Place

I should probably return to Rose Hill for a visit, but I fear I will be saddened if I do.

In the Spring 2009 issue of FORDHAM magazine, the University presented sketches of construction started on the Rose Hill campus, and planned for Lincoln Center (c.f. Curbed.)

I suppose that Sasaki has tried their best with the residence halls and McGinley replacement to reflect the Gothic Revival architecture that made Rose Hill so striking, but it doesn’t seem so from the pictures. They could still be an improvement over some of the more modern facilities, McGinley and Mulcahy in particular — or not.

I will not be contributing anything to the fund drive for this. But we might park in the college’s lot if we visit the Botanical Garden.

(By the way, I find it odd that Pei Cobb Freed & Partners chose music from The Mission for the promotional video for their Lincoln Center plans.)

I was just looking for Sam Waterston’s reading of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech. What I found was a picture of the Cooper Union’s new academic building.

Architects these days. There are images of the interiors which are even more disturbing. This is an environment expected to be conducive to learning? I’m dizzy just looking at the pictures.

At least it seems to fit into the block. Thank God that [t]he zoning envelope proscribes the kind of exuberant challenge to the grid that the institutional personality of Cooper Union would seem to demand. The best thing I can say about the building is that it looks like it has the potential to engage the street. Why, I wonder, did the architect not echo the exterior of the Cooper Union if his whimsy was forced inward by the zoning code? Is it too much to ask for right angles?

Catesby Leigh writes in the City Journal,

Modernist buildings, whether clad in glass or not, simply aren’t built to age gracefully—not only because of the way they’re constructed, but also because they aren’t designed to be loved. They are either commercially expedient products of the consumer culture or, less often, expensively histrionic but ultimately ephemeral fashion statements of the sort that Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel concoct.

And that, my friends, is my main gripe with Modernist architecture. It’s ugly, and gets uglier.

In this month’s issue of National Geographic there is a photograph of a golf course in the Mojave Desert. (The article itself concerns the drought in the West.) Why on Earth would anyone want to build a golf course in the middle of the desert, and why would they then try to make it look like Scotland? It seems to me that the challenge of a desert course would be that it has no grass.

We moved the spare television, necessary because our primary unit is a Philips, from the basement to the bedroom. That was a dumb idea; there’s no TiVo up there. Anyway, I was flipping through the channels — who does that? — and landed on Charlie Rose talking with some guy who was very enthusiastic about what he is building in China. Apparently it’s not every day that you get to “build a city inside a city.” It’s just easier in some countries.

The interview is interesting, but I certainly hope his buildings are better built than his website.

David Sucher’s book, City Comforts is subtitled “How To Build an Urban Village.” The book is not just for cities. The things that make a city pleasant are the same things that make a town, a village, a hamlet, or any collection of homes pleasant.

Do not be put off by the title if you think of yourself as country folk. This book is helpful for the smallest of towns.