I am puzzled as to why a sentence praising the work of Herman Jessor, a Jewish socialist immigrant whose work was almost entirely within New York City, should be accused of a dog-whistling attack on “coastal elites” if the same sentence expresses doubt in the world-transforming merits of Peter Eisenman (regardless of his late career move into tourist spectacle). Nonetheless, on Kahn, particularly given his work in Bangladesh, Zeifman’s point is well made and taken.
However, a clarification is apparently required. The point I was trying to make, with specific reference to the Smithsons, Eisenman’s one-time inspiration, was that paper architecture and built architecture can require very different talents. Sheffield’s Park Hill (1961), designed by municipal journeymen and a group of students from the Architectural Association, would have been impossible without the inspiration and precedent of the Smithsons’ unbuilt and unbuildable dream projects for Berlin and London. But before its—ethically, if not architecturally, indefensible— demolition, I would have defied anyon…
