February 25, 2005
Goodbye, Quirky 2 Columbus Circle
A judge has allowed the sale and redesign of 2 Columbus Circle, the bizarro building increasingly dwarfed by sleek skyscrapers. The Museum of Arts and Design had been fighting to get started on its new space for the past year, but various preservation groups filed a lawsuit to stop them from changing the facade of the Edward Durrell Stone building. Alternately called an icon of the Modern Movement and terrible 60s kitsch, the building was not approved as a landmark in 1996 by the Landmarks Preservation Commision, but it was on the National Historic Trust's list of endangered sites. The NY Times reports that the preservationists will still attempt further appeals.
Simply based on how weird and wacky it is, Gothamist would like it to stay as is. Architect Brad Cloepfil, commissioned with the redesign, has complained that 2 Columbus Circle looks like a "telephone transformer station", but as we love power substations and the like, we dig it. And we're not sure how we feel about his proposed design - click on "updates" at Cloepfil's website. What do you think?
And Curbed has more links to relief and uproar about the demise of 2 Columbus Circle.
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I'll miss it. It *does* stand out like a sore thumb, but it is distinctive.
Dear God, what an ugly building! Oh, the humanities! That's an improvement? If you're going to put up a windowless slab of white, why not leave it as is, or spruce up what you've got?
I'll always have a warm spot for 2 CC. It used to be the NY Visitors Bureau, and when I was young my grandfather would take us on "excursions" (from the Bronx) and we'd get off the D train at Columbus Circle. It was not only one of the first buildings I saw, but it also had cool postcards, good for letting your cousins know you live in a cooler place than them.
I should clarify I meant the new design is ugly, not what's there now.
Cloepfil's new rendition looks like a cubist minifridge or a salt storage facility for the Dept. of Transportation. I wonder what power substations he has been looking at since he does not see his own design.
Keep it the way it is.
definitely NOT an improvement. cloepfil's building is such a thug--it looks like it wants to hurt somebody! the current building is so playful, cheerful, almost, in contrast to the cold, ugly, anonymous monolithic trump and time warner buildings. adding cloepfil's would really seal the deal--columbus circle as ode to faceless, even menacing, corporate isolationism. bleh. nyc deserves better.
I kind of like the current building. Kind of ugly, but very distinctive. It's grown on me over the years. Cloefil's design is terrible -- it looks like some sort of maximum security prison.
Maybe I've become some sort of architecture snob, but what is the deal with all the new/proposed buildings lately? They're fugly! The proposed WTC site and the Time Warner Building to name a couple...
Jen - totally with you. i've never seen it as "quirky" so much as creatively designed (but i guess, as II points out, relative to most modern urban architecture, it could be considered downright strange).
it always seemed to me the building in new york with the most middle-eastern influence. imagine how beautiful it would be if, instead of destroying it, the developer simply played around with back-lighting the cracks and crevices in the exterior. wow wow.
b
I have mixed feelings about that building. For one thing, it's an icon of my teen years: there every morinng and afternoon while I attend high school. It housed a fairly decent, if small, art museum in its days as the "New York Cultural Center." It was designed by noted architect Edward Durrell Stone, who also designed the JFK Center in D.C. And NYC could use a few quirky Sixties relics. Having said that, I don't
care if they tear it down.
But the proposed design is an atrocity. It looks like a closed pipe organ case. I keep looking for a keyboard console at the bottom.
I totally agree with Dirk. What is up with the design proposals for buildings around town? I had so much hope that we were over that bland Trumpification of New York architecture when Santiago Calatrava got the commission for the WTC PATH station and I was over the moon when his building at 80 South Street got the green light recently. On top of that and in rapid succession Barry Diller Had the balls to hire Frank Gehry to design his headquarters on the West Side and the city recognized the High Line. What happened to all that great momentum? Now is our chance to really get some world class architecture, Why can developers seize it?
I think that's where they used to post preliminary marathon times that I would look up for my father at lunch time so many years ago.
It is rather unfortunate that they were given the go ahead on this. While the current architecture may be ugly by today's neoliberal (NYC as mall of the world) standards, it is a symbol of a period in NYC architecture where imposing, well.. fascist modernism was de riguer. This building was a compliment to Lincoln Center (also being redone a bit) and should stand as a testament to that.
The new design is confused. Does it want to pay tribute to what is already there or does it want to move on? If they are going to go ahead with a redo they should say to hell with the past and really move away from that white behemoth. you can't have both without looking stupid.
While I hate the rampant demolition of perfectly good buildings for flimsy contemporary design, 2 Columbus Circle just doesn't work as a building the way it is, only as a piece of urban scenography. While I enjoy it's quirkiness, nostalgia is no reason for saving a building that was so poorly designed in the first place as to be unusable and falling apart, especially when the alternative has the potential to be so much richer.
Cloepfil is a very good architect. One of the more subtle, ingenious designers out there today. But he is not flashy, trashy, or trendy like Gehry or Hadid. You cannot measure the worth of his work from the images he's released, only by visiting his completed work. A couple of renderings is never a good measure of a building's worth anyway; you really need to experience it in the flesh, both inside and out. Have patience, and hopefully we will have a wonderful new addition to the city, one that keeps the existing site's relationship to the Circle but with a wonderfully subtle new exterior wall and interior sequence of spaces (as compared to the windowless mess that's there now).
Healthy skepticism of new development is to be encouraged, but a knee-jerk desire for status quo, driven by nostalgia and fear of change, is never good guidance for architecture and urban design. This ruling is good news for the city.
I hope someone figures out a way to have this landmarked. I like the demented windowless design of the place. It's one of the most unique buildings in that area. Considering the landmarks people will landmark generically bland buildings I don't know how they could overlook this ugly diamond.
so instead of 60's kitsch we're going to have a piece of new millennium kitsch? lovely!
The Santiago Calatrava-designed condos--extravagent excess in the guise of structural ingenuity and supposed sculptural "Beauty"--is "millenium kitsch," if anything being designed right now is.
This looks to be refined and quiet in contrast.
The fact that the Calatrava design sucks (it does) doesn't make the Cloepfil design suck any less.
And if nostalgia is no reason for saving a building I guess we should all stop mourning Penn Station and praising its modern replacement, eh?
Call Landmarks, their services are no longer required.
i don't think it's nostalgia or fear of change... that is the motive behind a lot of wtc design reactions (particularly the folks who want to rebuild the same towers), but in this case i think people really appreciate the building that is already there. it's a unique landmark even if it's not official. i just don't understand why they need to detroy it.
I can't speak for you, but I certainly don't mourn the old Penn Station out of nostalgia, but rather because it was a much better building than the maze of rat tunnels that has replaced it.
Nostalgia is no reason to landmark buildings; quality of design, or "architectural significance" is. Of course, this quality threshold can be somewhat subjective and debatable (and the merits of 2 Columbus Circle were debated along these lines, not just because it was "quirky"), but there is a definite distinction between design quality and nostalgia or other personal sentimentality.
For example, I can be nostalgic for the restaurant where my girlfriend and I had our first date, but that doesn't mean it's worth saving from the wrecking ball, especially if something better-designed and/or better for the neighborhood is replacing it.
Furthermore, my point in comparing Calatrava to Cloepfil was to put forward my opinion that the condo tower design is something of a one-liner, based on structural bravado and extravangance, whereas Cloepfil has a history of designing seemingly boring buildings that, when you visit them, come alive in their detailing, spatial interaction, and materiality. They are complex and rewarding on close inspection. As to whether this design will live up to his track record, I think it is too early to tell, but I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, based on what I've heard of his planned approach.
Hijiki-
We've been addressing the building on more-or-less aesthetic terms up to this point, but you raise an interesting question: Why does it need to be changed?
Functionally speaking, the building is unusable as it currently stands. Not only does it not have any windows (except portholes in the corners), but the interior was apparently originally built to have floor plates that spiraled upwards a few steps at a time, like a stutter-stop, squared-off Guggenheim. This sounds interesting, except that it didn't work, and when the building failed as a museum the first time and was converted to city use, some of these floor plates were apparently destroyed or severely altered just to make the building usable as office space. But even if the current owners wanted to restore this floor structure, they could not do so, because the building would then fail to meet modern-day accessibility (Americans with Disabilities Act) codes. How do you navigate a wheelchair up a giant staircase? You can add dozens of elevator stops, but that would make it prohibitively expensive, and don't forget that the floorplate for this building is tiny. You'd have no space left over for the exhibits.
So, at least as I understand it, there's pretty much no choice but to either alter the building beyond recognition (adding windows and changing the interior floor levels completely in order to make it code-compliant) or just tear it down. No-one can afford to continue to subsidize a vacant shell of a building on such expensive real estate, whether people think it's unique or not.
marc, your point about why we mourn the old penn station is well-taken, and applicable here. i think people would be much lest resistant to the removal of a quirky, familiar, but ill-functioning building if the replacement was something inspired. renderings can't tell the full story, true, but even accounting for that, the proposed replacement looks like an unwelcoming fortress, heavy and depressing.
I knew someone was going to bring up Penn Station. Penn is certainly one of the most painful lessons we have learned. However, I don't think perhaps the most important building of the age of rail and the apogee of the beaux arts movement (Ada Louise Huxtable's idea, not just hyperbole on my part) can compare to an oddity that was built as a rich man's folly. That would be like trying to compare Saarien's TWA Terminal 5 to Jerry Seinfeld's personal Porsche garage.
A longing to maintain the past is always a factor in the decision to save a building. Your point about the restaurant is well taken, but the decision to keep or change isn't purely objective. It's importance to the city, to the cityscape, and to the city's past are all taken into account. Could we bear to have the city without Building X? Nostalgia is certainly a factor in that.
Now, does 2CC fit that bill? Probably not. I was simply expressing 1) my own fondness for the building, my own nostalgia if you will, and 2) the fact that they'll be replacing one "ugly" building with another "ugly" building.
And my point (and I do have one) is that if you're gonna do that, why not leave it as it is? If you are going to replace it with a thing of beauty, then have at it. But that design is not a thing of beauty.
If you like his design, so be it. I like it as it is. I'll feel it's loss. Doesn't make you or me right or wrong.
Clearly the building is so unique and representative of a certain time that it should be preserved. I think it would have been landmarked by now except that there is something un-p.c. about Huntington Hartford, the original financier, that rankles older generations. The landmarks committee has too get beyond their petty objections and evaluate the building on it's own terms.
Clearly the building is so unique and representative of a certain time that it should be preserved. I think it would have been landmarked by now except that there is something un-p.c. about Huntington Hartford, the original financier, that rankles older generations. The landmarks committee has to get beyond their petty objections and evaluate the building on it's own terms.
Isn't there a single architect or an architectural firm that would, when approached, walk away from destroying a building that is an icon in building styles? Are they so hungry and full of ego "sheet" that they pursue such destruction, hoping they would get some name recognition! Shame on u, Cloepfil, whoever u r.Why do u not offer to just update the existing building and be a man, my son!
what a fucking shame to loose such an amazingly original piece of architecture.