The Reptilian Lollipop: 2 Columbus Circle Sheds Its Skin

Rendering of the New 2 Columbus Circle

When I was in Seattle at the end of April for the press preview of architect Brad Cloepfil's addition to the Seattle Art Museum, he had invited me to attend the May 3 hardhat tour for his redesign of 2 Columbus Circle in New York, the future home of the Museum of Arts & Design. But after I got home, the invitation was rescinded by his publicist, who informed me that the tour was fully booked.

She also told me:

The NY Times was given an exclusive on this engineering story and everyone else is seeing it now on deep background. This tour really is strictly to inform later articles on the architecture and engineering of the space.

Are there really journalists out there who willingly accede to such "Times First" stipulations?

Put out by this put down, I enviously awaited Robin Pogrebin's "exclusive," which yesterday gave us an advance look at a building that won't be finished for another year and is not yet ripe for useful perusal (as can be clearly seen in the slide show accompanying the article's online version).

Although it did provide a moment of levity, thanks to its loopy headline ("Renovation Slowly Adds Some Light to Lollipops"), Pogrebin's first lick didn't tell me much about the building that wasn't already available to less worthy journalists through Cloepfil's own information packet, which he had distributed six weeks ago at SAM's preview.

That material described (and provided images of) the "series of cuts through the structural concrete shell of the building that admit light and views into the reconfigured gallery spaces." What's more, we learned that "those cuts take this thing right to the edge of its tectonic stability."

Even scarier is the risky eccentricity of the building's new skin, described as "terracotta, which has an iridescent glaze." During Cloepfil's slide show of his career highlights that he presented in Seattle, he briefly flashed an image of that skin, which certainly caught my attention: It looks like an oil slick.

In his informational packet, Cloepfil tells us:

When it's in flat light, it's going to be a single color and give you the impression of a unified building. But when the west façade is in sun, when the light rakes the curve on 58th Street, that iridescent glaze will go nuts.

Yikes!

He added that "this iridescent glaze is downright swanky." I can think of another word that might better describe it, but I'll hold my reptilian tongue and try to suspend disbelief. I must resist the serpentine temptation to review something I haven't yet seen.

The most glaring omission in Pogrebin's piece was its failure to explain why Edward Durell Stone's original design is now universally described (including several times in her own article) as "the lollipop building."

Credit where credit is due---to the Wall Street Journal's (and former NY Times') architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, who, in her 1964 review (which was generally appreciative, not dismissive), famously wrote that the building resembled "a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops."

I wonder if Ada Louise is already sharpening her herpetological metaphors for this building's second skin.