3 Quarks’ own J.M. Tyree writes a hilariously true architectural review of the humongous and hideous Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, in his Okracoke Post:
For a moment, reading the “letter from Nina and Tim Zagat” in the free Zagat Survey guide to the mall – “is that Anderson Cooper coming out of Williams-Sonoma?” they ask, going on to describe the “awe” one feels just entering the atrium – I am truly overcome by something like terror. Momentarily, I get moral vertigo, a glimpse of the place as it might have been seen by a Sayyid Qutb, an abomination of desolation. Two friends of mine who were recently thinking of starting a consultancy had taken on the joke motto “So That Others May Live.” The Time Warner Center, you genuinely feel, is designed so that others may die, distantly and off-screen, in some pocket of the world it is better not to think on. The real motto of the place is this piece of eternally revolving gibberish: “The shops at Columbus Circle – A great space to shop.” The Time Warner Center is a mall facility space that greatly facilitates shopping at shops.
Read the rest here.
