Architecture

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares109 Views

    Why Is Hollywood Obsessed With Architects? ‘The Brutalist’ Gives Us a Hint.

    by

    The trope of the embattled auteur exerting their will is too tempting for filmmakers to ignore.Now that the White House has decreed that all new government structures be made in a classical style, let’s cue up the original film of buildings and hubris — King Vidor’s “The Fountainhead” (1949), based on the 1943 novel by Ayn Rand.In the film’s final shot, the architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) stands squinting atop his latest skyscraper, the tallest in the world, with the wind popping his shirt. Inspired in part by Rand’s admiration for Frank Lloyd Wright, Roark has battled decades of herd mentality and bland neoclassical buildings in order to assert his vision of a gleaming, geometric Modernism upon America’s skyline. He has behaved ruthlessly, even sexually assaulting his eventual wife (Patricia Neal) in her mansion on the outskirts of a quarry. As he surveys Manhattan from his new perch, Roark seems a terrible demigod of will.What he doesn’t seem is an actual designer. Like the novel, Vidor’s film (which Rand wrote the screenplay for) spun an influential but misleading myth of architects as solitary artists. In the interwar period, conceptual-minded architects — from Wright in America to the Bauhaus school in Germany — turned the formerly public language of pediments and arches into a canvas for non sequiturs of personal expression. For decades that evolution helped turn the profession into a shorthand for greatness. The Museum of Modern Art began exhibiting models and plans in 1932: Buildings had become sculptures. Paul Simon was able to write a convincing (and spine-tingling) paean to Frank Lloyd Wright without any deep knowledge of his work. Time magazine put Philip Johnson, a Roark incarnate, on a 1979 cover, looking like a Batman villain.Lately that world seems to want reappraisal. A housing crisis, an epidemic of cheap development and luxury glass, red tape and a postpandemic “return to office” movement have called into question the use and feasibility of new construction. A recent play, opera and exhibition on New York’s most influential master builder, Robert Moses, decry the toll bridges and expressways he erected at the expense of the people they were meant to serve. In various outlets, the debate has resurged over the human effects of brutalism, the imposing concrete style that possessed architects from the early 1950s to the late 1970s but alienated more of its users than perhaps any modern style. (See: the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in D.C., by Marcel Breuer, or Boston’s City Hall.)In a world where building seems difficult at best and oppressive at worst, what’s the point of being an architect at all? That question unites two of last year’s most talked-about movies: Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.” To be sure, both films peddle the trope of the embattled auteur. In “Megalopolis,” the gloomy genius Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) battles philistines in his quest to renovate New Rome, a thinly-veiled Manhattan. (There is even a skyscraper scene to match Vidor’s.) Corbet’s tortured architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), too, a Jewish-Hungarian survivor of the Holocaust based roughly on Breuer, obsesses over a bunkerlike civic chapel that will brood over 1950s Pennsylvania in reinforced concrete, again recalling Roark, who in Rand’s “The Fountainhead” (the book, but not the film) builds a secular Temple of the Human Spirit for a rich financier. When Tóth’s wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), finds his blueprints and tells him, “I’m just looking at you,” she’s voicing the old belief: Buildings are extensions of their authors.But these movies flip that formula, as if to explain how we’ve changed our minds about it — one bleakly, the other romantically.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Rebuilding After Fire, Jacob’s Pillow Will Open a New Theater

      by

      The Doris Duke Theater, more than twice as large as the original and designed for modern technology, will open in July.When the Doris Duke Theater at Jacob’s Pillow, the bucolic dance festival in Becket, Mass., was destroyed by a fire four years ago, the festival’s director, Pamela Tatge, promised that it would be rebuilt.“The theater,” she said at the time, “is an essential component of the ecology of Jacob’s Pillow.”On Wednesday, Jacob’s Pillow announced that its new Doris Duke Theater would reopen on July 9, as part of its coming season. And the initial wave of programming there has been conceived specifically with the space in mind.“We all struggled when we lost the Doris Duke,” Tatge said in an interview. “But we had this moment to think of what we will build and why, and what sort of building we need in the future.”The campus of Jacob’s Pillow has other performances spaces: the large Ted Shawn Theater, and the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage. The old Doris Duke opened in 1990, with 230 seats and the look of a sleek barn.A $10 million gift from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, insurance claims and other gifts paid for the costs of the new theater. Jacob’s Pillow, Tatge said, wanted its new building to be a flexible space with “the ability to support the future of where this field is going.” The organization hired the Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo, and brought on the Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson as a consultant, to design a theater, Tatge added, “that was in dialogue with nature.”The result is a building nearly twice the size of the original theater, with a range of 220-400 seats and the ability to also house residencies and other events, perhaps at the same time. It will be equipped with a spatial audio system and specialized cameras for livestreaming and interactive video performances.Tatge said that next summer’s lineup of artists at the Doris Duke Theater was based on “works that could magnify and amplify the flexibility of the space, as well as works that demonstrate the intersection of dance and technology.”The programming includes the world premiere of Andrew Schneider’s “Here,” Shamel Pitts’s “Touch of Red” and Eun-Me Ahn’s “Dragons.” The Taiwanese choreographer and roboticist Huang Yi will make his Pillow debut, as will the Indigenous Sámi choreographer Elle Sofe. Faye Driscoll will return to the festival with her work “Weathering,” from last year, and Schneider and Pitts will create digital-first pieces.In the future, Tatge said, Jacob’s Pillow hopes to commission works that incorporate augmented reality, technology similar to video conferencing and other forms of mixed reality. And they can be developed year-round in the new building.“It will be a maker space,” Tatge said of the Doris Duke Theater. “At a time where there is a crisis of ambition in our country because a lack of resources, the fact that we’re going to be able to support artists — that is something.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Second Stage to Leave Its Rem Koolhaas-Designed Off Broadway Theater

      by

      The company said that it was leaving its space in a former bank in Times Square after 25 years because the rent was too high and the lease had unfavorable terms.Second Stage Theater, a leading nonprofit that presents work by living American writers both on and off Broadway, is giving up its Rem Koolhaas-designed Off Broadway home in a former bank near Times Square, saying its rent was too high and its lease had unfavorable terms.The theater company, which has nurtured multiple Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning shows over the years, until recently operated three theaters: the Hayes Theater on Broadway, an Off Off Broadway space on the Upper West Side and an Off Broadway theater, the Tony Kiser Theater, in a former bank building at the corner of West 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue.Last year, Second Stage gave up the lease on its Off Off Broadway space. Now it is also relinquishing the Kiser Theater, a 296-seat theater space where it has been presenting plays and musicals since 1999. The Broadway house has been unaffected by the changes. The company said it was committed to continuing to produce work Off Broadway, and was searching for a new place in which to do so.Second Stage is letting go of the Kiser at a time of significant strain on nonprofit theaters everywhere, and at a time of transition for the organization. Carole Rothman, one of the company’s founders and now its president and artistic director, is leaving the organization this summer after a 45-year tenure; the board is conducting a search for her successor.The Second Stage board had agreed to an 8-year lease renewal for the West 43rd Street building in 2021, but decided late last year to exercise a one-time option that allowed it out of the lease at the end of this year.Lisa Lawer Post, the company’s executive director, cited financial concerns in explaining the decision by the organization’s board to terminate the lease for the West 43rd Street building, which is where the company presented early productions of shows including “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Next to Normal” and “Between Riverside and Crazy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      The Artists We Lost in 2023, in Their Words

      by

      The many creative people who died this year built their wisdom over lives generously long or much too short, through times of peace and periods of conflict. Their ideas, perspectives and humanity helped shape our own: in language spoken, written or left unsaid; in notes hit, lines delivered, boundaries pushed. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their voices.“I never considered giving up on my dreams. You could say I had an invincible optimism.”— Tina Turner, musician, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)“Hang on to your fantasies, whatever they are and however dimly you may hear them, because that’s what you’re worth.”— David Del Tredici, composer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Ever since I can remember, I have danced for the sheer joy of moving.”— Rena Gluck, dancer and choreographer, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“The stage is not magic for me. It never was. I always felt the audience was waiting to see that first drop of blood.”— Lynn Seymour, dancer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Paul Reubens.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Most questions that are asked of me about Pee-wee Herman I don’t have a clue on. I’ve always been very careful not to dissect it too much for myself.”— Paul Reubens, actor, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“If you know your voice really well, if you’ve become friends with your vocal apparatus, you know which roles you can sing and which you shouldn’t even touch.”— Grace Bumbry, opera singer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Actors should approach an audition (and indeed, their careers) with the firm belief that they have something to offer that is unique. Treasure who you are and what you bring to the audition.”— Joanna Merlin, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Glenda Jackson.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady. I’m going to boss everyone about, make people stand up for me when I come into a room, and generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows towards the old.”— Glenda Jackson, actress and politician, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t see myself as a pioneer. I see myself as a working guy and that’s all, and that is enough.”— William Friedkin, filmmaker, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“Some people, every day you get up and chop wood, and some people write songs.”— Robbie Robertson, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I wasn’t brought up in Hollywood. I was brought up in a kibbutz.”— Topol, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jimmy Buffett.Michael Putland/Getty Images“I don’t play at my audience. I play for my audience.”— Jimmy Buffett, musician, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)“I’m still not a natural in front of people. I’m shy. I’m a hermit. But I’m learning a little more.”— Andre Braugher, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)“Some poets do not see reaching many in spatial terms, as in the filled auditorium. They see reaching many temporally, sequentially, many over time, into the future, but in some profound way these readers always come singly, one by one.”— Louise Glück, poet, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I paint because I believe it’s the best way that I can pass my time as a human being. I paint for myself. I paint for my wife. And I paint for anybody that’s willing to look at it.”— Brice Marden, artist, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“Writing is about generosity, passing on to other people what you’ve had the misfortune of having to find out for yourself.”— Fay Weldon, author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Ryuichi Sakamoto.Ian Dickson/Redferns, via Getty Images“I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima, and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, ‘Nature tuned it.’”— Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“I hate everything that is natural, and I love the artificial.”— Vera Molnar, artist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“A roof could be a roof, but it also could be a little garden.”— Rafael Viñoly, architect, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“True architecture is life.”— Balkrishna Doshi, architect, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)Sinead O’Connor.Duane Braley/Star Tribune, via Getty Images“Words are dreadfully powerful, and words uttered are 10 times more powerful. The spoken word is the science on which the entire universe is built.”— Sinead O’Connor, musician, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)“Before I can put anything in the world, I have to wait at least a couple of years and edit them. Nothing is going out that hasn’t been edited a dozen times.”— Robert Irwin, artist, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“An editor is a reader who edits.”— Robert Gottlieb, editor and author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Matthew Perry.Reisig & Taylor/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“Sometimes I think I went through the addiction, alcoholism and fame all to be doing what I’m doing right now, which is helping people.”— Matthew Perry, actor, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)“It was the period of apartheid. You know, it was very hard, very difficult and very painful — and many a time I felt, ‘Shall I continue with this life or shall I go on?’ But I continued. I wanted to dance.”— Johaar Mosaval, dancer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“God would like us to be joyful / Even when our hearts lie panting on the floor.” (“Fiddler on the Roof”)— Sheldon Harnick, lyricist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“I remember back in the day, saying it’s so cool that the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie are still played. That’s what we wanted hip-hop to be.”— David Jolicoeur, musician, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)“Civilization cannot last or advance without culture.”— Ahmad Jamal, musician, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Harry Belafonte. Phil Burchman/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die.”— Harry Belafonte, singer and actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“Some people say to artists that they should change. Change what? It’s like saying, ‘Why don’t you walk differently or talk differently?’ I can’t change my voice. That’s the way I am.”— Fernando Botero, artist, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“Performing is my way of being part of humanity — of sharing.”— André Watts, pianist, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)Renata Scotto.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Singing isn’t my whole life.”— Renata Scotto, opera singer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate.”— Frances Sternhagen, actress, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)David Crosby.Mick Gold/Redferns, via Getty Images“I don’t know if I’ve found my way, but I do know I feel happy.”— David Crosby, musician, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“I’m very abstract. Once it becomes narrative, it’s all over. Let the audience decide what it’s about.”— Rudy Perez, choreographer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t have a driven desire actually to be in the act of writing. But my response to any form of excitement about reading is to want to write.”— A.S. Byatt, author, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t think I ever wrote music to react to other music — I really had a very strong need to express myself.”— Kaija Saariaho, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Richard Roundtree.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“Narrow-mindedness is alien to me.”— Richard Roundtree, actor, born 1942, though some sources say 1937 (Read the obituary.)“The reason I’ve been able to dance for so long is absolute willpower.”— Gus Solomons Jr., dancer and choreographer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“My practice is a resistance to the glamorous art object.”— Phyllida Barlow, artist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.”— Milan Kundera, author, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Mary Quant.Hulton Archive/Getty Images“The most extreme fashion should be very, very cheap. First, because only the young are daring enough to wear it; second, because the young look better in it; and third, because if it’s extreme enough, it shouldn’t last.”— Mary Quant, fashion designer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)“I spontaneously enter the unknown.”— Vivan Sundaram, artist, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“The goal is to wander, wander through the unknown in search of the unknown, all the while leaving your mark.”— Richard Hunt, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Angus Cloud.Pat Martin for The New York Times“Style is how you hold yourself.”— Angus Cloud, actor, born 1998 (Read the obituary.)“I have an aura.”— Barry Humphries, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“Intensity is not something I try to do. It’s just kind of the way that I am.”— Lance Reddick, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)Alan Arkin.Jerry Mosey/Associated Press“There was a time when I had so little sense of myself that getting out of my skin and being anybody else was a sigh of relief. But I kind of like myself now, a lot of the times.”— Alan Arkin, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“I have always thought of myself as a kind of vessel through which the work might flow.”— Valda Setterfield, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it. You probably should be doing it.”— Cormac McCarthy, author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Elliott Erwitt.Steven Siewert/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“In general, I don’t think too much. I certainly don’t use those funny words museum people and art critics like.”— Elliott Erwitt, photographer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves. And hair, and skin: dead cells. This ancient detritus was nonetheless one move ahead of you, making its humorless own arrangements to rejoin the cosmos.” (“The Information”)— Martin Amis, author, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)Magda Saleh.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“I did not do it on my own.”— Magda Saleh, ballerina, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“The word ‘jazz,’ to me, only means, ‘I dare you.’”— Wayne Shorter, musician, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“What is a jazz singer? Somebody who improvises? But I don’t: I prefer simplicity.”— Astrud Gilberto, singer, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)“It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.”— Anne Perry, author, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“When I think about my daughter and the day that I move on — there is a piece of me that will remain with her.”— Ron Cephas Jones, actor, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)“Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future.”— Norman Lear, television writer and producer, born 1922 (Read the obituary.)Tony Bennett.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Life teaches you how to live it if you live long enough.”— Tony Bennett, musician, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via Getty Images. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      36 Hours in Melbourne, Australia: Things to Do and See

      by

      12 p.m.
      Explore a lane that’s gone from rags to riches
      Flinders Lane was the center of Melbourne’s rag trade, as its textile industry was known, until production moved offshore starting in the 1960s. Today, it’s home to a number of gorgeous shops and restaurants. The city’s most beautiful retail space must belong to Alpha60, a local brother-sister fashion label (think boxy shirts and breezy culottes), whose store inside the Chapter House building occupies a cathedral-like space with lofty, vaulted ceilings, pointed-arch windows and a baby grand piano. Across the road, Craft Victoria, a subterranean gallery and store, features experimental Australian ceramics and textile art. After your shopping, drop into Gimlet at Cavendish House, a glamorous restaurant where crisply dressed waiters sail by with caviar and lobster roasted in a wood-fired oven, but you don’t have to go all out: Squeeze in at the bar right after the doors open at noon for an expertly made gin martini (29 dollars) before the lunch rush. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      12 African Artists Leading a Culture Renaissance Around the World

      by

      In one of his famed self-portraits, Omar Victor Diop, a Senegalese photographer and artist, wears a three-piece suit and an extravagant paisley bow tie, preparing to blow a yellow, plastic whistle. The elaborately staged photograph evokes the memory of Frederick Douglass, the one-time fugitive slave who in the 19th century rose to become a leading […] More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      36 Hours in Glasgow: Things to Do and See

      by

      12 p.m.
      Browse Scandi home goods and woolly Scottish knitwear
      Glaswegians have an appetite for sustainable shopping and for secondhand goods of all stripes. Hoos, next to the Botanic Gardens, stocks chic Scandi home goods, while the Glasgow Vintage Co., farther along Great Western Road from Papercup, has a thoughtful selection of second-hand Scottish knitwear alongside show-stopping coats and dresses from the 1970s. Up the hill on Otago Street, above Perch & Rest Coffee, Kelvin Apothecary sells a nice range of gifts including handmade Scottish soaps and wooden laundry and cleaning tools. In the cobbled Otago Lane is the chaotic Voltaire and Rousseau secondhand bookshop, with teetering, vertical book piles. Unlike many Glasgow shops, this store isn’t the most dog-friendly, because of the resident cat, BB, who supervises from his perch at the till. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Myron Goldfinger, 90, Architect of Monumental Modernist Homes, Dies

      by

      His houses, which dot the Hamptons and other parts of the New York region, include a residence featured in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Myron Goldfinger, whose monumental modernist homes around New York made him a favorite architect of the city’s rich and powerful during the 1980s, died on July 20 in Westchester County, N.Y. He was 90.His daughter Thira Goldfinger and his wife, June Goldfinger, said the death, at a hospital, was from liver cancer.Mr. Goldfinger designed his homes by amassing basic shapes — half-circles, blocks, triangles — into dramatic sculptural statements that seem both modern and ancient, as if a Roman palace had lost all its ornamentation but otherwise escaped the wear of time.He first gained prominence with his own weekend retreat, which he built in 1970 in Waccabuc, a hamlet in northern Westchester. Its plan was simple: A rectangular block topped by two perpendicular triangles. But the structure, four stories tall, was full of surprises, like a hidden rooftop patio where the triangles intersected.Like the architect Louis Kahn, who had been his mentor at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Goldfinger sought to fuse modern styles with features found in vernacular Mediterranean architecture: barrel vaults, interior courtyards, vast blank walls.“All architecture must eventually fade and return to dust,” he wrote in the introduction to “Myron Goldfinger: Architect,” a 1992 compendium of his work. “The fashion of the moment is so temporary. Only the timeless basic geometry repeats in time.”Millennium House, designed by Mr. Goldfinger and built in Montague, N.J., in 1978. His expansive, theatrical designs fit perfectly with the lavish ethos of the era. Norman McGrathHis success came not only from his timelessness but also his timeliness. His expansive, theatrical designs fit perfectly with the lavish ethos of the 1980s. His giant walls accommodated massive works of art; his wide picture windows allowed c-suite clients to imagine that they were, indeed, masters of the universe.His homes dot the suburban landscape from northern New Jersey to southwest Connecticut, but his best-known projects lie in the wealthier enclaves that stretch east from New York City on the Long Island shore — above all in the Hamptons, where an influx of luxury buyers were looking for something different than the area’s traditional shingle-style homes.“He was a complete original,” Timothy Godbold, an interior designer and the founder of Hamptons 20th Century Modern, a preservation group, said in a phone interview. “He was completely pure in his aesthetic, which was geometry.”Mr. Goldfinger’s interiors were likewise spectacular. Fitted out by his wife, an interior designer, they included bridges, conversation pits and intimate hallways that led to living rooms with double-height ceilings. They were at once trophies to be displayed and cozy escape pods from the bustle of Manhattan.In 1981 he designed a home for Fred Jaroslow, the chief operating officer of Weight Watchers, in Sands Point, on Long Island’s North Shore. A pile of blocks, cylinders and vaults, it has an almost completely windowless facade, save for a kitchen aperture, a concession to Mr. Jaroslow’s wife.The back is the opposite: Double-height windows, a pool and a broad lawn opening to the water make it an inviting space for entertaining. The house gained prominence when Martin Scorsese used it as the setting for a debauched party hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio’s corrupt broker in the 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Myron Goldfinger in 1965. He designed his homes by amassing basic shapes — half-circles, blocks, triangles — into dramatic sculptural statements.The New York TimesMyron Henry Goldfinger was born on Feb. 17, 1933, in Atlantic City, N.J., to William and Bertha (Sass) Goldfinger. His father was a mail carrier, his mother a homemaker.As a child growing up working class on the Jersey Shore, Myron gawked at the stately homes in some of his hometown’s more affluent neighbors, like Marven Gardens to the south.“I guess we all search for a certain meaning and understanding of life,” he wrote in the foreword to “Myron Goldfinger: Architect.” “I know I am always building the houses I never lived in as a boy.”He graduated from Penn with a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1955, then served two years in the Army, designing cabinets at the Pentagon. Afterward he spent almost a decade working for large and small design firms in New York, including the office of Karl Linn, a noted landscape architect; the giant Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and the office of Philip Johnson.In 1966, he decided to go off on his own, opening a firm with June Matkovic, whom he married that same year. Through Mr. Johnson, he also secured a teaching position at the Pratt Institute, a design and engineering university in Brooklyn, where he stayed for a decade.Along with his wife and daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Djerba Goldfinger, and a grandchild.Later in his career, Mr. Goldfinger expanded beyond the New York area, designing luxury villas on the Caribbean island of Anguilla and two homes in the Southwest, including one in Santa Fe, N.M., for himself and his wife.David Michael KennedyMr. Goldfinger wrote two other books, “Villages in the Sun: Mediterranean Community Architecture” (1969) and “Images of the Southwest” (2008), both of which explored vernacular architecture and how it reflected its surrounding landscape, history and culture.“I love the intuitive artistic sense that drove these ancient peoples,” he told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 1996. “It was an organic process that used whatever materials were available in a basic, honest fashion.”Later in his career, Mr. Goldfinger expanded somewhat beyond the New York area, designing a series of luxury villas on the Caribbean island of Anguilla and two homes in the American Southwest, including one in Santa Fe, for himself and his wife. They had fallen in love with the region, and amassed a sizable collection of Southwestern art.Today, many critics and preservationists speak of Mr. Goldfinger’s work in the same sentence as that of Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier, two world-renowned modernists who likewise designed homes around New York City.If they are better known, it may be because they also completed high-profile public works — Mr. Gwathmey and his partner, Robert Siegel, renovated the Guggenheim Museum in 1992, and Mr. Meier designed the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Mr. Goldfinger’s single significant nonresidential work was a synagogue in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.His work also went out of fashion for a time, as postmodernism swept in and clients returned to more traditional styles. But, Mr. Godbold said, the pendulum may be swinging back: On social media, he often sees younger architecture fans fawning over a Goldfinger house.“We’re all going to be loving it in a few years,” he said. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Sonic Sphere, a Concert Hall That Hangs Like a Disco Ball

      by

      The lights inside the cavernous McCourt space at the Shed had been dimmed, and a mystical soundtrack was playing. “Your journey begins in five minutes,” a recorded voice announced to the roughly 200 people gathered there on a recent evening.A curtain opened, revealing a 50-ton spherical, suspended concert hall that glowed red and orange.There were whispers among audience members that the hall, called the Sonic Sphere, resembled a spaceship, Epcot, a disco ball or the Death Star. Some people, snapping photos, joked that it might take flight during the nearly 70-minute program, a listening session of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.” Others were expecting a more spiritual experience.“I want to lose myself in the sound,” Stephen Ross, an architect, said as he made his way up a flight of stairs to the main entrance. “I want to be transported.”The Sonic Sphere, a realization of a modernist dream by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, aims for a new kind of listening experience: surrounding the audience with 124 meticulously arranged speakers and an array of lights that change color with the music.The 66-foot-diameter Sonic Sphere suspended and under construction at the Shed.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe Sonic Sphere was overseen by a team that includes Ed Cooke, Merijn Royaards, Nicholas Christie, Chester Chipperfield and Jessica Lair.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe infrastructure includes 1,178 steel struts, 3,500 yards of cloth and 12 structural cables supporting the sphere from the roof.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThis summer, the Sonic Sphere will host listening sessions of music remixed for its spatial sound design, including the xx’s debut album, from 2009. The lineup also includes playlists by the D.J.s Yaeji and Carl Craig, and live performances by the pianist Igor Levit, who will play Morton Feldman’s “Palais de Mari” with a visual accompaniment by Rirkrit Tiravanija.The Shed’s iteration of the Sonic Sphere — overseen by a team that includes Ed Cooke, Merijn Royaards, Nicholas Christie, Chester Chipperfield and Jessica Lair — is the 11th and the largest, with a diameter of about 66 feet and a capacity of roughly 250 people, who sit or lie in netted areas.“It’s about a change in consciousness that leaves a memory,” Cooke said of the project. “Can people have an experience where they touch some new territory of consciousness, not in a way that is like an altered state, but one that actually leaves a trace?”George Etheredge for The New York TimesStockhausen conceived of a spherical concert hall known as the Kugelauditorium, a form of which was erected at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan. There, Germany’s pavilion presented works written for the dome, including music by Stockhausen himself. Crowds of music fans visited, but the idea never caught on.Since 2021, Cooke and his team have revived the concept, building Sonic Spheres in France, the United Kingdom, Mexico and the United States, including at Burning Man. Each time, the hall has grown bigger; the first one, at the Féy commune in northeastern France, was 10 feet in diameter and cost about $1,000.Events at the Sonic Sphere include listening parties of albums remixed for its 124 meticulously arranged speakers, as well as live performances by the pianist Igor Levit.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesThe version in New York has 1,178 steel struts, 3,500 yards of cloth and 12 structural cables supporting the sphere from the roof. The hall’s opening was pushed back a week because of delays receiving supplies, including trusses and floor plates. The result is the first Sonic Sphere to be suspended in air, at a cost of more than $2 million, with much of the financing from technology investors and entrepreneurs.Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director, who in his early career worked with Stockhausen, said that the Sonic Sphere’s aim was to bring the focus back to sound.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“These days, we talk about going to see a concert, which is kind of nuts,” he said. “We’re so dominated by the visual. Here we’re bringing music back to the center of the experience, and that’s really beautiful and important.”At the “Music for 18 Musicians” listening session last week, audience members had a range of opinions about the hall.Ryan Mannion, a software engineer in New York, said he was able to lose himself in the music: “I found myself just sort of sitting back and closing my eyes and enjoying it.” Some, though found the experience too noisy, and too long. “There were a few moments when it was sublime,” said Sarah Watson, an executive coach, “but not all the time.”The Sonic Sphere’s main entrance is reached by a staircase of about 50 steps.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesOne audience member, Ryan Mannion, said, “I found myself just sort of sitting back and closing my eyes and enjoying it.”Christopher Lee for The New York TimesWatson’s 9-year-old daughter, Matilda Morton, said that she enjoyed the session but found some parts excessive. “It felt like we were secret agents in an alien mother ship,” she said. “It was pretty overwhelming with the red lights and the loud, vibrating noises.”The Shed’s Sonic Sphere will close on July 30, but is expected to return next year. Before then, it will move to another location, possibly on the West Coast or in Europe.Cooke said that he hoped the agility and accessibility of the spheres, which can be built and taken down relatively quickly, would allow them to become more common.“People are more and more desperate to come together and experience rich, transformational things,” Cooke said. “We want to give them something magical.” More