The Assassination of Art

/Delirious Disney World/Delirious New York/Delirious Dubai/

I will be spending serious quality time this coming week with both my sisters. Where to go when in need of quality time on the east coast? Disney World! We all have not been there in ages and thought it would be a good idea to find the elusive r + r with Mickey. I will keep you all posted on how it goes but for now I wanted to talk about fantastical urban developments in the vein of Rem Koolhaas.

"A city cannot be a work of art," Jane Jacobs once wrote. Well, the renowned architect Rem Koolhaas has designed an enormous city-district that looks like a gorgeous work of art. To call it a mega-project would be a gross understatement. How about "giga-project"? Above is what it's supposed to look like.

It's one-square-mile of man-made island to be built on an artificial harbor in the Emirate of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, the cost of which, even before buildings, will be probably reach the tens of billions of dollars.

You can read about it on the website of Mr. Koolhaas's firm, The Office for Metropolitan Architecture, here. The idea is to mimic the density of Manhattan on an immense scale, combining mixed uses (what else?) in the context of his celebrated concept of a "generic city," which he has defined as "the city liberated from the captivity of the center, from the straightjacket of identity…it is the city without history."

So why can't a city be a work of art? Because a work of art is the creation of a single mind that abstracts from the complexities of life to achieve a particular end, however definite or ill-defined that may be. To the extent that the artist intends to create one thing and not something else (though she may change her mind often) she shapes parts of reality to realize her vision as effectively as she can — something the artist and the engineer have in common. A living city, on the other hand, is something that emerges over time from the mostly unplanned interactions of those who live in it, creating complex inter-relating patterns — social, infra-structural, and architectural — that defy deliberate construction.

"To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood," Jacobs continued, "as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life." Which is why (as I've said before) architects usually make bad urban planners.

Whether the result of private or public planning, or some private-public planning hybrid, construction on such a massive scale has serious, negative long-term consequences. First of all, even though Mr. Koolhaas's island district is designed to look heterogeneous and diverse, true architectural diversity is the result of buildings and public spaces being built in different eras, each with its own tastes, technology, and resources. A single mind can't design that kind of genuine diversity, any more than it can invent a living language. Visual homogeneity, no matter how cleverly done, is fundamentally bland and deadening at the street level.

Second, in addition to this deep and unavoidable visual homogeneity is an inherent temporal homogeneity. That is, since the structures will be built over a period of years rather than decades or centuries, they will mostly be of the same vintage. This will tend to make the district affordable when it's new only to the very rich and well-established, and it will all age together — good for married couples, but bad for long-term economic growth. Having some old and worn-out buildings sprinkled around offers cheap space for young entrepreneurs and artists with little money to experiment and exploit opportunities in a wealthy district with high concentrations of people. "New ideas need old buildings." They serve to significantly expand the diversity of tastes and knowledge that are necessary for the vitality of the city over time.
If ordinary mega-projects have trouble grappling these problems of homogeneity, giga-projects don't stand a chance.

I suppose if enough foreign wealth floods into this commercial and residential playground, it will achieve a sort of Disney World success. That's perhaps the best that deliberate planning at this scale can hope for, but it's as far from real urban success as Disney World is from Manhattan.

Au Revoir Parapluie

I attended AU REVOIR PARAPLUIE at BAM last evening. We witnessed the magic of Charlie Chaplin's grandson, James Thiérrée. No amount of program notes can prepare you for an experience that is like being locked inside someone else's dream, or rather, their nightmare. Even the title is mysterious because the only rain that falls is a shower of shuttlecocks.

Watching Thiérrée's dazzling show - part dance, part conjuring trick, part visual theatre - is like being involved in a mad word-association game that has been given a physical manifestation. One thing simply leads to another in a world that has its own internal logic. It is a place where giant fish can gobble you up, the top of the head can be removed to reveal brains in need of a good dust, and cause and effect become jumbled up: when a man hits another with a bottle, it is the hitter who collapses to the ground.

I must admit I loved every bit of it.

Enter Obama, the Drug Afflicted Candidate

Alec MacGillis writes for the Washington Post:

Billy Shaheen, the co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire, raised the issue of Sen. Barack Obama's past admissions of drug use in discussing the relative electability of the Democrats seeking the presidential nomination today.

In an interview, Shaheen said, he remains perplexed about why, at this fraught point in history, voters and the media are not giving more attention to experienced Democratic candidates such as Sens. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden and are instead elevating into the first tier alongside Clinton a pair of candidates with less experience in Washington, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Shaheen also expressed his personal misgivings about whether Obama or Edwards would be electable if they became the party's nominee.

Among his concerns about Obama as the nominee, he said in an interview here today, is that his background is so relatively unknown and that the Republicans would do their best to unearth negative aspects of it, or concoct mistruths about it. Shaheen, a lawyer and influential state power broker, mentioned as an example Obama's use of cocaine and marijuana as a young man, which Obama has been open about in his memoir and on the trail.

"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," said Shaheen, the husband of former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is planning to run for the Senate next year. Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama's openness about his past drug use -- which Obama mentioned again at a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire -- with the approach taken by George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000, when he ruled out questions about his behavior when he was "young and irresponsible."

Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

I say everyone should try everything at least once in their life.

Olivier Theyskens @ Alliance Francaise

I had the opportunity to see Pamela Golbin, Curator of Twentieth-century and Contemporary Fashion at the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Paris, interviewing Olivier Theyskens last night. Olivier was named Artistic Director for Nina Ricci in November 2006.

The Belgian designer dropped out of La Cambre Art School in Brussels to launch his own label in 1997 at the age of 20. Moving in his collections from an uncompromising and radical design to a more romantic and moody spirit, Theyskens revealed a singularly personal and essential style. After presenting nine collections under his own name, he joined the legendary House of Rochas in 2002 as Artistic Director. In 2005, he was a star Honoree at Fashion Group International's Night of Stars. In 2006, he was named Best International Designer by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

I must say that I appreciate how far this designer has gotten in a period of just a decade. With all of his many accomplishments I was floored by his unassuming personality and disarming charm...not to mention, that gorgeous French accent!

In Olivier's own words, "I want to create a cool girl paradise at Nina Ricci, something suitable for women from Manhattan to Paris to Tokyo."