March 1, 2007
RUINING WITH AN EYE TOWARDS THE FUTURE
The New York Sun has a lengthy article today on real estate development in Brooklyn: it is absolutely on fire. Some people are extremely hostile to development. The people at Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) are foursquare against Forrest City Rattner's plans to build a stadium and mini-city of skyscrapers along Atlantic Ave. and in the middle of their low rise neighborhood. While I think a 70-story tower in that spot, would be absurdly out of scale, I think it's foolish to think that one can preserve a city in amber, nor would one want to.
I do object, however, to development for development's sake. Architecture is an extremely lasting artistic medium. While treasures like Penn Station that should stand for the ages fall to the wrecking ball, hideous buildings have a way of sticking around interminably. And unlike the ugly person at a party who makes everyone seem more attractive in comparison, an ugly building serves more like bad lighting at a party, making even the best looking neighbors struggle to look even presentable.
As an example I give you this picture to the left. It is currently under construction by Boymelgreen Developers and will be a 93-room hotel with 50 residential condo units when it opens this spring. It's located at the intersection of Atlantic Ave. and Smith St. in Boerum Hill. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than as a short squat inbred cousin of the sort of soulless highrises Billy Wilder made the landscape of Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1975. The lowest mud I can sling at this type of architecture is to say that the building doesn't belong in Brooklyn, it belongs in Crystal City, VA, a weird city/non-city on the outskirts of DC that I consider to be the epicenter of architectural and urban planning hell. This completely undistinguished hotel could be plunked down unremarked on any Route X across the country that briefly passes through a mid-size city in a sea of strip malls and car dealerships. It looks awful today. In 20 years it will simply be embarrassing.
Posted by Lexiphane at March 1, 2007 7:58 AM
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