Last week, we had the opportunity to tour the new Guthrie down our way, and we were impressed. The shell is more or less complete, and now the finishing work begins–a Herculean task that makes shoveling the stalls of Augeas look like a July picnic. Anyway, we were finally convinced of the genius of “the endless bridge”–which we had shamefully been calling the “skyway to nowhere.” The bridge is actually a spectacular, free-flying, glass stairwell, in this case a low-angle ramp connecting the third and fourth levels of the building, with a detour to the other side of River Road. Now we get it! Awesome!
We’ve heard a few other somewhat more phallic euphemisms, but this is a family blog.
We also noticed this quiet little game of brinksmanship amongst the world-class architects currently romping through our modest little cabbage patch: Who can build the most impressive cantilever? Nouvel’s bridge at the Guthrie wins going away, of course. (There are two other cantilevers in the new Guthrie.) But it’s interesting to consider the ramifications of Pelli’s wing above the new public library, and Herzog and De Meuron’s blocky overhang–not so much a cantilever as an exposed bottom.
With the worsening flap about what should be done with Ground Zero, we think the answer is pretty obvious. Cantilevers are the new skyscrapers. Skyscrapers were a brilliant marriage of form and function–you know, minimize the footprint of actual real estate, and make use of all the headspace, while celebrating the, ah, thrusting ambitions of 20th century capitalism. But their vulnerabilities are unbearable today. (Have the terrorists won if we don’t build another towering phallus of commerce in lower Manhattan?) And if you think about it, nothing would be more fittingly decadent in a self-righteous, post-industrial, xenophobic, me-first nation than a two- or three-story skyscraper, turned on its side and suspended just a few feet above the ground. Why not go entirely yonic and historic-revisionist, and make it a levitated Pentagon?
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