Word: trumps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...match of developer and designer is apt. Jahn's work tends to be glossy, imposing and a little martial, the architectural equivalent of Wagner played on a synthesizer at full blast. He is the Donald Trump of his field, a showman enthralled by sheer size. "We are doing the tallest building in Houston," says Jahn, "the tallest building in Philadelphia, the tallest building in Europe." He arrived from West Germany 19 years ago, at age 26; at 33 he was partner and design director of C.F. Murphy Associates in Chicago; at 43 he was owner and chief executive officer...
...building. Inside that vast, quasi-subterranean space will be 13 acres of TV studios, underground parking for thousands of cars, and an enormous shopping mall. The whole multibillion-dollar shebang, called Television City, must get approval from two separate city boards, a process that could take a year. If Trump is successful, his enclave will be the most ambitious urban project of its kind since Rockefeller Center went up half a century...
...City has an odd retro quality. The project seems inspired by a Believe It or Not sensibility, the equation of freakish size and glamour that plays well these days only in Las Vegas. Sure, sipping a martini at sunset 150 stories up would be swell--once or twice. But Trump, a man entranced by superlatives, seems not to realize that few people any longer share his obsession with building a still taller tallest skyscraper...
People who live near Trump's site worry about the prospect of shadows, of crowded subways and buses. Yet Television City does not really seem so disruptive. The site, a defunct rail yard, is empty land; urban renewal rendered most of the adjoining blocks charmless years ago. Moreover, 8,000 new apartments should channel some of the gentrifying development pressure away from fragile Manhattan neighborhoods. The rooftop acreage is ingenious: the park will be above the elevated highway that runs along the Hudson, allowing pedestrians unimpeded views and a sense of riverfront connection...
...Jahn and Trump have passed up a much greater opportunity, however: the chance to create an intricately woven place, a true city within a city, complete with streets, courtyards, a variety of building types, maybe even a sense of community. The land is so vast and comparatively cheap (Trump paid $1 million an acre, vs. the $26 million an acre paid for a midtown block at the same time) that high-rise construction is surely not, for once, the only practical option. But the pair will take the easy way out, designing housing wholesale. What about all the new passengers...