LIC's Taste of Brazil

I couldn't help but notice Long Island City's "mystery condo" (now known as "L Haus," pronounced "Hell House") from a mile away.  It shrieks for attention.

Nearly everything else -- including the Manhattan skyline featuring Donald Trump's Big Black Thing and Citibank HQ (flanking the building, below left) -- is a wallflower compared to this building.  Only the powerful accumulation of junk that is Newtown Creek (below right) can compete.

It looks like a fat parrot, and turns the LIC skyline (on top) into something straight out of Brazil -- in fact brighter than the Brazilian flag.  Let's hope the developer runs out of money before the parrot plumage is hidden under drab condo cladding and the building becomes just another "suit," another turkey.

Newtown Creek Wastewater Plant 1

I've put together a collection of my photos of new construction at Greenpoint's Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant over the past year.

One reason I like the plant is obvious: it's stunning, especially for something so useful.  I see it as an ideal example of public art, that turns urban plumbing into monumental sculpture.

These photos were taken at different stages of construction, which is still in progress.  I'm posting them in groups, by the side of the plant I took them from.

From the Pulaski Bridge, north of the plant:


From the Greenpoint Ave. Bridge, east of the plant:

Karl Fischer in `The Showerhead`

Every time I walk by architect Karl Fischer's timeless Empty Clockface building on McCarren Park, I think: I know I've seen that look somewhere.  I believe I am getting closer to the source of his inspiration with the picture above.

Having recently watched The Fountainhead, and watched Karl help turn this area into a luxury condo theme park, I'd guess it's only a matter of time before his life story is immortalized on film; let's call it The Showerhead.

The Showerhead will tell the story of the architect "who could not say NO," who brought the soul-deadening plastic of the suburbs to the city, and designed buildings that make you wish The Fountainhead's Gary Cooper would blow them up.

Developers couldn't care less about what the rest of us have to look at, and condo owners live inside the hideous creation, the one place where they don't have to look at it.  It's up to supposedly high-minded architects to save us, and Karl's just not getting the job done.


The fantasy boulevard setting of Karl's Warehouse 11 promo picture, above left (compare it to the less spacious reality, right), betrays its purely suburban origin, designed for a world where people drive everywhere, and where a home is not part of some organic neighborhood rich with diversity and history, but just a garage where residents park the alienated corporate work-unit their soul has become.

The only good looking building Karl's produced is the Ikon, left; they are not done yet, so they still have time to wreck it.

It looks like a slick Swedish ant farm, the perfect setting for another movie or reality TV show -- call it The Glass House -- about the problems of Wall Street worker ants so filthy rich and hollow it hurts, and leaves them wondering if their life of shuffling other people's money from one esoteric financial instrument to another has lost all meaning, so they spend their nights in drug-fueled debauchery, and greet the dawn with their naked bodies stuck to the Ikon glass like suction toys stuck inside a car window.

If only Karl could return to the inspiration for that one.

[ Critical Fountainhead ]

Critical Fountainhead

First The End of the Critic?, then the war over art criticism and journalistic ethics summarized by Ed Winkleman.  Cultural criticism is under siege.

So it was refreshing to watch The Fountainhead for the first time the other day and soak up its nostalgic warning: Beware the diabolical and powerful Architecture Critic, or you'll wind up pulling a plow on a collective farm.

O for the days when critics swayed The Masses!

My notes after viewing:

- Ayn Rand was 12 years old when she wrote this, right?

- The setup: A self hating, sexually repressed Gestapo worm is chopped up and comes back as 3 people: the cold and empty, riding-crop wielding heiress Dominique Francon; the heroic, iconoclastic architect Howard Roark (Frank Lloyd Wright meets Albert Speer meets The Unabomber); and tabloid tycoon Gail Wynand, a Rupert Murdoch clone.  Then the tabloid's architecture critic, Ellsworth Toohey, conspires to destroy Howard because he is too heroically individualistic.

Still, I was so moved I put together the storyboard below.

The movie starts with a bang: Howard is expelled from architecture school because he will not conform and submit to mediocrity.  Then the 3 worms proceed to spout each others' lines to each other, as captured in the subtitles and comments:




And now, 60 years after the triumph of Ayn's will, with our shared institutions crumbling, we can heroically and individually: vote for our favorite future casino lounge singer on American Idol (owned by Rupert); poison ourselves with the bitter, dead-end politics of The New York Post and Fox News (owned by Rupert); and express ourselves by throwing up gang signs on our MySpace page (owned by Rupert).

Soon we'll have American Idol-style government that changes daily by cell phone vote.  (Which might not be a bad idea, but would be... owned by Rupert.)

And soon the last newspaper critic will be sent packing, their wealth of knowledge useless to a world that doesn't really need help choosing between McDonald's and Burger King, or really enjoy the effort it takes to decipher all those words, when pictures will do.

Water Towers of NYC 1

Gravity is still free, and tall buildings still have water tanks, many enclosed in towers.  Here is an assortment of tanks & towers that caught my eye.  (I'm not sure all the enclosed towers are for tanks; some may house elevator or heating equipment.)


Staid ones first.  A mildly sinister military/industrial complex above left, and a handsome, vaguely religious octagon on the right (both Lower East Side).  Note the vents; I guess the water would boil in summer without them.


Some drama.  Above left, the Empire State Building and a bug-like helicopter line up with a modern water tower.  On the right, a zigzag in Long Island City waits for a tank that will never come.


Reconfigured.  Above left, a Greenpoint tank turned into a cellphone tower (do the microwaves heat the water?).  On the right (off Lexington above 23rd), it looks like a newer, bigger tank is perched on the old one's tower.


Finally, two of my favorites.  On the left, a tank perched dramatically next to the New Museum on Bowery.  And on the right, a small temple seen on a hazy day (on E. 9th just east of Broadway).

McCarren Park Lights 1

I look at the picture above all the time -- it's my computer desktop background -- and though it looks like it should be dreary, it never feels that way to me.

These pictures are of McCarren park and Automotive High School.  I've learned to admire their matter-of-fact, durable appearance, accented here by the lights' hint of sentient life under foreboding skies.