Architecture Here and There

A floating oil rig, or is it a gigantic baby's tub toy, is the latest thingamabub to pop up in the new modernist cottage industry of toying (Sean Penn, etc.) with the reconstruction of hurricane-damaged New Orleans. Andres Duany sent it to the TradArch list. There's a story and a video in Governing magazine. I played the video, but toward the end, as I was about to nod off, something caught my eye.

It seems that Cambridge Seven Associates shares credit for this balmy idea. It says so at the end of the video. Cambridge Seven was the architecture firm that designed several iterations of OneTen Westminster, the proposal for downtown Providence that started out as the tallest building in Rhode Island and swiftly shrunk from 40-story condo tower to a W Hotel at maybe half that height, then - poof! - nothing. (Except for the obligatory empty lot created by tearing down one of the loveliest old buildings in downtown.)

It seems that, without anyone in Providence really knowing it, the design of the building was given a "coolness" transplant, if the image at left can be believed. The shaft of the tower seems to grow wider as it grows taller, does it not? Wow! Another building designed to look as if it might just topple over. Just what Providence needs. (Note the crestfallen Arcade at bottom right.)

Anyway, the presence of Cambridge Seven at the end of the NOAH video, taking credit for a bit of silliness that was, I assume, never meant to be built but rather to create buzz for the "creators," might help explain the collapse of the OneTen project.

 Tags  Andres Duany Cambridge Seven New Orleans Providence RI TradArch W Hotel

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