http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/ar...pagewanted=all
By the Architects, for the People: A Trend for the 2010s
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
NEWARK — Last week, when the city planning board here voted to approve construction of a four-block-long mixed-use development, the decision was barely noticed outside a small circle of civic boosters. But it was a turning point in the career of the project’s architect, Richard Meier.
For decades Mr. Meier, with his trademark dark suits and leonine white hair, has been a fixture on the New York social scene, where he often rubs elbows with his moneyed clients. And his designs, from second homes in the Hamptons to international art museums, have become known for an almost unbearable, and expensive, refinement. He is the Martha Stewart of the Modernists.
But the Newark development, a complex for middle- and lower-income tenants to be known as Teachers Village, takes Mr. Meier, 75, back to his roots, to a time more than 40 years ago when he devoted as much energy to subsidized housing as to beach houses. Despite the project’s modest budget of $120 million, its tautly composed and thoughtfully laid out forms reflect the same intelligence and care found in most of Mr. Meier’s work. City officials are hoping its design — along with its location, a dilapidated neighborhood between City Hall and a cluster of college campuses — will help contribute to a much wider urban revival.
Teachers Village is not only the most impressive of several new initiatives in Newark, but also the most dramatic example yet of what is shaping up to be a significant and hopeful trend in architecture. After a long period in which America’s greatest talents seemed to work almost exclusively at the service of the wealthy, there are signs that their efforts are trickling down to other segments of society. In New York, for example, Annabelle Selldorf, best known for the exacting precision of her gallery designs and loft renovations — and for revamping the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel — is about to break ground on a recycling plant on the Brooklyn waterfront; she may soon start work on another in the Bronx. Michael Maltzan, the architect behind the Museum of Modern Art’s temporary home in Queens during its last renovation, as well as homes for major art collectors, recently completed his second housing project for the homeless in six years, and is now working on his third.
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I hope that's still got a pole for the fireman to slide down.
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