Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library
Georgetown University
March 19th, 2019
Beautiful Brutal Lines
Tag: brutalism
Met Breuer
Edvard Munch always makes a strong impression but, in this case, the same can be said about the host building. This is Met Breuer, built in 1966 and named after its Brutalist architect Marcel Breuer, who designed it to house the Whitney Museum – and so it did until 2015, when the Whitney moved to its current location in downtown Manhattan, and this beautiful concrete ”inverted ziggurat” was leased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Artwork from “Delirious Art at the Limits of Reason 1950-1980”, an exhibition running in parallel to Edvard Munch’s “Between the Clock and the Bed”.
Credits:
Cob II, 1977-80 by Nancy Grossman
Wood, leather, painted horn, lacquer, lead
13/3, 1981 by Sol LeWitt
Painted balsa wood
Beginning Study for Changes and Communication, 1978 by Alfred Jensen
Oil on canvas
Three Mirror Vortex, 1965 by Robert Smithson
Stainless steel, three mirrors
My Father Pledged Me a Sword, 1975, by Anselm Kiefer
Watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil and ballpoint pen on paper
Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, Manhattan
December 28th, 2017
The creepiest, most mysterious building in the City is a concrete monolith
A marvel of Brutalism by some, a monstrosity by others. An awesome building, in a brutal sort of way, by me. Vertical. Massive. Minimal. Windowless. It looks the same from every angle. It looks like a CGI fortress.
Not surprisingly, it was featured in Mr. Robot Season 2 plot. Even less surprisingly, it became the subject of an investigation by The Intercept, where the idea that parts of the building may used as an NSA surveillance hub was explored. Sounds plausible but we will probably never know for sure.
What we do know is that it was built for the AT&T Long Lines to house switching equipment. Although AT&T has now moved some of it to another building nearby, the monolith is still in use for telephone switching, but also as a highly secured data centre facility.
What I would like to know, is how does it feel to spend one’s working days in a windowless, fortified environment among cables and servers, with zero access to natural light? It takes a certain type of person, doesn’t it?
Adding to the layers of mystery, the AT&T building has also been the subject of a short film by Field of Vision, “Project X“. Interestingly, it was narrated by Rami Malek (of Mr. Robot) and Michelle Williams.
January 29th, 2017
The Humble Fabulist 