Closing Bell: LPC Still Not Buying Domino Plan
At a public hearing today the LPC once again urged developers CPC Resources and Isaac Katan to rethink the design that Beyer Blinder Belle has produced for repurposing the landmark Domino refinery building. According to a post on the WPGA blog, “In a nutshell, the majority of the Commissioners felt that addition was too tall…
At a public hearing today the LPC once again urged developers CPC Resources and Isaac Katan to rethink the design that Beyer Blinder Belle has produced for repurposing the landmark Domino refinery building. According to a post on the WPGA blog, “In a nutshell, the majority of the Commissioners felt that addition was too tall and that it was not the the right design for this building.” Beyer Blinder Belle, meanwhile, compared its design to the Tate Modern, the Morgan Library and the Hearst Tower.
LPC to Domino: Not Yet [WGPA]
Landmarks Commission Sends Domino Back for More Work [Curbed]
New Domino Plans Falter at LPC Hearing [Brownstoner]
Rendering courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle architects.
the domino building looks fine. beyer binder belle has always done decent work. the towers on either side however, a way too big.
i will like it only if the glass box changes color at night.
Is that the world trade center to the left?
On the other hand, you may be right.
Guests 9:37 and 8:38, I cited the Louvre and Tate not to argue that this building shares that level of significance, or that this architect/developer can rise to that standard. I’m simply responding to the posters above who seem incapable of grasping the very simple idea that good architects have often responded to the challenge of adaptively re-using older buildings by attaching contemporary pieces to them. And that, in both examples I cited, this was achieved–to stunning aesthetic success–with glass.
Polemecist: the developer owns a SIX BLOCK site – if this addition isn’t approved, the floor area could easily be distributed throughout the rest of the site. The developer’s position is a red herring.
Rehab: read the link, the landmarks commissioners dismissed (rather derisively) the comparisons to the Tate. This is a different factory, and simply mimicking the Tate is pretty lame architecture. Bankside is nothing like Domino, and suggesting that the solution to any industrial building is to drop a glass on it because the Tate did it is just phoning it in.
9:37 pegs it. This is a half-assed design that doesn’t begin to live up to the precedents they set. The landmarks commissioners said as much, and the architects should be (and probably are) embarrassed.
The Louvre and the Tate are two super-ambitious cultural projects sponsored by the governments of European allies who are not ashamed to spend big bucks on art projects and are not afraid to be called elitist becaue they do so.
This by contrast is a private speculative development with absolutely no other raison d’etre but to make profits. I don’t see how anyone with half a brain can compare these things. On the one hand you have a public interest cultural endeavor and on the other you have a most venal and, I’m sorry, low-life, development project that is meant to extract every last nickel of profit from anything it can. I have a feeling even the architects are embarrased at this and have to put up with the derision of the landmarks commission and a large segment of the public because their clients are too wooden-headed to know the difference between what is decent and what is indecent. I may be wrong but that is how I feel about this abomination.
the louvre?
just cause you pour syrup on shit, doesnt make it pancakes
8:38….????!!!!! grow up, we are just sharing opinions. This is not a war.
Anyway – glass pyramid in Louvre and Pompidou center were both rather hated by
Parisians, but now they are the essential part of the city. Mind you, they are not residential projects and way more significant (and designed by famous, if not always loved)architects. That said – glass addition looks much better than something fake traditional.