Replies

Extra-added attraction: Martin Fuller, The New Republic's architecture critic, calls Herbert Muschamp an "erratic and ethically challenged architecture critic." I don't know why he wrote that, but I'm not surprised with the paper that gave us Walter Duranty.

I got his name wrong; it's Martin Filler.

I'm an NYC architect so let me give my 2 cents on Muschamp and the proposals.

Muschamp is a realtively new architecture critic replacing (not very well I would add)the fabuolus and insightful Paul Goldberger. While Goldberger had an eye for modern architecture he also could relate it in language understood by layman and his aesthetic sense balanced his writings very well. I miss him tremendously.

Muschamp has an agenda to push the most avant garde architecture no matter how ugly or perverse it is. When you read his articles its very hard to understand his point as he suffers from a bad case of self importance and verbal diahrea. That is a disease suffered by the so called leaders of avante gaqrde movement. I went to the Architecture School at Cornell University, the best in the US, and we had our share of these mind polluting pretenders.

The group of architects assembled for ther Times piece consists of a few less avant garde architects like Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier and Rafael Vinoly, all extrememly talented architects and important to the profession. But the rest are bizare pretenders who push idea and concept over form to the exclusion of creating form and space that is palatable to only those with a Masters Degree in Bull Shit. Especially pontificaters like Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas, both of whom seem to get Muschamp's rocks off on a regular basis. Eisenman's design intentionaly took the form of crumpled buildings! How friggin depressing is that! What an idiot.

The only parts of the proposal I like is the transit hub which could be stunning and functional at the same time. The ideas of putting two toeers back up but leaving them empty is ludicrous. I don't mind keeping the majority of the site open and clear for a memorial as it is a cemetary. I am warming up to the idea of ripping down the Deutsche Bank building and siting one fo the new towers there. I have a bigger problem with building all this housing and schools and the such. Why does this have to be a socialist exercise in urban planning. Not to mention, what is the poing of creating a new memorial promenade if you are going to fill it with very very ugly new buildings. (by the way they would have to be very expensive condos to make it fly).

I think the exercise the Times has commissioned was commendable in spirit, but is a clear example of why you can't just leave the rebuilding process to the architects, and I'm an architect.

Excellent article by the way. One of the best I have read. I may have to pay attention and read his architecture reviews from now on.