'NYT' Architecture Critic's 'Tricky Task': Review His Paper's New Building

By: Joe Strupp As a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times has no doubt faced countless challenges in attempting to bring out the good, bad, and ugly of building and construction design.

But when Ouroussoff faced the prospect of reviewing his own newspaper's grand new home -- a 52-story building that has received years of advance hype -- even he admitted the assignment was, well, different.

"Writing about your employer?s new building is a tricky task," Ouroussoff states in the lead of his review published in today's Times, just a day after the paper devoted a 16-page ad section to the building and held a grand VIP party to christen it. "If I love it, the reader will suspect that I?m currying favor with the man who signs my checks. If I hate it, I?m just flaunting my independence."

So was it right for the Times to have its own critic review its own new building? Having read the piece, Poynter Institute Ethics Group Leader Kelly McBride and the Times' own public editor, Clark Hoyt, say yes.

"My attitude toward it was that he did exactly the right thing by starting off stating what a box he was in," Hoyt told E&P. "The review turned out to be a fairly balanced review. It is an awkward situation for anyone to be in."

McBride, who handles ethics questions daily from news outlets nationwide, agreed: "I think the reviewer was upfront about being in a strange situation. He figured out a way to do it that provided the audience with the transparency they needed."

Hoyt's only suggestion was that, perhaps, the Times should ask an outsider to write a second review of the building, to give another viewpoint: "That occurs to me as on option they might have."

Ouroussoff wrote: "So let me get this out of the way: As an employee, I?m enchanted with our new building on Eighth Avenue. The grand old 18-story neo-Gothic structure on 43rd Street, home to The New York Times for nearly a century, had its sentimental charms. But it was a depressing place to work. Its labyrinthine warren of desks and piles of yellowing newspapers were redolent of tradition but also seemed an anachronism. The new 52-story building between 40th and 41st Streets, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, is a paradise by comparison. A towering composition of glass and steel clad in a veil of ceramic rods, it delivers on Modernism?s age-old promise to drag us ? in this case, The Times ? out of the Dark Ages."

Much of Ouroussoff's review offers positive assessments of the new building, with statements such as "I enjoy gazing up at the building?s sharp edges and clean lines" and "The lobby is encased entirely in glass, and its transparency plays delightfully against the muscular steel beams and spandrels that support the soaring tower."

But Ouroussoff is not above finding fault with the structure, which some have said is a bit sterile. Some of his critiques:

? On the "scrim of horizontal ceramic rods" that make up much of the facade: "Viewed from a side street today, they have the precision and texture of a finely tuned machine. But despite the architect?s best efforts, the screens look flat and lifeless in the skyline. The uniformity of the bars gives them a slightly menacing air, and the problem is compounded by the battleship gray of the tower?s steel frame. Their dull finish deprives the facades of an enlivening play of light and shadow."

? On the "disappointing" tower crown: "To hide the rooftop?s mechanical equipment and create the impression that the tower is dissolving into the sky, Mr. Piano extended the screens a full six stories past the top of the building?s frame. Yet the effect is ragged and unfinished. Rather than gathering momentum as it rises, the tower seems to fizzle."

In the end, the critic offers a straightforward balance, it appears, by stating: "Depending on your point of view, the Times Building can thus be read as a poignant expression of nostalgia or a reassertion of the paper?s highest values as it faces an uncertain future. Or, more likely, a bit of both."