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Back to the future
There is a sci-fi grimness about Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid project in Beijing, featured in your January 2010 issue, that is worrisome as it relates to the ultimate course of Modernism. I sincerely hope that the people who inhabit this soulless place may find human refuge in the vibrant parts of old Beijing, much like the characters in Jacques Tati’s 50-plus-year-old film Mon Oncle, who found a similar refuge in the heart of old Paris.
What hogwash! Sustainable is a skywalk with no purpose? Cantilevers for no reason?
A total underutilization of a site? Dreadful is simply not adequate! You are committing a great disservice to architecture (and the Chinese) by fawning over such a ridiculous project!
In his article on Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid, Clifford Pearson characterizes the Minneapolis sky bridge system as a development that “strangled street life.” This oft-repeated denunciation has become conventional wisdom, but it is based on a superficial glance, and it is false. Minneapolis’s downtown is among the healthiest in the nation, in spite of a cold climate that favors suburban commercial development, with its free parking conveniently near building entrances. Developers and corporate decision makers are drawn to Minneapolis by its extensive skyway system, which enables the area to compete with suburbs for employers and employees. In fact, the city’s central business district has grown to 26.5 million square feet, one of the nation’s largest among metropolitan areas of similar population. Observe Minneapolis’s downtown and you will see pedestrian activity greater than that of most American downtowns, because Minneapolis has a skyway system.
Friend or foe?
Robert Ivy writes in his January editorial, “Architects will look, amazingly, to government in 2010, not as Big Brother, but as partner …” This statement highlights why you are out of touch. The reality is that the architectural profession is unsustainable unless the federal government’s wasteful spending spree doesn’t continue.
Lawrence G. Kownacki
Erie, Pa.
CORRECTIONS
January’s Practice Matters column [“A Stimulus Success Story,”] incorrectly stated the dollar figure associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The legislation allocated roughly $787 billion for stimulus measures, not $787 million. A statement in the January editorial [“Through the Looking Glass,” page 15] implied that Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a United States senator in 1962. In 1962 he was an assistant secretary of labor and was not elected to the Senate until 1976. The same editorial implied that the United States Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security are separate entities. In fact, the Coast Guard is a service within the Department of Homeland Security.
Please send letters
via e-mail to editor-in-chief Robert Ivy at
rivy@mcgraw-hill.com.
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© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
