Breaking! Frank Gehry Sucks.

From No Land Grab

Frank Gehry: has the bubble burst?

The First Post
By Charles Laurence

Superstar architect Frank Gehry is being sued by MIT - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology renowned for technological innovation - and the court action suggests that the Gehry bubble may be about to burst.
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Gehry, 78, became America's most celebrated architect since Frank Lloyd Wright after building the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He has since created a host of other buildings which have captured the imaginations of both critics and the public. The latest is billionaire Barry Diller's headquarters in Manhattan, which suggest billowing sails on the Hudson river. But do they work?

Guess what Bruce Ratner and Frank Gehry have in common? We'd tell you, but we have to check with our lawyers first:

Contracts with Gehry Partners turn out to have clauses gagging public criticism or complaint, so now critics are wondering whether problems are being covered-up at Bilbao and other famous buildings.

article

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As NLG says seems like Gehry and Ratner are perfect for each other...and hell for us.

Shhh, It's a Secret!

From DDDB:
State, NYPD, Ratner All Mum on Arena Setbacks

Arena renderings from the Final Environmental Impact Statement,
and the 5/12/06 NY Times
(Top: along Atlantic Avenue. Bottom: Along Flatbush Avenue.)

First Forest City Ratner and the NYPD have refused to state basic facts to the public about the setback of the arena from the streets; that is the distance from Atlantic, Flatbush and Dean Street from the proposed Barclays Center arena. Now the state agency overseeing the project ostensibly on behalf of the public, the Empire State Development Corporation, is also refusing to state what will become obvious if the arena is ever built--the setback distance to the arena. Claiming confidentiality about this distance seems suspicious and is unacceptable.

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Huh? The ESDC is claiming (this is the 'new' ESDC of the "everything changes" Spitzer administration) that they cannot devolge the setback distance of the stadium for security reasons. Hmm, how do they intend to keep that little fact from the public once its built?

NoLandGrab wonders:

Seriously, if the ESDC claims that a security study isn't warranted because a terrorist attack isn't a "reasonable worst-case scenario," then why has one security expert testified on FCRC's [Forest City Ratner Companies] behalf that "safety of the arena and surrounding area could be easily compromised" if security measures were disclosed?

The implication is, if they told us how bad things really are, then a worst-case scenario might be within reason.

Daily News on Gehry, Via No Land Grab

FRANK LLOYD WRONG

CRACKS FINALLY APPEAR IN THE FAD OF GEHRY

NY Post
By Kyle Smith

StataCenter-NYP.jpgWhen there are problems with Frank Gehry's buildings, the startchitect's response is to blame the victim. MIT is the latest of several high-profile projects that display a sincere lack of common sense — will Brooklyn be next?

In a lawsuit first reported by the Boston Globe last week, MIT alleged that the three-year-old Stata Center, one of Gehry's trademark designs from the Four Car Pileup school of architecture, is already suffering from cracks in its amphitheater because of poor drainage, as well as widespread leaks that have been there since virtually the day the building opened. In winter, outdoor mini-avalanching turns entrances into hard hat zones.
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Professors at the MIT building - including Noam Chomsky - complain that they can't put in bookcases (the walls are tilted) and they're living in a zoo because of the open plan's lack of privacy (actually, it's more like living in a petri dish - there's mold growing on the outside). People with IQs that exceed Queen Latifah's weight have complained that they get lost in the maze-like internal layout. One of the conference rooms stuck into the roof is so bizarrely shaped that a third or more of all visitors - including Gehry himself - suffer dizzy spells in it.

One of Gehry's most praised creations had to be torn up because its floor was too slippery for women in heels. Who could have expected fashionable women to congregate in such a space - the Conde Nast Cafeteria here in Midtown?
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Gehry is diluting his cool factor so quickly - now he's designing jewelry, wristwatches and the Wyborowa Vodka bottle - that he seems determined to become the Pierre Cardin of design, and once his stuff is everywhere, as it soon will be, future generations will look at his jumbly faddish structures the way we look at shoulder pads or hoop skirts. When he builds the Ground Zero arts center and the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, will he embarrass us the way he has so many others?

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Yeah, he sucks, what took people so long to realize this? Are our elite this naive? Are critics? Do they not have eyes? Do they not have brains to ask simple questions like, "hmm it looks unusual, but how practical is it to actually work there? How practical are those roofs in cities with heavy snowfalls?". Gehry represents the ultimate arrogance and agoraphobic nature of 'starchitects' -ego driven maniacs whose vanity designs not only try to defy human nature, but nature itself. Even if there were ways, for example to say, melt the snow on the roofs- it is extremely wasteful to not have a design that simply does the job in the first place.

IF AY gets built (and that's a big if, no only because of the lawsuits but because of the increasing infeasibility of the whole scheme, oh but wait Ratner doesn't care because we absorb all the risk), IF it does, it will be a laughing stock and eyesore before its finished. And given both Ratner and Gehry's track record, it will be an impractical poorly constructed mess, which will probably start to fall apart before it's finsihed.

Side note the maze like corridors were intentionally designed by Gehry so people would bump into each other and spontaneously interact.

From DDDB, worth repeating in full:

Let Them Eat Hot Dogs

On Thursday the Bloomberg administration announced its plans to turn Coney Island into Bloomberg's fantasy island. What does the Mayor think of the small people? From the Brooklyn Paper:

...The city was not prepared to say how much it would be willing to pay to buy out existing land owners. But, Bloomberg made one thing abundantly clear: no longer will small, individually owned amusements conspire to create one great carnival.

“Today, you can’t have a bunch of individual little things and have them survive, not when the public has entertainment alternatives,” said Bloomberg. “They can fly anyplace for next to nothing.”...

Apparently, though, eminent domain is good when used on the small people (see: Prospect Heights, West Harlem, East Harlem, Willets Point, Duffield Street), but not on the table when it comes to big developers such as Joseph Sitt's Thor Equities. From Crains:

...But Mr. Bloomberg will have to get approval from the state legislature, and acquire the land from Mr. Sitt through a cash or land swap deal...

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Get that? small and mid sized business should be forced to relinquish their property to bigger businesses. We're now seeing a bizare fusion of captialism and communism - but the forced redistribution favors the extremely wealthy. I am amused that Mr Bloomberg thinks that most Brooklynites and New Yorkers, especially those middle class ones with families, can hop on a plane and fly away for the weekend for next to nothing. Tell us Mike, when you flit down to Bermuda for the week-end, how many of the families you rub shoulders with work as teachers in the NY public school system?

I know many people on the old right and left, myself included, go on and on about how we're losing our freedoms and the republic is slipping away but what further proof do you need when the mayor of America's largest city says this and it doesn't cause the slightest outrage from any MSM?

Bloomberg and his ilk are solving the pesky problem of America's middle, working and Upper middle classes, by simply importing a new people, poorer, less educated, who are more easily manipulated and controlled.

Only question now is how bad will it get until we get up on our hind legs and get rid of people super-elitists like Bloomberg? The baby boom generation - the 'children of the sixties' is turning out to be the most destructive, irresponsible and arrogant in generation in American history...only problem is, I think my generation will be worse.

Side note, one of the most humurous things i have read all year is MSM's attempt to float gun grabbing, open borders, pro Iraq /Iran war, eminent domain favoring Bloomberg as an alternative candidate 'outside the system'.

Ann Coulter: Joe McCarthy Was Right.

Like most everything else liberalism (modern, not classical) is based on, McCarthyism is a lie:
McCarthyism: The Rosetta stone of liberal lies

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Posted: November 7, 2007
6:20 p.m. Eastern

By Ann Coulter

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© 2007

When I wrote a ferocious defense of Sen. Joe McCarthy in "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism," liberals chose not to argue with me. Instead they posted a scrolling series of reasons not to read my book, such as that I wear short skirts, date boys and that "Treason" was not a scholarly tome.

After printing rabidly venomous accounts of McCarthy for half a century based on zero research, liberals would only accept research presenting an alternative view of McCarthy that included, as the Los Angeles Times put it, at least the "pretense of scholarly throat-clearing and objectivity."

This week, they got it. The great M. Stanton Evans has finally released "Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies." Based on a lifetime's work, including nearly a decade of thoroughgoing research, stores of original research and never-before-seen government files, this 672-page book ends the argument on Joe McCarthy. Look for it hidden behind stacks of Bill Clinton's latest self-serving book at a bookstore near you.

Evans' book is such a tour de force that liberals are already preparing a "yesterday's news" defense – as if they had long ago admitted the truth about McCarthy. Yes, and they fought shoulder to shoulder with Ronald Reagan to bring down the Evil Empire. Thus, Publishers Weekly preposterously claims that "the history Evans relates is already largely known, if not fully accepted." Somebody better tell George Clooney.

The McCarthy period is the Rosetta stone of all liberal lies. It is the textbook on how they rewrite history – the sound chamber of liberal denunciations, their phony victimhood as they demean and oppress their enemies, their false imputation of dishonesty to their opponents, their legalization of every policy dispute, their ability to engage in lock-step shouting campaigns, and the black motives concealed by their endless cacophony.

The true story of Joe McCarthy, told in meticulous, irrefutable detail in "Blacklisted by History," is that from 1938 to 1946, the Democratic Party acquiesced in a monstrous conspiracy being run through the State Department, the military establishment and even the White House to advance the Soviet cause within the U.S. government.

In the face of the Democrats' absolute refusal to admit to their fecklessness, fatuity and recklessness in allowing known Soviet spies to penetrate the deepest levels of government, McCarthy demanded an accounting.

Even if one concedes to on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand whiners like Ronald Radosh that Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson didn't like communism, his record is what it was. And that record was to treat Soviet spies like members of the Hasty Pudding Club.

Rather than own up to their moral blindness to Soviet espionage, Democrats fired up the liberal slander machine, which would be deployed again and again over the next half century to the present day. In hiding their own perfidy, liberals were guilty of every sin they lyingly imputed to McCarthy. There were no "McCarthyites" until liberals came along.

"Blacklisted by History" proves that every conventional belief about McCarthy is wrong, including:

• That he lied about his war service: He was a tailgunner in World War II;
• That he was a drunk: He would generally nurse a single drink all night;
• That he made the whole thing up: He produced loads of Soviet spies in government jobs;
• That he just did it for political gain: He understood perfectly the godless evil of communism.

Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories – the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears' career, etc., etc. – when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U.S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy.

Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in – or aptitude for – persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies. "Blacklisted by History" removes the curse from one of the greatest patriots in American history.

The Guardian On Gehry:

"Gehry breached its duties by providing deficient design services and drawings," the suit said, according to the Boston Globe.

Gehry's critics have long accused him of overvaulting ambition, both in terms of assessing the depths of his clients' pockets as well as the technological limitations on turning his visions into reality.

Two of Gehry's earlier university projects have run into difficulties. A 1986 engineering building for the University of California at Irvine has been torn down because it leaked. A building for the management school of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio cost more than double the original estimate.

Critics have been divided since the Stata Centre's completion, with some praising its innovation and others denouncing it as a blight on the landscape.

In 1989, when Gehry was awarded the prestigious Pritzker prize, the citation read: "His sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work, has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury, in making this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values."

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Note the last part...is this who we want desing buildings in this day an age when practicality, safety are paramount and environmental concerns an issue? And when the novelty wears off what are left with? An eyesore. Gehry is nothing but a hustler who's been knighted by the elite to brand globalism - like globalism, it entices you for a moment until you realize behind the dazzle are just greedy people like Bruce Ratner picking your pocket.

Ratner is a dinosaur - stuck in a 1960/1980s megablock mentality, only paying lip service to things like environmental concerns or, more amazingly, security concerns (maybe, like Larry Silverstien he is hoping of for a double windfall) so its not surprising that he's picked an architect that, if this nonsense gets built will be viewed as a laughing stock by the time its finished....problem is the joke's on us since we'll be paying for it.

Ratner is very simply a very greedy, corrupt and rather disgusting man who is concerned about one thing - lining his own pocket - he is willing to use fake community groups, take money from real affordable housing and even go as far as to seize schools from children (see the Brooklyn Tech effort) yet our elite and the New York Times showers praise and calls him one of their own...what does that tell you?

Gee, I didn't Know We Were Propsering.

Really, I know it's rhetorical, but is Bush mentally stable? How can he go one aping comments like this:

Bush warns protectionism will cost U.S. jobs

President ramps up free trade blitz amid flagging support for new pacts

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Oh I see and our current policies are just doing wonders for the US economy... I mean, what other president had gas quadruple and the dollar lose 40% of its value on their watch? And conversely every country that has 'free trade' with us and protects their own economies are prospering. Yet Bush keeps on repeating the same ideological nonsense.

The evidence is overwhelming - NAFTA and one sided 'free trade' agreements with the far East have hurt the American middle class - the only ones to profit are the super elite and protected classes such as Wall Street (who is protected by the Fed) and other cartels such as lawyers- the working classes have been hit the hardest.

Sailer on "The Difference Myth"

The Difference Myth"

From the Boston Globe:

The difference myth

We shouldn't believe the increasingly popular claims that boys and girls think differently, learn differently, and need to be treated differently

Here's my favorite line in the article:

Scientists have turned up some intriguing findings of anatomical differences between the sexes.

Who would have imagined it? It's amazing what science can accomplish!

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It is both amusing and morbidly fascinating to see the liberal/left (and to be fair Neonconservative) denial of reality. Their ideologies trump reality and science and they are getting increasingly aggressive about defending their non-truths.

All this means we have a society, educational system, public policy, government and foreign policy in defiance of reality, which is why it is failing before our eyes.

Steve Sailer On Gehry :

Frank Gehry's Toontown at MIT

From the AP:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing renowned architect Frank Gehry, alleging there are serious design flaws in the Stata Center, a building celebrated for its unconventional walls and radical angles.

The school alleges the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.

Gehry, designer of the UFO crash Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, needs to lawyer up in a hurry. Disney might sue him for plagiarism, because his MIT building looks an awful lot like Roger Rabbit's Toontown at Disneyland, just silverier:


I love a joke as much as the next guy, but the reason we have new jokes is because jokes get old, fast. I'm sure that when MIT decided to spend $200 million (or whatever they budgeted before it ended up costing $300 million) on this, it must have seemed pretty funny at the time. But the problem with a $300 million dollar joke building is that it ought to last long enough to wear out the joke. Maybe that's Gehry's latest conceptual breakthrough: design it so badly that it will fall apart only a few years after it's not funny anymore.

Oops, I Trashed Your Campus.

MIT sues Gehry, citing leaks in $300m complex
Blames famed architect for flaws at Stata Cent

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up.


The suit says that MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which was hailed by critics as innovative and eye-catching with its unconventional walls and radical angles. But soon after its completion in spring 2004, the center's outdoor amphitheater began to crack due to drainage problems, the suit says. Snow and ice cascaded dangerously from window boxes and other projecting roof areas, blocking emergency exits and damaging other parts of the building, according to the suit. Mold grew on the center's brick exterior, the suit says, and there were persistent leaks throughout the building.

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Can't stop water...but it'll stop a truck bomb :)
Seriously just imagine what this moron will accomplish if he is allowed to build the sixteen skyscrapers and an arena in Brooklyn. Hell, Al Queda might not have to do anything - just sit back and wait for Frank's designs to self destruct. Want a clue why 'no other buildings' look like Frank Gehry's ? Same reason you don't see buildings with half a roof and a door in the ceiling...it doesn't work..

Even without the construction flaws this building is an absolute dud- according to wiki:

there are certainly many who are less enamoured of the structure. The use of glass for walls on the inside means that those who work in the building have to give up a sense of privacy. There is also one lecture room where, because of the slight lean of the walls, some people have been known to experience vertigo. Sound insulation is almost absent. The building has also been criticized as insensitive to the needs of its inhabitants, poorly designed for day-to-day use, and at an official cost $283.5 million, overpriced

Insensitive to the needs of inhabitants -well he's the perfect chap for Ratner, eh?


I would add that Gehry's design, according to a woman I knew who was at MIT, was intentionally confusing so people would bump into one another and spontaneously create (i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried) so you 'never knew who was around the corner....well you can imagine how women feel about working there after hours.....

Feed an Aligator, so it will eat you Last?

Multiculturalism Multitasks in Destroying Christmas and Women’s Rights

Posted By Brenda Walker On 1 November 2007 @ 5:09 pm In General, Immigration | Comments Disabled

In Britain, voluntary grovelling toward [1] hostile Muslims took another step toward destroying British culture and dragging Christmas down in the process.

Immigration works so much better than [2] messy warfare for overturning a nation. Particularly when the people don’t seem much interested in defending their heritage…

Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations, says an explosive report.

Labour’s favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to ‘expunge’ Christmas from the national calendar, ‘even-handedness’ means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing. […]

“We can no longer define ourselves as a Christian nation, nor an especially religious one in any sense.”
[[3] Christmas should be ‘downgraded’ to help race relations says Labour think tank, Daily Mail 11/1/07]

Right on cue, a British school went all out: [4] Teachers ordered to dress up as Muslims [Daily Mail, 10/31/07].

Teachers at a primary school have been ordered to dress up as Muslims to promote multi-culturalism.

The West Midlands school is belatedly celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid and told its pupils and teachers to don traditional Muslim dress for the day.

All 257 pupils, most of whom are Christians, and 41 teachers - two of whom are Muslims - dressed up.

A morning assembly was held to mark the event and an afternoon party was strictly for women only, because Muslim husbands object to wives mixing with other men.

Get that last bit? [5] Hard-won women’s rights are the first thing to be thrown under the bus by multiculturalism. Furthermore, following Muslim misogynist rules for a kids’ assembly illustrates that the purpose was to appease Islamists and [6] train girls into [7] proper Muslim submission.

Winston Churchill wisely opined that a person deluded by the leftist appeasement philosophy believes that if he feeds a voracious alligator, “the alligator will eat him last.”

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Well, as Mrs walker Points out, Multiculturalists are getting remarkably efficient now destroying multiple aspects of Western society instead of one feature at a time.