October 19, 2006
Parking Garage, West 44th Street
One wonders how long this parking lot will last with the encroaching commercial real estate on 8th Avenue. In the background, the upper half of the absurd Westin Hotel (2002) is visible. The hotel was designed by the Miami architecture firm Arquitectonica and it is ghastly but I kind of like it. Somehow it is so over-the-top garish that it seems meaningful. It is certainly in the right place, at the corner of gaudy and gaudier on 42nd and 8th Avenue. It is certainly distinctive, even sexy. As New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp put it, "It is as if the libidinous energies driven underground by 'the New 42' have found momentary release." I don't find the tower nearly as orgasmic, but I do like its daring.
