Architects use "get-out-of-jail card" to justify projects, New York architecture has its "wings clipped" and "showbiz" designs are a thing of the past.
"She should realise that architects have come to rely on the get-out-of-jail card of 'evidence' which can then be used to justify their work. Evidence shows that meagre space standards are often more carbon efficient; evidence shows that reducing carbon makes you happier; evidence shows that you cannot possibly have an 'opinion' because you have to cite 'evidence' to back that opinion up."
BD Online
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"What causes this mediocrity? In New York, architects are forced to run a gauntlet of government agencies and community groups who like nothing better than to clip the wings of inspiration and to round each advanced idea down to the nearest available triviality."
The Real Deal
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"Now, like long-haul flying, architectural excess is sniffed at with a disdain approaching distaste. The icon project, while not quite dead (people will always want showbiz), is having a good lie down in the post-Noughties age. There is no more public or private money in the kitty for revolving skyscrapers, and Dubai is sooo 2005."
Times Online
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"For all their individual distinction, however, these and other South Campus buildings don't come close to making a coherent or lively place. None are tall enough to beckon students, as do the filigreed Gothic towers of the university's Harper Memorial Library. Several dutifully face the Midway, but they barely acknowledge each other. Indeed, some of the buildings have the haughty air of embassies."
Chicago Tribune
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"You can't thrive as a nation while New Orleans is drowning, and Detroit is being beaten into oblivion decade after decade, and a bridge in Minneapolis is collapsing into the Mississippi River, and cities in upstate New York and the Rust Belt are rotting from lack of employment opportunities, and so on."
New York Times
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