{"id":635,"date":"2011-10-02T09:07:42","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T15:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=635"},"modified":"2013-01-17T17:06:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T00:06:04","slug":"635","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=635","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Kimmelman’s Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Michael Kimmelman<\/p><\/div>\n

New York Times<\/em> commentators have always figured prominently in my urban studies reading lists, whether its Paul Krugman advocating Old World urbanism<\/a>, David Brooks explaining American exurbanism<\/a>, or the extant architecture critic opining about the latest addition to the global skyline.\u00a0 So, I was excited last Monday when Caitlin Barrett, one of my students, alerted me to a front page article about architecture in that day\u2019s edition of the Times<\/em>.\u00a0 I wondered if this might be the first piece by Michael Kimmelman, the person appointed to replace Nicolai Ouroussoff<\/a>\u00a0as Times<\/em> architecture critic. I was delighted to find out that it was.\u00a0 And I was even more delighted to discover that Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s inaugural subject was Via Verde<\/a>, an affordable housing project in the South Bronx. Affordable housing and homelessness is a territory into which this blog\u00a0has ventured a couple of times (see\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s review of Via Verde hits many good notes.\u00a0 He serves notice on (1) the inter-effective relationship between people and buildings; (2) the civic value of architecture; (3) America\u2019s calamitous history of \u201curban renewal\u201d in the name of creating affordable housing; and (4) and the \u201cbinge culture\u201d of recent years in which \u201cadvances in new digital technologies and materials coincided with unprecedented private wealth to cause architecture to join the conga line of fashion and art.\u201d\u00a0 Of course his review also detailed the particular design virtues of the Via Verde complex, including its many green features, built-in incentives to outdoor living and walking, and rooftop gardens and other common areas.\u00a0 Importantly\u2014and refreshingly\u2014the review ends with a promise to keep tabs on the building to see how it’s actually used by residents and whether it accomplishes its social goals.<\/p>\n

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Via Verde (Phipps, Rose, Dattner, Grimshaw)<\/p><\/div>\n

I was impressed that Mr. Kimmelman (and his Times<\/em> editors) paired his print piece with an online bit<\/a> about Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s \u201cmission\u201d and an invitation to converse about the social context of architecture: who benefits from buildings, who doesn’t, and what makes them succeed or fail.\u00a0\u00a0 The resulting reader commentary is pretty much uniformly positive about Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s inaugural piece and mission statement.\u00a0 The most impassioned commentators played off of the \u201cbinge culture\u201d riff.\u00a0 One agreed with the need to \u201cdrive the conversation away from luxury developments by starchitects and towards sustainable construction.\u201d \u00a0Another urged that we \u201cshift the discipline\u2019s radar from form-based aesthetic evaluation to a broader social-based evaluation.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 A third wished Mr. Kimmelman good luck in nudging the conversation \u201ctowards a more comprehensive evaluation of the built environment and away from the breathless adulation of the latest big name architect, or the branding of the latest green trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most trenchant comment, however, challenged Mr. Kimmelman to carry through on his commitment to turn criticism and conversation in this direction.\u00a0 As this reader noted, global travel to exotic locales and company kept with Pritzker Prize<\/a> winners can have seductive effects and derail even the best laid plans to re-focus the critical agenda.\u00a0 The accusation is that Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s predecessors in the Times<\/em>\u00a0architecture critic\u2019s seat too easily succumbed to these temptations.\u00a0 I\u2019m not so sure.\u00a0 Mr. Ouroussoff had his moments writing about housing for the poor<\/a>, although he may have gone a little over the top writing about\u00a0Koolhaas<\/a>.\u00a0 Only time will tell if Mr. Kimmelman will make good on his promise to sustain a focus on the social context, redemptive qualities, and long-term history of urban architecture and design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Times commentators have always figured prominently in my urban studies reading lists, whether its Paul Krugman advocating Old World urbanism, David Brooks explaining American exurbanism, or the extant architecture critic opining about the latest addition to the global […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1H2bI-635","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2432,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/2432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}