Thursday, May 18, 2006
Mondo Condo
Right again, artlings. The answer to yesterday's question is: D) None of the above.
According to the marketers of the Libeskind apartments, "neither article is correct": 12 of the 56 residences, ready for August occupancy, remain unsold. The economics of the commercial building are completely separate from the museum's (unlike MoMA's neighboring Museum Tower, which generated "tax equivalency payments" for the museum).
But the real question is whether Libeskind's jagged, spiky structure, designed to resonate with the nearby Rocky Mountains, will work as a congenial space for displaying art. In a red-flag division of labor, the museum decided to assign its own designer, Dan Kohl, to lay out the interior walls for the galleries, finessing Libeskind's challenging, quirky angles with some traditionally shaped spaces.
This will be Libeskind's first completed project in the United States. Denver chose him as architect before his fame grew as the visionary, if beleaguered, master planner for Ground Zero.
But only CultureGrrl can tell you how he got his start: He was a year ahead of me at the Bronx High School of Science, and I'm guessing that he was one of the very few of my fellow nerds who actually enjoyed wielding a T-square at the much maligned Mechanical Drawing class we were all required to take in the Sixties.
As for me, I won the Bronx Science graduation award for best student in English. Hey, someone's gotta read!
According to the marketers of the Libeskind apartments, "neither article is correct": 12 of the 56 residences, ready for August occupancy, remain unsold. The economics of the commercial building are completely separate from the museum's (unlike MoMA's neighboring Museum Tower, which generated "tax equivalency payments" for the museum).
But the real question is whether Libeskind's jagged, spiky structure, designed to resonate with the nearby Rocky Mountains, will work as a congenial space for displaying art. In a red-flag division of labor, the museum decided to assign its own designer, Dan Kohl, to lay out the interior walls for the galleries, finessing Libeskind's challenging, quirky angles with some traditionally shaped spaces.
This will be Libeskind's first completed project in the United States. Denver chose him as architect before his fame grew as the visionary, if beleaguered, master planner for Ground Zero.
But only CultureGrrl can tell you how he got his start: He was a year ahead of me at the Bronx High School of Science, and I'm guessing that he was one of the very few of my fellow nerds who actually enjoyed wielding a T-square at the much maligned Mechanical Drawing class we were all required to take in the Sixties.
As for me, I won the Bronx Science graduation award for best student in English. Hey, someone's gotta read!
