Jean Nouvel and the Angry 2400 Inches

They sliced it off: last month, the New York City Department of Planning cut starchitect Jean Nouvel’s proposed MoMA highrise by 200 feet, out of consideration for the scale of its would-be neighbors on 54th St. and in deference to the small but noisy local opposition to the project. The skyscraper, combining residential and commercial space with additional galleries for the new-but-already-maxed-out MoMA building next door, will still be constructed more or less along the lines of le maître‘s original design–but this fact was somewhat obscured when the news of its mandatory haircut hit the wires in early September.

And now, the New York Observor tells us, Nouvel and the project’s backers are fighting back.

Even as I write, Nouvel himself is appearing before a City Council sub-committee to second the request of developers Hines Interests to restore the excised portion of the tower. If built to full height, the building would be as tall as the Empire State Building; why such an extraordinary height should be necessary to the success of the design is unclear, but it will certainly be central to Nouvel’s case in the hearing this afternoon. In a rush to preempt him, allow me a few errant speculations on several aspects of this débâcle:

–The building looks pretty good: in the latest renderings, a web of skewed structural members traces a snaking patina up the long chrome face of the twoer, something like an expressionist revision of Chicago’s Hancock Center. Strange allure is Nouvel’s legerdemain; some scholars have noted his indebtedness to European nightclubs of the 1970′s. Geting something this compelling and original added to the New York skyline is worth it of itself to justify whatever height, and the design is assured enough to confirm that Nouvel knows what he’s about and should be trusted as regards the building’s particular dimensions. Let it go.

–And why not build something really tall in midtown? It’s midtown, and besides, Lower Manhattan will soon have its 1 World Trade Center (at least it looks that way), so why not make this a moment to affirm the power and possibilities of the vertical city? The lot is empty, so preservationists needn’t lose sleep; and there’s no chance that any building, however large, could change the character of such a complex and teeming neighborhood.

–But then there’s the unseemly stuff: The Hines Interests are cashing in here, because MoMA owes them big-time. Hines has underwritten a very large portion of the museum’s architectural program for years; they headed up the development of the new museum building earlier in the decade, and have built previous commercial projects (notably Cesar Pelli’s Museum Tower) on museum property. The additional floors won’t add any gallery space for the museum–the new galleries will be further down–but they will help fill Hines’ already ample coffers. Naturally MoMA, as owner, will also stand to benefit from the increased saleable space, but then we’ve reason to suspect what they’ll do with that money–such as lard their directors’ slush-funds.

–Final thought: the recent renovation of MoMA was successful as a design effort, but no devotee of the museum can help but miss its older, more intimate quarters. Even before that, it had been a long time since MoMA had the cozy clubbish feel it did at mid-century, but the last vestiges of that were wiped away in Taniguchi Yoshio’s revamp. The addtional gallery space in the Nouvel building will only add insult to injury–let the museum do more with less! And if the City Council won’t give back the missing inches, well, Hines can turn the would-be galleries into apartments to make up the lost revenue. I put the odds Nouvel will get his footage back at 50-50–and I’d say it makes very little difference either way.