Sperone Westwater gallery (center, lit up) at 257 Bowery

It is always a pleasure to welcome a new building by Norman Foster — that’s Lord Foster to you, by the way. In addition to his peerage, Foster has won architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, and has even deserved it — by no means a foregone conclusion among Pritzker laureates. His reworking of the British Museum is as fine an architectural performance as we have seen in the past quarter century, and even his somewhat gimmicky Gh [more]

From left: Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, Foster’s HSBC Building and Piano’s Menil Collection

Starchitect Frank Gehry has nabbed yet another accolade: the title of Modernism’s “greatest renegade,” courtesy of Vanity Fair, which surveyed 52 industry experts to name their choice for most influential piece of architecture built since 1980. Gehry’s winning work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which was completed in 1997, shared the honor with other recent works, including Sir Norman Foster’s HSBC Building in Hong Kong, which was finished in 1985, and Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection, completed in Houston in 1987. But, despite the other worthy contenders, Paul Goldberger, a noted architecture critic, said that the Guggenheim Bilbao has a universal appeal. “Bilbao was one of those rare moments when critics, academics and the general public were all completely united,” Goldberger said. [Vanity Fair]

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From left: Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, Foster’s HSBC Building and Piano’s Menil Collection

Starchitect Frank Gehry has nabbed yet another accolade: the title of Modernism’s “greatest renegade,” courtesy of Vanity Fair, which surveyed 52 industry experts to name their choice for most influential piece of architecture built since 1980. Gehry’s winning work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which was completed in 1997, shared the honor with other recent works, including Sir Norman Foster’s HSBC Building in Hong Kong, which was finished in 1985, and Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection, completed in Houston in 1987. But, despite the other worthy contenders, Paul Goldberger, a noted architecture critic, said that the Guggenheim Bilbao has a universal appeal. “Bilbao was one of those rare moments when critics, academics and the general public were all completely united,” Goldberger said. [Vanity Fair]

[more]

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a less formidable expansion of a six-story building at 980 Madison Avenue between 76th and 77th streets, two years after rejecting a proposed 30-story glass addition to the building, according to the New York Times. Architect Lord Norman Foster and landlord Aby Rosen had faced a firestorm of controversy over their proposed changes in 2006, receiving a scathing review from New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. Later alterations to the plan were also denied by Landmarks. The most recent plan, approved by a 7-to-1 vote, includes an addition limited to 108 feet.

British starchitect Lord Norman Foster has bought a second unit at white-glove co-op 912 Fifth Avenue, bringing the amount of his total purchases in the building to $13.9 million. According to city documents, the Pritzker Prize winner and his wife, Lady Elena Foster, closed on unit 8B June 29 for $6.7 million, just two months after purchasing unit 8A for $7.2 million. The couple plans to combine the units into one large floor-through apartment in the luxe pre-war building, which is located between 72nd and 73rd streets, said a source. The seller is listed as Barbara T. Missett. Foster, who designed the triangular-framed Hearst Tower at 300 West 57th Street, is working on 200 Greenwich Street, a 78-story office tower at the World Trade Center site, and Masdar City, a zero-waste, car-free five-square-mile city in Abu Dhabi. [more]