Richard Meier, quits (41)
Asked to sweep Peter Eisenman’s office, quits (42)
Eisenman, Peter
“No one has ever called him a mensch” (41)
Ground-zero developer Larry SilversteinM
Compared to Nikita Khrushchev (261)
“Not a man who cares much about how things look” (244)
Tells Libeskind, “I don’t want you touching my building” (245)
Jewish Museum in Berlin
Called an “architectural fart” by Berlin building director (134)
Opens on September 11, 2001 (13)
Philip Johnson says, “My God! It’s not possible that this building is actually going to get built, is it?” (140)
“Would not be about toilets” (6)
Johnson, Philip
Calls architecture “this queasy feeling in my stomach” (107)
“Gestured at the AT&T building and laughed—laughed at his own work!” (140)
Libeskind, Daniel
Accordion child prodigy (8–9)
Attends Cooper Union in the sixties, misses out on all the drugs (159)
Contributes a list to Rolling Stone’s “Cool” issue (156)
Labors manually at kibbutz as a child (225–226)
Late bloomer (6, 81, 98)
Lumped in with Sartre and Mao in the London Times (194)
“More cornball than cosmopolite . . . a grateful immigrant” (159)
Possibly a direct descendant of Prague’s Rabbi Loew, creator of the Golem (111)
Storms out of meetings (31, 134, 260)
Upstages a young Itzhak Perlman (9)
Upstages the New York Times’ Herbert Muschamp (31)
Work is brilliant, with human imperfections, like Mozart’s (128–130)
Libeskind, Nina
At age 20, first impression: “so beautiful she must be stupid” (105)
Single-handedly saves the Jewish Museum project (140–146)
Smooths things over with Muschamp (31)
Meier, Richard
Perry Street towers as gross violation of privacy (69–70)
Muschamp, Herbert
Comes out against Libeskind’s ground- zero proposal; Libeskind comments, “What insanity was this!” (167–172)
Has “wrapped his power around himself like a luxurious fur-lined cloak” (21)
Internal compass “swings quixotically” (22)
Keeps Libeskind waiting for an hour because he’s taking a long bath (22)
New York
A place where “nobody has said anything nasty to me” (274)
This is some good Herbert gossip (note: Aric Chen, quoted below, is the gossip columnist for The Architect's Newspaper. And this lawsuit is apparently 'the straw that broke the camel's back' with Herbert and his leading role at the Times). He is so self-destructive. I actually find it sad:
"And now, a word from Off the Record [NY Observer] architecture correspondent Gabriel Sherman:
On Sept. 12, Suzanne Stephens, a special correspondent for Architectural Record, was boarding Delta Airlines Flight 145 traveling back to New York from the Venice Biennale, and found she was seated in the same middle row as 56-year-old former architecture critic of The New York Times Herbert Muschamp.
Ms. Stephens, author of the just-published Imagining Ground Zero: The Official and Unofficial Proposals for the World Trade Center Site, and Mr. Muschamp came to blows earlier this year, when Ms. Stephens tried to include in her book architects who had contributed to a special issue of The New York Times Magazine that pulled together plans for the World Trade Center site, and which Mr. Muschamp had curated. Fellow Times reporter Julie Iovine was seated one row behind.
According to Ms. Stephens, upon realizing the pending seating arrangements, Mr. Muschamp promptly turned to Ms. Stephens and declared: "Would you mind switching seats with Julie [Iovine] so I don’t have to look at your fucking face?"
To which Ms. Stephens said she retorted, "Certainly, and may you rot in hell!"
The verbal volleys drew the attention of nearby passengers, according to sources on the flight. A woman from Croatia jumped up and said, "Well, it looks like you all know each other!" Other passengers sneaked curious looks towards Mr. Muschamp and Ms. Stephens.
"Herbert was already sitting down when I got to my row, and he turned and without saying hello, that’s when it happened," Ms. Stephens told Off the Record. "He told me, ‘Do you mind switching seats with Julie, so I don’t have to look at your fucking face?’ That’s when I answered back."
Neither Mr. Muschamp nor Ms. Iovine returned calls for comment before press time.
Eventually, Ms. Stephens and Ms. Iovine swapped seats, and then Mr. Muschamp and Ms. Iovine traded seats again before take off. Once the musical chairs between the smarting journalists subsided, the parties settled in for the flight, in which architects Jessie Reiser, Nanako Umemoto, Enrique Norten, Preston Scott Cohen, MoMA curator Paola Antonelli and director Spike Lee were also on board.
Aric Chen, a contributing editor at Surface Magazine and a design writer who has penned pieces for GQ and Elle Decor, was also on the plane, seated in the aisle across from the developing fracas.
"Throughout the entire flight, Herbert had this creepy smirk on his face. He had the look of someone who was unraveling," Mr. Chen said. "It was kind of a zombie-ish, smug little smirk."
According to a source familiar with the dispute between Ms. Stephens and Mr. Muschamp, it all began in February of this year, when Mr. Muschamp learned Ms. Stephens was preparing the book. Mr. Muschamp was reportedly furious that Ms. Stephens had contacted the architects in the Times Magazine spread—many of them his personal friends—without approaching him first. This winter, the two sides ratcheted up the legal rhetoric, with Ms. Stephens’ lawyer issuing a letter threatening to sue Mr. Muschamp for tortious interference and Mr. Muschamp threatening legal action of his own. The two sides finally reached an accord this spring, but by that time, most of the architects in the Times Magazine package declined to participate in Imagining Ground Zero.
"The Times was prevented from being represented in the book by one of their employees, and the project couldn’t show all the work of something The Times had sponsored, because of the machinations of one of their employees," a source involved in the proceedings said.
"You know, it’s funny—I guess I felt I was doing the right thing all along, no matter how horrible it got," said Ms. Stephens. "I wasn’t doing something I didn’t think was right. These architects had done a lot of work, and they deserved to be in this project." Then she added: "But I’m not confused or upset. For Herbert, it’s a power thing."
—Gabriel Sherman
via (frequent contributer to this page) Selma
"It was not very long ago -- three years to be precise -- that the debate over the future of Ground Zero began to coalesce around several distinct ideological camps. The discussion was dominated by two prominent architecture critics, Herbert Muschamp of The New York Times and Paul Goldberger of The New Yorker. Goldberger was consistently the wiser, steadier, more informed voice."
tall buildings muschamp
muschamp chronicles, parts 1,2,3 (11/02/00)
"The subject of the 4,466-word article was straightforward enough--the winner of a competition to build the newspaper's new Times Square headquarters--but you needed a graduate degree in Times protocol to keep track of all the roles Muschamp played in writing it. First there was Muschamp the critic, reviewing the design proposed by the winning architect, Renzo Piano. Then there was Muschamp the Times employee, who wasn't in a position to judge his bosses' decision too severely. There was also Muschamp the Times representative, who had to be gracious to the three losing finalists who had gone to the considerable trouble of entering the contest in the first place. Muschamp juggled the apparently conflicting rhetorical requirements imposed by these roles--the need for tough-mindedness and the need to brown-nose and be generous seemed particularly at odds--by praising Piano strongly but praising one set of finalists (Frank O. Gehry and David Childs) even more strongly, then attacking another finalist (Cesar Pelli) harshly. Muschamp thereby sacrificed a modicum of graciousness to gain the aura of independence."
"I call this type of design parabuilding : it is the
modern tick on the
postmodern host. New York examples include the
Palace Hotel, a modern
shaft that towers above the historic Vuillard Houses
on Madison Avenue
and 51st Street. Typically, as at the Palace, the
parabuilding is
designed as a discreet background to the existing
host. Not at Soldier
Field. Here modernity erupts with the jubilance of a
prodigal."
New York Times, September, 30 2003 by Herbert Muschamp
"Lord Foster's design is a parabuilding: a new addition that transforms the character of an existing structure. The host building in this case is Hearst's present home at 959 Eighth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets. The parabuilding is a faceted tower of steel and glass that rises 42 stories above the host. Herein lies a historical curiosity. The existing building, completed in 1928, was originally designed as the base of a taller structure."
New York Times, October 30, 2001
by Herbert Muschamp
"The parabuilding a new addition to an older structure, continues to entrench itself as a vibrantly contemporary architectural type. The Brooklyn Museum of Art has unveiled the genre's most recent example: a monumental main entrance for the museum's Eastern Parkway facade."
New York Times, September, 20 2000 by Herbert Muschamp
"The host building for Gwathmey Siegel’s parabuilding design for the Mid-Manhattan Library is the former Arnold Constable building which is owned by The New York Public Library. The expansion will add an additional eight floors and 117,000 square feet for library service to the existing 139,000 square foot building.
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates have also designed the new United States Mission to the United Nations; a concrete tower with a cylindrical core of shingled zinc. The windows are narrow slits that become more closely spaced and numerous as the tower rises from base to summit and..."
-arcspace
"Lord Foster, 65, has ample experience designing around historic
buildings. His much-acclaimed addition to the Reichstag in Berlin, featuring a latticed glass dome, has become a symbol of the new unified Germany. For a newly unveiled renovation of the British Museum, he designed a
glass-covered courtyard that architecture critic Paul Goldberger, writing in The New Yorker, called "stunningly beautiful."
(discussion)
-wirednewyork
herbert muschamp on the richard meier perry street towers
"Arquitectonica's design for Rockrose Development Corporation, developers of the 74-acre
site in Queens where Pepsi-Cola was bottled and canned until two years ago, is still in
development. But it's not too soon to comment on the promise of this project and the
obstacles faced by the architects in fulfilling it. The project, expected to cost $1 billion, will
occupy almost 22 acres in the northern area of Queens West. It will include seven apartment
towers, for a total of 3,000 new units. There will be 13.5 acres of parks, streets and other
public spaces.
Arquitectonica is sui generis. Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear, the firm's
principles, were the first American architects of the baby-boom generation to start building on
a large scale.
The Spear House in Coral Gables, Fla., designed by them in collaboration with Rem
Koolhaas, was among the most photographed residential designs of the 1970's. Later,
Arquitectonica imprinted itself on the public imagination with the high-rises the firm designed
for Brickel Avenue in Miami.
As featured backdrops in the 1980's television series "Miami Vice," these towers helped
establish the new image of that city as an economic and cultural crossroads between Latin
America and the United States. And they defined the specialty for which Arquitectonica has
become known: a highly inventive, often colorful manipulation of the tall building type.
Arquitectonica is the Ricky Martin of contemporary architecture. While retaining Latin roots,
the firm has built widely around the world. Its cosmopolitan outlook suits Queens West.
There is nothing profound about this firm's work. On the other hand, there is none of the
spurious historical depth asserted by the retro buildings at Battery Park City and Riverside
South. This brings us to the obstacle Arquitectonica must reckon with in attempting
something fresh. Queens West, sponsored by a division of the Empire State Development
Corporation, is stuck with a Battery Park City-clone master plan and design guidelines.
For a site where views are paramount, the guidelines restrict the use of glass in favor of
masonry walls. Instead of encouraging new approaches to planning, the master plan
mandates neo-traditional towers on bases with uniform street lines. Can the bishop's-crook
lampposts, world's-fair benches, hexagonal pavers and other theme-park accessories be far
behind? Will we have Gene Kelly look-alike doormen dancing to "Singing in the Rain"?
Arquitectonica should be given the widest latitude in responding to the conditions of the site.
After all, the context here extends far beyond the neighboring low-rise brick buildings of
Long Island City. It also includes the midtown skyline, the river and its bridges, the airports
in Queens and, not least, the United Nations headquarters and all it symbolizes for the city
and the world beyond."
- Muschamp for NYT