When Graydon Carter gets involved in a building rehabilitation effort, people tend to pay attention. People like the New York Observer‘s Eliot Brown, who chatted with numerous allies in the Vanity Fair EIC’s personal battle to help save the IRT Powerhouse building (currently housed by ConEd) on the far west side of Manhattan. Preservationists led by the Hudson River Powerhouse Group have been pushing to designate the McKim, Mead, and White building as a historic landmark since last summer after previous attempts fell flat in 1979 and 1990. Carter’s idea is to turn the 1904 classical-turned-industrial power station into a new home for the International Center for Photography. Museum director? Who knows, even Graydon’s got to retire someday…
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The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is gearing up for a major expansion in the form of a new wing to house the collection of GAP founder Donald Fisher. Because hell, why not, the art and architecture press has been bandying about some architecture firm names as possible short list contenders for the project. (Unconfirmed, naturally.) But seeing as how there’s a limited pool for this sort of thing, and even museums in the middle-of-nowhere are snagging starchitects for their renovations, and SFMoMA‘s 1995 building is kind of hideous, we present to you a handicapped guide to the contenders.
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So hysterical, these architects and their brethren. Why on earth would an architectural paean to a Nazi sympathizer in the Arctic Circle be controversial? Knut Hamsun is one of the most highly regarded authors Norway ever produced; he also gifted his Nobel Prize to Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist and one of Hitler’s besties. And then there’s the building, constructed in time for the writer’s 150th birthday. We examine the issues after the jump. Read More »
