So distracted were we by the love fest that was yesterday's High Line ceremony that we failed to note the big, fat, wet kiss that Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff planted on Renzo Piano's renovation and expansion of the Morgan Library:
A sublime expression of the architect's preoccupation with light, the design transforms the world of robber barons and dust-coated scholars conjured by the old Morgan into a taut architectural composition bursting with civic hope.A few paragraphs later comes the side note everybody's waiting for, and he carries it off effortlessly, with just a hint of nose-thumbing, our-guy-rocks-your-socks insouciance:(Full disclosure: Mr. Piano, of course, is the architect of the future New York Times Company building rising on Eighth Avenue. I can only dream that the Times tower lives up to the standard set at the Morgan.)We're also kind of partial to the moment in the video where Ouroussoff says: "To make room for a small 280-seat theater, Mr. Piano blasted through 45 feet of bedrock." Mr. Piano's hard hat, along with the rest of his design, goes on display April 29.
· Renzo Piano's Expansion of the Morgan Library... [NYT]
· Morgan Library: Pictures [RPBW]
· Morgan Expansion Project [TheMorganLibrary]