15 March 2005. See Building and Landscape Security:

http://cryptome.org/building-sec.htm

14 March 2005

New York City's Best if Odd Architecture

This shows the  stabilized facade of the demolished Henry Miller's Theater on West 43rd Street, just off Times Square in Manhattan. A giant office building is being constructed on the site and the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission cruelly allowed most of the theater to be demolished except for this theatrically false-front remnant. As it stands now, though, it is a singular statement affirming the value of evanescent architecture over the more permanent mistakes surrounding it.

Ripping down historic buildings while leaving only their facades for prestigious face-saving has a long history in architecture. In recent times the practice has grown from a few tentative cases in the 1960s in Washington DC and Philadelphia to a ground swell around the country as pusillanimous and brow-beaten historic preservationists cave under pressure from politicians and real estate developers.

This oddly impressive structure will not have a long life, as it should, for it is surely to be far superior to the maximum floor-area leviathan to be built behind it, as evidenced by the one beside it and all around elephantine Times Square attempting diversion from the over-sized hulks with carnival tinsel and LEDs.

The temporary apparatus, like that above, for constructing these gigantic worker beehives (more arising at WTC) is always more imaginative and dazzling than the supermax office-prisons, so much so that one might appreciate the evanescent apparatus the genuine architecture to be enjoyed on the run from the terrible.

Yes, we confess, we aided and abetted the design one of the bloated beasts, the Reuters Building, at 3 Times Square on 42nd Street.

No, we caution, buildings in New York City are not safe or secure, the big ones in particular. And we're eager to tell and prove why threat assessments never tell the truth, and why they are never made public. Examples: take a look at the parking garages and loading docks beneath high-rise buildings near the false front above and then stroll around Times Square to gaze at its bountiful hotels and office squats, the drive-under lobbies, the dozens of limos packing the curbs, the acres of plate glass, the blocked exit doors, the cops and security guards yawning, with nothing to do, squirming crowds and urban cacophony numbing alertness.