Delirious New York: A reaction, not a review

by Sandy Ikeda

I started reading Rem Koolhaas’s insightful but seemingly endless Delirious New York a couple of years ago and just finished it this morning. Why so long? Well, it’s partly because I don’t read so fast, but mostly because it’s maddeningly obscure, both its structure and prose.

Although it has a lot of interesting and important things to say about the “culture of congestion,” RK’s writing is as self-indulgent as his architecture.  Architecture should not be art, non-fiction should not be (mostly) non-sense.

Earthquake, shmearthquake

by Sandy Ikeda

“To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It” The city is Kashgar, “the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia….”

Local authorities claim that by pre-emptively demolishing 85% of it they will be protecting its citizens from the kind of catastrophe that befell Chengdu last year. As Robert Moses was fond of saying:  “If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?”

Want to know your echinus from your abacus?

by Sandy Ikeda

As a result of taking “Creative Cities in History” at NYU I’ve a renewed interest in architecture. I picked up Achitecture: Elements, Materials, Form by Francesca Prina and have found it very useful as a source of basic vocabulary and concepts.

I can now tell a capital from an entablature, a column from a pillar, and a model from a rendering, each of which is treated in its own, short chapter. The text is concise accompanied by many photos with brief captions that, except for an occasional misdirected arrow, helpfully illustrate and explain.