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Jean Nouvel v. Community Board 5

by Sandy Ikeda
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 at 10:12 AM

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A recent Sun article makes me wonder just what community boards think their role is when they try to block new architecture in their jurisdiction. I had blogged before about incentive and knowledge problems facing CBs, but the issue here is different.

The building in question, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, is "a twisting, 75-story apartment tower on a small site adjacent to MoMA" (Museum of Modern Art) which will expand into part of the new space. Personally, I wonder why all towers have to be torqued these days (e.g., the Freedom Tower at the site of the former World Trade Cener), but that's just me. So while I have my own aesthetic sense, I wouldn't necessarily place it above those of a Pritzker Prize winner and MoMA, much less use political power to stop someone else from applying theirs even if I thought it was awful. (Okay, if it was awful enough I might think about doing it, but the point is I shouldn't be able to, because mixing politics with architecture makes for bad politics and even worse architecture.)

After Community Board 5 rejected the plan, the president of the West 54th and 55th Street Block Association, evidently echoing the sentiments of the CB:

I can't believe the claim that Nouvel looked at the context. If he had he would never have done this. … It will have an incredible affect [sic] on the already crumbling infrastructure and it just doesn't fit there however gorgeous some people think it is.

(The Landmarks Preservation Commission is supposed to rule on this, but after perusing their website I've been unable to determine whether they've made any decision yet.)

Now, we're not talking about construction inconveniences or environmental problems or the like, which are indeed the legitimate concerns of a community board, but rather how the structure fits in with the existing built environment – a purely aesthetic judgment. The Empire State Building certainly didn't "fit" its neighborhood in the on Fifth Avenue and the 32nd Street when it was built (and it still doesn't), but few would claim that its current location was a mistake nor that it detracts from its surroundings. Builders of large projects today are required to conduct environmental impact studies – so can "aesthetic impact studies" be far behind? (Crumbling infrastructure is a legitimate concern, but the article doesn't elaborate.)

The deeper question is not only whether community boards or anyone else should determine the look of their neighborhoods over the long haul, but whether it's even possible for them to do so. The "fit" of a set of buildings in a given neighborhood block is something that can only be partially planned for in an evolving urban environment. The distribution of age, style, and function of buildings throughout New York and most other cities is an emergent phenomenon and largely beyond the control of all except the most heavy handed urban planners. In a market economy it depends on taste, technology, and economic conditions. Somehow, though, fit usually does seem to take place over time – witness Wall Street or Midtown – despite or because of the seemingly hodgepodge of building sizes, styles, and uses that have arisen over time.

So somehow it seems paternalistic or worse, not merely to freely object to an innovative building, the product of both artisan and artist, but to grab for the political power to stop it (as has happened repeatedly to the Whitney Museum further up town). Forcibly stopping someone from building because in your opinion it doesn't look nice? C'mon!

(This would be less problematic, of course, if the community board owned the neighborhood.)

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