Hey, speaking of Costas Kondylis (can we just call Element, Essex Ale House and?sadly?Katz's the ballsack from now on?), Richard Meier opens a mild case of whoop-ass on him in a Time Out backpage interview published this week. Meier talks about how he wouldn't mind being remembered as the guy who built those celebrity dorms, then tosses what could be considered jabs at Kondylis and Frank Gehry:
From here you can see Sir Norman Foster’s Hearst Tower and Renzo Piano’s New York Times building. What do you think of those efforts by your fellow starchitects? Well, it’s not their buildings I worry about—it’s some of the other ones that are popping up around here.?
What—you’re not a fan of the Atelier apartments on Eleventh Avenue? They were designed by Donald Trump’s favorite architect!
[Laughs and shakes his head] No.
High-profile buildings like yours make neighborhoods more desirable, and then developers cash in with schlockier designs. Do you worry about how your work might change the character of an area—the one going up near Prospect Park, for example?
We’ll have to see about that. The area around the park is pretty well built out, so I don’t see how it could change that radically. The important thing is to build to a scale appropriate for the surroundings, which is what we’re doing in Brooklyn. I mean, it’s not like the Atlantic Yards!
Might we suggest settling this with a mud wrestling tournament at the Soho Mews site, reffed by Charles Gwathmey, with the winner allowed to build whatever the hell they want on, say, Governors Island? We need some excitement around here.
· Hot Seat: Richard Meier [TONY]