Word: pelli
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...less than a block south is architect Helmut Jahn's new 70-story Cityspire. Yet instead of adding to the high-rise pile-on, Carnegie Hall Tower improves the neighborhood and the skyline -- in part by visually eclipsing Metropolitan Tower -- and proves that grandeur need not equal bulk. Pelli's apartment-and-office tower is a full block deep and 60 stories tall, but it is marvelously narrow -- a mere 50 ft. wide. New buildings of this height usually contain two or three times as much square footage; no matter how interesting or tarted up, such behemoths almost inevitably darken...
...unusual difficulties Pelli faced -- squeezed site, Carnegie Hall as partner and next-door neighbor -- are what have made the new tower so special and grand. "Constraints," the architect says, "are not necessarily negative. They force you to try avenues you would have ignored." Contextualism has been the urban-design buzz word of the past decade, but no architect has done a better job of fitting a big building into such an important, tightly woven urban fabric. The 535,000-sq.-ft. tower is technically an addition to Carnegie Hall and takes important aesthetic cues from...
...hall's century-old Roman brick and terra cotta are suggested on the tower by a skin of brownish and amber brick in five shades, and the molding and cornice lines of Carnegie's beaux arts facade are continued across the front of Pelli's building. The high-rise is wrapped by thick metal bands at six-floor intervals corresponding to the older building's height...
...Pelli, however, did not make the standard postmodern mistake of replicating an old form at inappropriately huge size. The interior spaces are modest (no more than about 14,000 sq. ft. per floor), and an intricately detailed exterior suggests a bygone age, not any particular building or style. Four metal grids, each bolted at an upswept angle to the 60th floor, provide a classically inspired, yet unequivocally modern top. "We picked up threads of the past," says Pelli, "with a contemporary technology and contemporary sensibility...
...Pelli still gets thank-yous from strangers about his MOMA renovation and notes from Minneapolis praising his Norwest Center. Ordinary people instinctively understand his talent. Remarkably, his very big buildings are thoughtful, likable, rich in detail, humane. "If the architecture is very good," he says, "huge scale can be a vehicle for doing an exceptional building." Coming from almost anyone else, that would be disingenuous tripe. When Pelli delivers platitudes about making cities better -- "In a good city every building should be a gift" -- one tends to accept the earnestness. His work has earned...