Review : Thom Mayne's New BLDG in NYC

There's a well written and relevant review of Thom Mayne's new BLDG for the Cooper Union in NYC. Watch how in the writing facts are arranged to both explain (describe, reflective and empirical writing) and expound (dialog, projective and intuitive writing). NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF explains it well and makes good points about how it might otherwise be.

The article is HERE.
A slide show of the BLDG is HERE.

Then think about how the BLDG is described as an urban event or element in the city, just as yours could be. Try to consider in your drawings a civic sense to the place. Where do people pause, congregate, collect, disperse, etc? Where is the space vectoral and where is the space non-vectoral and static? What is it about the architecture (BLDGs) at those places that makes the space operate in these civic ways? Why doesn't anyone stand outside of the Customs House except smokers who'd rather be inside? Maybe that has to do with all those lines that surround that building? There is a relationship in all of this between the way things are shaped, formed, laidout, and otherwise constructed and the way they operate. There isn't a necessary relationship or a universal way that things have to to associate with events. But in every situation in architectural thinking there is a way they do relate. The associations are always situational, never universal. As the Ft. Worth art critic Dave Hickey says, "Architecture only has to work where it is."