It’s a little hard to know what to make of George Claflen’s claim that Comcast Technology Tower is “the best precedent” for 270 Park. I suppose it’s a precedent in the sense that the former was designed by the same firm and finished before construction began on the latter, but by that somewhat expansive definition London’s Millennium Bridge (2002), Kuala Lumpur’s Ilham Tower (2015), and Hong Kong International Airport (1998) also constitute glaring omissions.
Or maybe the operative word is “best”? I respect hometown pride, at least when the hometown in question is Philadelphia, but surely Claflen’s fondness for an overworked rework of Frankfurt’s underrated Commerzbank Tower (1997) isn’t enough to justify claims of lineage. It’s not even the best Philadelphia skyscraper with Comcast in the name! Much as I hate to speak well of the dead, Robert A. M. Stern Architects’ Comcast Center (2008) has a soothing, Pelliesque mediocrity I appreciate from any angle. Maybe I should have mentioned it.
As far as credit and oversimplification, I should note that I do refer to Foster + Partners more than once (that is, twice), a glaring omission from Claflen’s letter. Nor do I think that any critic, at any word count, is responsible for telling a building’s “full story,” though I hope someone writes it. My hope was that it wouldn’t take a reader much prodding to register “Foster” as shorthand for the firm, and my contention was (and is) that 270 Park was as much media event as architecture, with the embodied Foster at the heart of the campaign. Still, Claflen is as right on this score as he is wrong about Comcast, and I’ll be more diligent in my attributions in the future. On recent visits, Foster + Partners’ 270 Park has looked worse than ever.