Condos vs Velos: Defining a City's Inner Spirit

Has Las Vegas come to Manhattan? I find myself jolted senseless, walking around Manhattan these days.

Forget Times Square, which one expects to have a certain Vegas flavor and now a gentlemen’s club or two or three.

I’m not speaking of the Electric Fountain, a kitschy, transitory LED light project, currently installed in Rockefeller Center.  No, I didn’t stick my finger into the cascade of electrified fake water, as I did in the real Prometheus fountain, on a magical night in Manhattan decades ago.

I’m a jaded New Yorker now … and a mistress to Carversville … or perhaps the opposite; I’m never sure where my heart is happiest. Bottom New York line, nothing much punches my consciousness anymore, but lately …

Architecture Gets in My Way

I’m minding my own business, walking the streets of Soho, Tribeca or the Meatpacking district. when I come face to face with the new kid on the block, the bold, modern fascade of another New York condo. Walking down a cobblestone street, filled with 17th century factory cum loft architecture, I am slapped in the face by a naked, modern building, as devoid of feeling as a Vegas showgirl or rich man’s call girl.

Trying to get a perspective on her . . you know, get inside her mind a bit, hear what she has to say … well, I hear nothing. If you remember, I have the same problem with Las Vegas. The city demands my attention, but what does she offer me, in terms of her inner life?

To be fair, not all of these new buildings fail to inspire. There are some Parisian Crazy Horse dancers with a genuine leg up, in the slick, glass Vegas veneer. And this journal entry sounds as if I have a hard-on for the Electric Fountain, which is not at all the case.

Restating My Position


Flickr: mcminty’s France set 

I adored riding the millennium Ferris Wheel, spinning me into the night sky, delighting in my view of the centuries-old Le Louvre and Leoh Ming Pei’s 1989 controversial, modern glass pyramid entrance to the museum. A photograph of this contemporary, architectural juxtaposition hangs next to my bed, as a reminder of the need for me to look forward, not backwards, into the future.

Pei’s Louvre pyramid expresses a different meaning than many of these new Manhattan buildings. Serving a civic purpose, it directs me, from any direction,  to the entrance to the museum. 

Civic Partners 

The original, authentic Louvre shows through the glass, as a historic, Parisian masterpiece. The two structures co-exist, without a modern, in your face, architectural fist fight.

Similarly, the Electric Fountain does coexist with Prometheus in Rockefeller Center. The creators, two London artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster spent several years lobbying for support to erect their lightshow project in New York.

Once their proposal for a giant fountain was approved, the couple began reading up on the art and architecture of Rockefeller Center. “In the foyer of Radio City there is this amazing mural that depicts the fountain of youth, so fountains are in its bones,” Noble said. “The Art of Rockefeller Center,” a 2005 book by Christine Roussel, convinced them they had hit on the perfect form, he added, quoting from one passage: “The Rockefellers knew the future would concentrate on the electric arts of sound and light.”

Funding for the Electric Fountain, part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial, was negotiated with Lexus by Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen, of the Art Production Fund. The two women unite artists with private sponsors to create large-scale public art in New York City.

Yet another big splash is headed our way. Waterfalls, not fountains, will shower lower Manhattan in July 2008, when Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson installs four 90-to-120-foot waterfalls in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governor’s Island, effectively turning New York Harbor into a mini-Niagara.

These installations, like the beams of light celebrating the twin towers at the World Trade Center, are meant to inspire our souls, nurturing our spirits.

Superstar Architecture Beams of Steel

Andrew Rodriguez
Modern, status-seeking condominiums striding into Manhattan create a different conversation with my spirit. Nicholas Ouroussoff recently wrote a thoughtful piece on this Manhattan trend for name-brand residential architecture.

Citing an “unmistakable shift in the appetites and aspirations of an elite group of New Yorkers for whom an apartment’s architectural pedigree has become a new form of status symbol,” Ouroussoff” suggests:  “Decades from now these preening, sometimes beautiful, sometimes obtrusive towers could well be the last testament to this century’s first gilded age.”

The challenge for innovative architecture in any city, from Paris to Shanghai, is to balance design aesthetics and the freedom to design forward into the future, with a sensitivity to the existing environment. Frank Gehry is an architect able to accomplish this objective, as is IM Pei. There’s an organic sensibility to their work, missing from many new buildings.

The Voyeur and The Exhibitionist

In 2002, my design presentation focused on the development of nonreflective glass, as a vehicle to enhance a lifestyle trend of increasingly exhibitionist and voyeuristic human behavior.

At the time, I didn’t put these new buildings in the context of a larger architectural statement … one that now directly affects my experience of city life.

Ouroussoff reminds us that most memorable architecture has been civic buildings or corporate headquarters. Installing The Electric Fountain next to Prometheus in Rockefeller Center is a sophisticated, civic wink to the pervasive influence of the Las Vegas lifestyle in American life.

The new residential, tabloid architecture of New York is not a lighthearted wink. These powerful, sometimes dominating structures — whatever their size —  can be a fist in our faces.


We experience not only the transparency of 21st century life, but the narcissism of the powerful egos occupying Manhattan. Often, there is no attempt to blend into the cityscape, connecting the organic roots of the city, with 21st century architecture that has soul. Not every new residence forces this contradiction in the city, but many do.

These buildings remind us that the chasm between the haves and the have nots has never been greater in New York.

Las Vegas is not my city because — for me — it has no inner self. It’s all show and celebrity wannabes. The city interests me only because I must stay abreast of new trends around the world, and Las Vegas is a trend.

Condos and Velos

In France 1.7 million Parisians — including my friend Laura Wenke — hopping on bicycles, to get around the city. These two trends about the well-lived life couldn’t be more dramatically different.

My psyche aches for more soulful expressions of ‘velos’ and fewer reminders of the fact, as stated by Ouroussoff, “that we are living in a rampantly narcissistic age.” This high and mighty altitude of New York condos is wrecking havoc in everyone’s lives, including mine. Anne

Update on Wed, March 26, 2008 by Anne

This New York Times article on developing Manhattan’s West Side is a sobering followup to my post. Read: Profit and Public Good Clash in Grand Plans. Anne

Update on Thu, March 27, 2008 by Anne

The Christian Science Monitor worte an article about the upcoming Waterfalls exhibit. Anne