Architecture
New York State has officially started to construct a new Terminal 6 at JFK airport.
Over $4 Billion for a small International terminal with just 10 gates? That terminal had better include an AirTrain station!
And I'm sorry, 'final phase'? JFK is always being demolished or built. The governor said so. Nothing in NYC is a final phase.
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OWA)
Specifically, Samuel Stein has questions, and his piece in The Baffler is a must read.
I have pointed this out before. In 2014, I wrote:
what we are seeing are overpriced luxury homes being built on top of decaying infrastructure
I don’t think anything will wake-up educated Americans to this fact and want to change anything. I don’t think even Chicago becoming uninhabitable could wake people up. So be it. We’re doomed. And millionaires can enjoy their towers for about 10 more years. Have fun.
2 World Trade Center, in its second design proposal by Bjarke Ingels / BIG
The plan to build the most architecturally interesting tower is dead. 2 World Trade Center, if it is ever built, will not be the Bjarke Ingels design shown above.
Norman Mailer once said that modern architecture is “collective sightlessness for the species.” He included all of the 20th century greats in his assessment. I wouldn’t go that far. I think a lot of architecture becomes misguided when it attempts to make a statement on our relationships to buildings, landscapes and cites. Maybe if we just designed buildings that were appropriate for their environment and purpose, we’d have generally better architecture. There’s no need to have elaborate themes or statements. Architecture is not filmmaking. Yes, it is art and engineering. But let’s not overthink what it means.
I have architect friends and surly they will disagree with what I wrote above. So let me me make a less controversial and more obvious point: the new World Trade Center (2006-) was a failure the moment it was decided to rebuild the square footage of office space that was lost in 2001. And now, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more of a failure.
New York City will never die. But it is no longer a port town. It is no longer a manufacturing town. It has a thriving real estate industry, tourism, financial services, and still has healthy legal, advertising and marketing sectors. It also attracts film and television productions, but long lost its film production edge to Hollywood and London. Most people in the city are employed by hospitals, restaurants, banks or the city itself, which operates within a social service economy. The city spends what it collects, and when the economy goes south, the city and its people go broke.
The shift to online retail dominance has been ongoing since Amazon launched 25 years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has instantly changed some corporate HR policies to allow permeant remote work agreements. Again, New York City won’t die. But the corporate real estate landscape in the city has changed and may remain in this state for a generation or more.
We should house the homeless with all the unused square footage we have.
It’s been about 18 months since it opened, but I think it’s fair to acknowledge that a verdict that has already been rendered: Hudson Yards is terrible. It was terrible before the pandemic that killed our city, and it is even more terrible now. It isn’t just the Vessel. The whole thing sucks.
Well, not Mercado Little Spain. That’s great. Tapas, gin and tonics, wine and genuine Spanish atmosphere.
But this city within a city sucks. Why not start with the public plaza that hosts the Vessel. It’s designer, Thomas Heatherwick, created one of my favorite things, the New Routemaster bus for London (TFL). But the Vessel is easily one of the worst things in New York. It’s an anti-social, $200 Million dollar vanity project for a pro-Trump billionaire developer. It’s pointless. And it’s not New York. Well, actually, it is. New York happily allows parts of itself itself to be destroyed for projects like this. The Vessel is like the middle finger to both the city and state governments which sold the site for too little, spent too much to assist the construction, and gave-up too much in future tax revenues to allow the site to be built. In addition, Hudson Yards sits at the northern end of the High Line, a sunny open space that, while enjoyable on weekdays, is really a device designed to inflate land values and make luxury condo developers more rich. It’s a neat private park, built from wisely-preserved infrastructure, designed to promote real estate appreciation, for 11 years and counting.
But back to the public outdoor space at Hudson Yards, which is still incomplete. Does Mayor Bill de Blasio remember saying that it “will be one of the great public squares of New York City”? Does anyone? It’s a car passenger pickup/drop-off point and a pointless sculpture. How full of shit can a New York mayor -and this city- be? I used to think that Los Angeles was full of shit. But I’ve seen recent scholarly works, mainly by Mike Davis, that make the case the our nation’s second largest city should be taken seriously.
It’s a driveway. They have their place, like hospitals and Vegas resorts. But it’s a driveway to a mall and a vanity sculpture.
Theses and books can and will be written about Hudson Yards, the Billioaire’s city within a city that was enjoyed for just over a year before our economy and our city collapsed. I will not write a book here. But I want to repeat a key argument that is at the heart of the failure that is Hudson Yards: it’s not for us locals. It’s for billionaires. One of the first things people noticed about the shopping mall inside Hudson Yards was that it is devoid of places to sit and has a woeful lack of public restrooms, aside from those inside the upscale restaurants. If you visited its architectural sibling, The Shops at Columbus Circle, before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, you would see restrooms on all three upper levels, plus renovated outdoor seating inside Columbus Circle. Both The Shops at Columbus Circle and The Shops And Restaurants at Hudson Yards were designed by Boston based Elkus Manfredi Architects. It’s not the most welcoming place, but it has places to sit. Not so with Hudson Yards.
It only gets worse from there. The people who over-payed for luxury condos in Hudson Yards mainly don’t live in New York. Retired Chinese tennis player Li Na was the final example I could find before the economy collapsed, and she most definitely over-paid.
The residential real estate at Hudson Yards is cynical in my view. These are investment properties, not a practical place to live and work -not anymore. I could see myself living there, sure. I could walk to my Midtown East office from there. With no children, I wouldn’t have to worry about the lack of schools in that area. Being a West Sider, I would continue to reply on the 1 and A trains to get to other parts of the city I frequent. But the fact remains, these properties are not for us locals. A wealthy New Yorker would probably look at Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg or downtown Brooklyn before seriously considering Hudson Yards.
It amazes me that we are not easily impressed anymore by engineering or architectural feats that were radical 50 or even 30 years ago. Slurry walls? A “bathtub” of concrete? Massive steel plates to support tall buildings over hollow spaces? A hidden network of service tunnels? Pneumatic garbage chutes and underground garbage collection? A full fiber-optic network? Hudson Yards has all of those. These engineering feats got some attention, but overall, they didn’t generate excitement.
Hudson Yards hoped to be welcomed the way we were in awe with the original World Trade Center. But instead, it’s been greeted by locals with a shrug. And now it is dying, like this rest of this once-great city.
The aftermath of the Amtrak Train 188 derailment in Philadelphia, May 2015.
Last month, we saw the third serious Amtrak accident of 2018 - the third in just in six weeks! Our "infrastructure president" should have his golden hair on fire about our third world inter-city train system. But of course, he can't be bothered. He just gave away $1,500,000,000 in tax cuts to himself and his wealthy pals, so a real effort to fix our miserable public infrastructure isn't going to happen. Fromt time to time there are blog posts and news stories about how aircraft in France struggle to get to their destinations ahead of the TGV trains, and nearly always fail! Every modern nation has rapid rail transit, just as they have universal health care, with the exception of the good old USA.
Which leads me to this opinion. I think Amtrak should be downsized. I know Amtrak's charter requires it to function as a 48-state federally subsidized train network. But it is an imbalanced network. California might be able to build its own high-speed coastal rail system. Amtrak is crucial to the economy of the five city megalopolis from Boston to DC. But it is not crucial anywhere else. It has to run on freight train tracks. Ridership is poor. It can keep the Chicago to LA routes for nostalgia buffs. But it's time to reduce Amtrak to mostly northeast service only. This would require Congressional action. And rather than downsize Amtrak to make it easier to kill, I would argue we need a fully-funded Amtrak to serve the northeast. No reduction in funding. Just a new charter and mission to keep the most important part of the United States running (most important region outside of California and Texas, certainly). Amtrak needs to run better. We need new everything in the northeast. We need new roads, bridges airports, train networks, and subways. Amtrak should be re-chartered as part of a 20-year northeast infrastructure rebuilding plan.
There's just one big problem. We're broke. It's a non-stater. And so the slide into oblivion continues.
Uncle Tim contributed to this post.
There is no doubt New York City needs congestion pricing. It it is to remain a World City, like London, it must. But we can see that this proposal will fail. There is too much resistance from the counties outside the city. Just one more reason for this city to be its own Federalized district, like DC. New York is too important to this country to be ruled by Westchester, Long Island and Albany. Paris, London and Tokyo are national capitals. They don’t have this chronic political problem that New York has. Let’s fix it. New York is the economic capital of the United States. And it can’t have people driving into midtown who don’t NEED to.
High speed rail is not coming to the US in any sustained system, except perhaps in California.
Why? The USA missed its chance after World War II, when it had the capital and its rail corridors could have gotten the width they needed for freight and passenger trains on their own tracks. If the US tried to make room for high speed rail on the west and east coasts today, it would cost hundreds of billions. Of course, the US is still spending $2 Billion a week in Afghanistan. So I guess we can't afford it.
In France, Germany Japan and China, where four of the world class train systems are found, the high speed passenger services were built from scratch, not piggybacked on an old, existing, mostly freight rail system. A world war helped, and that included a lot of bombing by the US and UK. But I don't think that's any excuse. The USA remained a wealthy nation through the space age. Just look at what happened to Penn Station. The French National Rail Corporation would die laughing if it ever got a good look at Penn Station and Amtrak. After all, France is a first world country, while the United States barely qualifies as a banana republic. And I wrote these words before news came out that the state of New York is considering yet another private company to manage the crumbling Penn Station.
This ties into the bigger, more obvious issue that mass transit in the US is generally terrible. The underlying reason is the same: the best chance for planning and funding was in the last century (either before the 1920 crash, or just after WWII). In my father's day, New York City took care of it's essential infrastructure. The automobile had not yet become the dominant means of transportation, and Robert Moses had not yet rearranged the city to accommodate millions of cars. Now, after decades of neglect, the bill is coming due. I hope the city gets the help it needs, because it's approaching a dangerous tipping point.
I have always liked the Liberty Hotel in Boston since it opened in 2007. The Liberty is one of the bestter adaptive reuse projects of this century, as it turned Boston's nortorious Charles Street Jail into a five-star hotel. Here is a video tour of the hotel in 2017.
The exterior of the old, medieval jail is still intact. It always had a grim and depressing aspect, built next to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, on the grounds of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The hotel is really imaginative, and makes clever use of the existing architecture. The old jail has been used in a couple of movies, and I think it even appeared once in a Spenser for Hire episode.
New York City's bridges are falling apart. It would cost over $20 Billion to reapir them.
New York City's rails, from the state owned subway and commuter rail to Amtrak, are a mess. It would cost tens of billions to replace, fix and renovate signals, switches, tunnels and stations. The only major projects that are currently in-progress are the repair of the L train tunnel under the East RIver, and the MTAs East Side Access project to move Long Island Rail Road Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal. Other critical projects, such a new Amtrak tunnel under the Hudson River and the replacement of Penn Station remain unfunded,
And even when the state of New York maintains its rails, the waste and corruption is is easy to identify.
Even if Trump and the Republicans actually gave a rat's ass about the state of America's cities or public transportation, the Administration's crippling incompetence and absurd scandals make serious action nearly impossible. This is what middle America voted for, and all of us, beginning with the people of New York, are going to pay for it.
Bridges. Airports. Highways. Tunnels. We Americans have a terrible habit of naming our infrastructure (what little we have) after people. Why?
When John Roebling designed a mile-long suspension bridge to connect Manhattan to Brooklyn, there was no question what it was going to be named. A bridge should be named after the town or neighborhood it connects to - Brooklyn! But over 100 years later, when Boston had the chance to build an iconic bridge between itself and Charlestown, and simply call it the Charlestown Bridge, it walked into a political battle over whether to name it after a civil rights attorney or a Revolutionary War battlefield. And what did Boston do? They named it after both. Clarity and courage!
On the Arizona-Nevada border, there is the impressive Hoover Dam Bridge. But it was not named that. It was named after a former Nevada governor and the most famous pro-athlete turned soldier of our time. The latter name is the one most people use when they talk about the bridge.
And then there's the special, unprecedented case of New York City and New York State re-naming its bridges and tunnels. It is an incredible history that dates back decades. The latest re-naming proposal would re-name the Williamsburg Bridge after Sonny Rollins. Why not John Lurie? He's a great New Yorker. Why not fellow artist, the late Jean-Michel Basquiat? Also great. New York has too many greats to honor. But why honor them on infrastructure? Why?
What happens when a state names infrastructure after the wrong person? Well, New York holds that title as well. John F. Kennedy Airport is named after a president from Massachusetts. He had sex with Marilyn Monroe here. But JFK wasn't from here. His brother was a US Senator for New York for just two years (and he got a bridge renamed for him in 2008).
I can go further with examples of bad naming. What's the name of the airport in Liverpool? It's John Lennon, a man who was born there, but spent almost no time there after 1964. Liverpool John Lennon Airport was the first airport in the UK to be re-named after a person in 2001. The disease has spread.
Renaming Idlewild International Airport was a costly, hasty error, in my opinion. New York City gave its biggest airport the wrong name just so they could be first to rename infrastructure after JFK (just six weeks after his assassination). If any city should have renamed their airport to JFK it should have been Boston. Can you imagine an alternate universe in which the big New York airport is named after someone who actually lived or died in New York? How about Joey Ramone from Queens who sung a damn song about the very part of Queens the airport is located? Or how about David Bowie, who lived his last 22 years in New York? Or maybe even Jane Jacobs, who stood up to Robert Moses and saved SOHO? Or how about Margaret Sanger?
Yeah. Margaret Sanger International Airport. I'd get behind that. Remember kids, legal abortion brought down the crime rate. You're welcome.
But we need to stop the madness. Can we get back to naming bridges, tunnels and airports after places, please?
Places, not people. Places are where we go in our cars and planes.
I meant to share this in June, when I stayed at El Blok for the first time. It was my ninth June vacation in Vieques. I had stayed at Malecon House for seven straight years. But with that inn under new management, I decided to give El Blok a try. I'm glad I did. I had been to their bar and restaurant in previous years. But this was my first time as a hotel guest, and I loved it. Despite some door lock issues (I think their security server lost power a few times), and the failed promise to provide a cooler to take to the beaches every day, I think El Block is a fantastic, modern hotel to make one's "base" during a stay in Vieques. The longer the stay, the better. Don't just visit for the bio-luminescent bay. Stay for the beaches and one of the best bars in the Caribbean.
The eye of hurricane Maria passed very close to my favorite island. It will be several weeks before the recovery can begin. The cleanup is still ongoing.
Here's an overview of he hotel, designed by Fuster + Architects. And here are detailed photos and floor plans of the hotel available at Arch Daily.
Here are a few shots of El Block after Maria. The storm blew inches of sand onto the main street through Esperanza. El Blok is the concrete structure.
I have been sitting on this blog post since May of 2016. I was going to call it, "Paris Dooms Most Cars More Than 20 Years Old To The Crusher." But this story has grown over the months. Paris is trying to get to the point where very few people own cars, and those who do, use it to escape the city, not use them to travel within the giant metropolis. That's how I use my car in Manhattan. It is my get out of town for the weekend ride.
This story really went global when Paris announced it was banning most cars made before 1997 from driving on roads. But then this week, Paris mayor Anne Hildago explained that it wouldn't be enough to meet her vision. And that vision is a capital with nearly no cars driving in it. And so she is accelerating efforts to do just that by banning cars from some major thoroughfares and expanding bicycle lanes. For Paris, the answer is not electricification, as all cars are "archaic," and waste space. If Hildago gets her way, cars will no longer have priority access to the streets of Paris.
I have never been to Paris. I am more of a London kind of guy. But there are two things we need to understand about this push to sharply reduce the number of cars in it.
From our colleague Uncle Tim:
“First, Paris is in a deep geological basin, which worsens the smog problem caused by the cars. And secondly, it has one of the best and easiest to learn and use subway systems in Europe. If there’s one city on the continent which could reduce private car use, it’s Paris. Banning pre 1997 cars is a good idea, but Paris should follow London’s wise example and charge operators for driving in the central city.”
Paris has the mass transit infrastructure to do this, of course. It is already faster and cheaper to get to any of Paris' 20 arrondissements by metro or bus. And Paris has confidence that it can increase capacity to carry more passengers who give up cars. New York couldn't do that. No US city could. London could, and it has encourages a shift to mass transit with its congestion tolls, now going strong in its 13th year. If Paris combined its aggressive car restrictions with London-style congestion tolls, it would see results even sooner. Let's see how Paris is doing in a year (2018).
And look what direction Madrid is now going.
I said it back in May, and now more and more people agree: The World Trade Center, and particularly One World Trade Center, is a big mess. And it's not because of the current rat infestation. It is an architectural and economic failure. And now it is a lasting symbolic one as well.
At least the name Freedom Tower was dropped. But that's just a positive footnote in an otherwise depressing saga. However, thanks to the media, and the popularity of our enless wars, tourists will still call it the "Freedom Tower" forever.
The new One World Trade, the world's most delayed, most expensive skyscraper ever, is a brutal monument to the forces that govern this city and nation. Money, plutocratic megalomania, and the arrogance that attends them, have labored and brought forth yet another monster. Congratulations America, your rebuilt, lower Manhattan super-tall trophy tower lives!
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the World Trade Center site is a disaster on every level where failure was possible. It can't make money, it's an aesthetic nullity, it dishonors the dead, and is the crown jewel of the dysfunctional relationships that permeate the corrupt Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. What's worse, of course, is that this outcome was predicted more than a decade ago, by just about everybody with any knowledge of the situation.
Photo from that stellar news outlet, the Daily News.
Surprise, surprise, New York infrastructure is deteriorating before our eyes! How could this possibly happen? Everyone knows the city, the state and the nation have been pouring billions into creating the infrastructure of the future while putting millions to work and stimulating solid economic growth. Right? Or maybe not!
It would have been all too easy to commit billions to rebuild the infrastructure in Manhattan, much of which is now in its second century. But no one thought of that. And here we are.
Right now, Manhattan is riding the biggest real estate bubble in its history. The median price of a condo in the borough is well over $1 Million, with the price far higher in downtown neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side, where this water main break and sinkhole occurred. Not that it will make us little people feel better, but what we are seeing are overpriced luxury homes being built on top of decaying infrastructure. And many of these developments are in what are now flood zones going forward as sea levels rise and more Atlantic hurricanes are expected to turn left and make landfall in the region.
My biggest gripe with New York, beyond the fact that it is an imperialist, even pro-war city with a dangerous wealth gap, is that its infrastructure is terrible. We have outstanding drinking water. But that won't last. We are told that the subways are reliable. Yes, in spite of the fact that the system is barely holding together. When I look at Tokyo, Hong Kong, and even London (the other "Capitals of the World" right?), I see better infrastructure. We New Yorkers won't realize the lost opportunities we had to rebuild until it is too late.
The 2009 Federal stimulus package might have been our last chance to rebuild. We shall see if I'm correct.