The Gray Lady Sags a Bit

I just read Paul Goldberger’s review of the new New York Times building and the Bloomberg headquarters. It is a fairly work-a-day review, but those of us still suffering a hangover from the days of that shrill shill Herbert Muschamp, just that is reason to lift every voice and sing. The pointed end of his criticism is leveled at the design of the interior—the newsroom, to be exact. In fact, the whole reason for bringing in the Bloomberg building at all, since it is hardly a fresh addition to the city, is to make the point that the Times newsroom is a staid design gussied up in some fresh finishes while the Bloomberg example is a totally innovative approach to a media-environment which, by the way, also has some fresh finishes.

While I believe Goldberger—after all, a combination of Cesar Pelli and Pentagram probably can do a much better job at planning an interior than just letting Gensler loose in a big floorplan whose lace edging was hooked by Renzo Piano—we kind of have to take it on faith. Compare

“With its sea of cubicles partitioned by wood-veneer cabinets, it is vastly more sophisticated than any workplace the Times has ever had, but sleekness has brought a certain chill . . .”

with

“. . . some four thousand employees sit in uniform rows at identical, white-topped desks bearing custom-built Bloomberg flat-panel computer terminals.”

and tell me where, if anywhere, I can find “a newsroom truly designed for the electronic age . . . a workspace that could not have existed ten years ago.” All in all, I think I’d rather pass on both and go work in the Marin Civic Center as re-imagined in Gattica. Well, minus the eugenics.

Goldberger doesn’t answer my two biggest questions—in fact, he slides by both of them as if they’ve been answered somewhere else, and I just haven’t been keeping my eyes open. The first is why the NYT needed to build a 52-story tower of which they were only going to be occupying a fraction. The second is how we all got it passed over on us that the building is not the shimmer white tower we saw in renderings and model and instead looks armor-like and, basically, filthy before it’s even finished.

The old Times building and the new Times building are of such different scales, it’s a little hard to imagine how the same institution could find a home in both. Goldberger mentions the development team of Forest City Ratner and later talks about how most of the news room staff is actually housed in a midrise building outside of the bigger tower—something that is supposed to give these old newsies a “pride of place.” (Dolores Hayden just called—she wants her catchphrase back.) What he doesn’t do enough of as all is connect the dots of these two features of the project and tell us how the Times is basically an anchor tenant to a towering commercial real-estate mall, one with enough public and economic clout to smooth the way for such a large project, but no more the occupant of the tower than Nordstrom’s at your local Westfield development. This thing seems like a rip-roaring real-estate investment that uses the reputation of the Times as some sort of scrim over thee more real, more likely ugly, mechanisms of the principals here.

The last issue is why this thing has to look so dingy. The ceramic rods were supposed to be shimmering, ephemeral (Goldberger managed to suck that one up straight from the press release too—bonus points to the PR flacks who have made sure we all talk about the building using that word, even if in outright disagreement). I guess we should know by now, every time you hear those words, put your hand on your wallet. I can see the Times tower grow day by day from my office window, and it may be a lot of things, but light, iridescent, ephemeral, etc., etc. are not among them. Goldberger gets the ambiguous success right on:

The ceramic screens rise higher than the roof by about ninety feet, forming a light, ephemeral crown. Piano said that he wanted the tower to look as if it disappeared into the air, and while it doesn’t quite do that—in part because of its steely, battleship-gray color—it has a tensile elegance that sets it apart from every other skyscraper in Manhattan.