vicemag:

A candid conversation on the horrendous state of new construction in New York, with the crankiest of architecture critics, Ivana Force-Majeure, and our own Bob Nickas.

Bob Nickas: Ivana, looking lovely as ever. Your outfit is so well constructed, as are you yourself, poised with style and restraint. What are you wearing today?
Ivana Force-Majeure: Don’t you know? It’s Schiaparelli. In honor of the exhibition at the Met—Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada. Either of them, with their eyes closed, could design a better building than the flashy mediocrities you see today. Most of these architects are men, and most are frustrated artists. A frustrated artist is one thing when you’re talking about someone tucked away in an attic studio, but it’s quite another when they get to plop down one of their overblown sculptures in a residential neighborhood. I mean, we’re not talking about a garden folly on a country estate—a place to play for the idle rich. Here in the city they’re more like the blanded gentry.  

You recently made a rather remarkable proposal. You said that the most offensive and boring of the new architectural trophies should be demolished, even suggesting that a hit-list of buildings be put together by concerned New Yorkers. Where would you start?
Oh it’s not just new buildings that should go. There are plenty of atrocities around. How about Trump Tower? It’s not exactly the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. More like a skyscraper with a pubic patch. But I’d start in my own neighborhood, NoHo, and work my way north. There’s 40 Bond Street, for example, designed by Herzog & de Meuron. They’ve done good things in Europe, but not in New York.

Are they giving us the buildings we deserve?
Possibly. But if it’s the architect who takes the heat when a building isn’t well received, don’t forget that the client may also be to blame.

40 Bond was built for Ian Schrager. 
I’m just saying. I mean, what about the ridiculous fence that runs along the street? It looks like a bastardized take on a Jackson Pollock splatter, rendered in Swiss cheese. What is that, abstract fondue?

The material is expanded polystyrene.
I remember Poly Styrene, the singer from X-Ray Spex, and all her prophetic songs from the late 70s: “I Am A Poser,” “Germ-Free Adolescents,” “Prefabricated Icon,” “Genetic Engineering.” Take a look at architecture and people today and you realize that it all came true.  

I have a friend who lives on Bond Street, and she says that anytime anything sizable is delivered to that building they have to bring in a big crane and hoist it up to get stuff inside. It’s very disruptive to the block.
That’s because there’s no service entrance. That would have cut into sellable or rentable space. But the city doesn’t care if long-term residents of a neighborhood are inconvenienced day after day. The developer gets what he wants, the city gets what they want, and all is well.

CONTINUE