Libeskind’s fantastic flying machine?
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 2:24PM
by c mullen ••• I was buzzing through the interwebs one day last week (www.mymodernmet.com) when I spotted this unidentified flying object. It easily could have been an invention of Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks - designed to fly between the twenty-three known and suspected dimensions. But it wasn’t. It was a building, solid and connected to the ground. ••• The building is The Frederic C. Hamilton Building, and is an extension of the existing Denver Art Museum. Yes Denver. Take that you Chelsea gallerists, curators and snobs. (By the way, how boring is the Museum Of Modern Art in New York? My wife says it looks like an upscale retail space. And she was being kind.) ••• I was surprised to find out that Denver’s frenetic building was completed in 2006. (What rock have I been under?) But I wasn’t surprised to discover that the architect responsible for this dynamic structure was none other than Daniel Libeskind. Sometimes the good guys do win. ••• I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when those morons who are in charge of rebuilding of the World Trade Center eviscerated Libeskind’s genius design and forced an unacceptable compromise on us all. What a loss. ••• So take a couple of clicks and head over to Libeskind’s site and marvel at his talents and his accomplishments. And if you can, go to Denver and see how this building moves the real world. It’s on my list of to do(s) other things list.
Reader Comments (2)
I'm thrilled to read your reaction to Liebeskind's WTC design -- I too thought it was so beautiful, so NYC, I almost teared up when I saw it -- and what David Child and his cohorts did with it. While you can't be entirely neutral about architecture if you're a New Yorker, I have usually had a neutral-positive reaction to new buildings: if it's a New York building, it has some good stuff. That's how I reacted as the Twin Towers were going up. Everyone else was condemning them (the citizens of New York, the most changeling of cities, do not like change) and I was standing on my corner (Perry Street and 7th Avenue), looking downtown and thinking, "Hm, pretty powerful." After they fell, I'd automatically look downtown when I was at that corne, with the instincts that trauma produces hoping the catastrophe hadl been a phantasm, and seeing downtown it as a hole in the sky.
When the various proposals were on display at the World Financial Center, I actually went down to see them and when Liebeskind's fantastic design was chosen by, um , the People? Wasn't that what we were told? I was so damn happy.
Still can't figure out how We the People picked something and the despotism that is David Child's firm managed to slam it into the ground.
Thanks for you share it!!!!!!!