Posted Sep 12, 2010, 4:33 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 51,836
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http://therealdeal.com/newyork/artic...-james-gardner
Architecturally, Islamic Center stands out
August 05, 2010
By James Gardner
Quote:
On Tuesday there was high drama over at the Landmarks Preservation Commission. This group, which is used to basking in the near-total indifference of the citizenry, must have been surprised and delighted to find their obscure mumblings broadcast live on NY1, as though this were a presidential impeachment or a health care vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate. When it was all over, they had voted unanimously not to grant landmark status to an ugly old building at 45-47 Park Place, which was in effect a vote in favor of the proposed Islamic Center.
In truth, Landmarks was presented with a thankless task: they would be damned either way. On strictly aesthetic principles, however, I think they were right. The cast-iron building in question had no special quality to it other than that it was 150 years old. Of course you could certainly argue that, in the past, the commission has sanctioned the destruction of far worthier buildings, while insisting upon the preservation of structures far less interesting even than 45-47 Park Place. Just think of the debacle at the Whitney Museum a few years back.
But let's set aside the political debate for a moment, and consider the architecture of the proposed Islamic center.
As far as the latest renderings are concerned -- and the finished project may look quite a bit different, of course -- I must say that the general conception appears to be promising. The building presents itself as a severely flattened and uninflected façade, relieved from tedium only by the vigorous patterns that cover the screen-like surface. The effect is a little bit reminiscent of Jean Nouvel's Institut du Monde Arabe, the masterpiece that put the French architect on the map.
Jean Nouvel's Institut du Monde ArabeThe Islamic Center's bold and unified flatness, rising from the street all the way to the summit, adheres to a very different logic from that of most other buildings in the five boroughs, which even when modernist, are divided into a tripartite base, shaft and summit. But the proposed mosque near Ground Zero reminds us that there was once a time, 500 or 1,000 years ago in a far-flung Muslim empire, when some of the finest architecture ever made was being fashioned from brick.
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