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...structure, by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone, opened in 1939, the architectural tone of 53rd Street-and of midtown Manhattan in general-was set by brownstones, mansions and beaux-arts commercial buildings. It was a world of rich, plum-pudding surfaces. When MOMA raised its polemic International Style façade of glass and polished marble, with those futuristic Swiss-cheese holes in the roof canopy, it looked apparitional. But now the context has shifted again. Thanks to the competitive urges of developers, the very idea of the glass tower has acquired a bluster it never had before...
Known as the "country of eternal springtime," Guatemala appears peaceful. Late-model cars breeze along the capital's tree-lined boulevards, and restaurants draw crowds with such delicacies as imported stone crabs and tender churrasco steaks. But that façade of tranquillity conceals some unpleasant facts. According to Western diplomats, the average number of violent deaths each week has increased from 150 under former President Efraín Ríos Montt to 190. Daily newspapers display incongruously cheerful pictures of students and young professionals who have "disappeared." Earlier this month an engineering student known for his leftist...
...finally settled on the pyramid form because it would be distinctive and yet would not clash with the classic lines of the old building. The proportions of the pyramid (modeled after the famous Egyptian pyramid at Giza) would make it two-thirds the height of the Louvre's façade. Computer-generated graphics commissioned by Pei indicated that the glass structure would be barely visible to visitors approaching the Louvre from the Champs Elysée and quite unobtrusive even from the Louvre's Tuileries Gardens...
SITE's first real commission was the renovation of a Best Products Co. showroom in Richmond in 1971. Best Products is the largest U.S. catalogue showroom merchandiser, with a network of sales outlets that are essentially windowless brick boxes. In Richmond, SITE added a new façade that incongruously and dramatically seemed to be peeling...
Without repeating itself, the SITE team subsequently designed equally startling Best Products showrooms all over suburbia. Outside Houston, their building seems to be collapsing, a cascade of brick tumbling onto the front entrance. Near Miami, the Best Products showroom façade seems ripped to pieces, and the fragments are surrealistically placed in front of one another like stage wings. There is a ten-foot space between each of the freestanding elements: doorways, a canopy over the sidewalk, a stripped, façadeless structure. And in Richmond a second showroom is built in segments amid a stand of trees, giving...