Karl Fischer in The Showerhead
Every time I walk by architect Karl Fischer's timeless Empty Clockface building on McCarren Park, I think: I know I've seen that look somewhere.I believe I am getting closer to the source of his inspiration with this picture.
Having recently watched The Fountainhead, and watched Karl help turn this area into a luxury condo theme park, I'd guess it's only a matter of time before his life story is immortalized on film; let's call it The Showerhead.
The Showerhead will tell the story of the architect "who could not say NO," who brought the soul-deadening plastic of the suburbs to the city, and designed buildings that make you wish The Fountainhead's Gary Cooper would blow them up.
Developers couldn't care less about what the rest of us have to look at, and condo owners live inside the hideous creation, the one place where they don't have to look at it. It's up to supposedly high-minded architects to save us, and Karl's just not getting the job done.
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The fantasy boulevard setting of Karl's Warehouse 11 promo picture, above left (compare it to the less spacious reality, right), betrays its purely suburban origin, designed for a world where people drive everywhere, and where a home is not part of some organic neighborhood rich with diversity and history, but just a garage where residents park the alienated corporate work-unit their soul has become.
The only good looking building Karl's produced is the Ikon, left; they are not done yet, so they still have time to wreck it.It looks like a slick Swedish ant farm, the perfect setting for another movie or reality TV show -- call it The Glass House -- about the problems of Wall Street worker ants so filthy rich and hollow that it hurts, and leaves them wondering if their lives of shuffling other people's money from one esoteric financial instrument to another has lost all meaning, so they spend their nights in drug-fueled debauchery, and greet the dawn with their naked bodies stuck to the Ikon glass like suction toys stuck inside a car window.
If only Karl could return to the inspiration for that one.
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5 Comments:
could not agree more
You confuse the talent or vision of the architect, with the financial goals of the developer. Very few architects (e.g. Gehry, Nouvel, Koolhaas) get to be Howard Rourke and design buildings that represent their undiluted personal aesthetic. Karl makes attractive buildings that fulfill the developer's requirements within the constraints of zoning and DOB approval. That takes real talent.
"That takes real talent." - anonymous II
No, that takes the desire to get paid.
I wouldn't pick on Karl if he didn't choose to cover the landscape with depressingly ugly behemoths. No one's forcing him to be a hack.
I think Karl is just like Howard in one way: neither has any concern for the effect their buildings have on anyone else.
If you live in the area of the development, then it would be surprising if a high-density structure designed by even the world's best architect would please you. Let's face it: Karl doesn't choose to cover the landscape, the developer does. To call him a hack makes clear your lack of familiarity with his work. Spend a few minutes at www.kfarchitect.com and educate yourself. The Chelsea Club and Slate are good looking buildings. Queens Plaza and Grand & Driggs will be quite handsome; The Powerhouse is an very tasteful conversion. As for the Bayard buildings, they're not my taste. However, as they say in Brooklyn, "Chacun a son goute!"
"Spend a few minutes at www.kfarchitect.com and educate yourself."
I did before I wrote the post, and the site confirmed my suspicions.
"The Powerhouse is an very tasteful conversion."
That's funny. I picked the cheap plastic top of that building out of the skyline months ago, and didn't learn it was Karl's till this week. If I worked at the U.N., right across the river, I would sue for degradation of view.
'However, as they say in Brooklyn, "Chacun a son goute!"'
No, that's what they say in Montreal, another Karl victim.
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