Being in New York sometimes you want to get away from everybody – and all you really need to do is put on a pair of headphones and start walking. Last Friday I did just that. It was an incredibly satisfying serendipitous jaunt through midtown and I thought it could make for a great blog serial – so this is the first of many more to come.
Along the way I went through the Lever House, Seagram’s building and Morgan Library (among others) – and came to the conclusion that Renzo Piano’s New York Times is actually a derivative of Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House, fifty (or so) years later. Raised podium over public ground plan, through block transparency with gallery even the massing with courtyard is freakishly similar. Of course I may be overly simplistic and speaking only of a typology but I also believe that Bunshaft was more successful in making a truly public ground plane. Makes me really appreciative of what was accomplished by SOM given the period they were operating in.
The soundtrack to this adventure consisted of Yeasayer’s Odd Blood, Ra Ra Riot and the new Sufjan Steven album The Age of Adz (amazing).