Never Built New York

Description

Following on the success of Never Built Los Angeles (Metropolis Books, 2013), authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell now turn their eye to New York City. New York towers among world capitals, but the city we know might have reached even more stellar heights, or burrowed into more destructive depths, had the ideas pictured in the minds of its greatest dreamers progressed beyond the drawing board and taken form in stone, steel, and glass. What is wonderfully elegant and grand might easily have been ingloriously grandiose; what is blandly unremarkable, equally, might have become delightfully provocative or humanely inspiring. The ambitious schemes gathered here tell the story of a different skyline and a different sidewalk alike. Nearly 200 ambitious proposals spanning 200 years encompass bridges, skyscrapers, master plans, parks, transit schemes, amusements, airports, plans to fill in rivers and extend Manhattan, and much, much more. Included are alternate visions for such landmarks as Central Park, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the U.N., Grand Central Station and the World Trade Centre site, among many others sites. Fact-filled and entertaining texts, as well as sketches, renderings, prints, and models drawn from archives all across the New York metropolitan region tell stories of a new New York, one that surely would have changed the way we inhabit and move through the city.

Sam Lubell is the West Coast Editor of the Architect's Newspaper and the co-curator of the recent exhibition 'Never Built Los Angeles'. He is the author of five books about architecture. Greg Goldin was the architectural critic at Los Angeles Magazine from 1999 to 2011. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Architect's Newspaper and Zocalo, among many other publications.

...an impact on designers and architects for years to come.--Erika Owen "Travel + Leisure" ...an intoxicating look at the designs for New York that, either through bureaucracy, budget or bad luck, never came to pass...--Anika Burgess "Atlas Obscura" ...projects from the last two centuries, sited all throughout the five boroughs, that range from the monumental to the mortifying...aborted reflections of their time, place and politics.--Amelia Taylor-Hochberg "Archinect" ...the city's most intriguing and unrealized architectural and design projects.--Darryn King "Wall Street Journal" a gorgeous tome published by Metropolis Books...Perfect for the urbanist, the New York City-dweller, or really anyone--this book is as historically fascinating as it is visually compelling.--Meg Miller "fastcodesign.com" revelatory--Martin Filler "The New York Review of Books" [New York] appears as a tumultuous construction site where radical creative enclaves, quixotic engineering proposals in the name of efficiency, and proud civic-engagement movements compete for disparate visions of a city that always could (or could never) have been.-- "Metropolis Magazine" A wonderful funland and/or twisted hellscape...some of the most outrageous architectural and urban planning ideas from more than 150 years of New York City history.--Raphael Pope-Sussman "The Gothamist" By any standard, this is a fascinating scholarly tour de force, ultimately paralleling in its brilliant ambition the infinite spectrum of its subject matter.--Kenneth Frampton "Ware Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University" Captivating architectural plans that didn't get built give a glimpse of what the Big Apple could have looked like--Clemence Michallon "Daily Mail" Imaginative... a catalog of dashed dreams.--Sam Roberts "The New York Times" It's hard to think of city that has been the object of such intense dreams and desires for architects--and yet so elusive and hard to get--as New York. The building concepts in this book are imaginative, opinionated attempts to compete for New York's attention and shape its future, knowing that a mark left on this city will be forever felt around the world.--Paola Antonelli "Senior Curator, Architecture & Design, and Director, Research & Development, The Museum of Modern Art" Just as compelling as the extraordinary collections of drawings is the vivid language the authors use to tell the projects' stories. Goldin and Lubell, whose editorial tone ranges from sarcastic to critical, introduce the reader to the people behind these visionary projects, giving us glimpses of their dreams and obsessions.--Guglielmo Mattioli "Arch Daily" Sure, New York has plenty of icons -- the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, the Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Terminal. But as this book makes clear, you could create a pretty good city from the schemes that failed. Flipping through it is like taking a trip to that city.--Fred A. Bernstein "Introspective Magazine" The best architecture and design books of 2016-- "Curbed" The book shows architects as idealistic, yet often unrealistic dreamers; the Skyscraper Bridges of Raymond Hood emerge eerily from their pencil sketches and R Buckminster Fuller's glass dome over Manhattan, half a mile in diameter, looks positively futuristic... an inverse history of a city that never was.--Harriet Thorpe "Wallpaper" The unfinished fantasy of New York City, this reminds us all, is of a thousand competing ideas canceling one another out -- with envy, greed, destruction and lethargy -- and arriving half by accident at a complicated compromise that everyone can more or less live with, and even come to love.--Will Heinrich "The New York Times" ...leafing through Never Built New York will keep right on provoking gasps at the sheer, lunatic audacity emblazoned on every page.--Justin Davidson "New York Magazine" Never Built New York encompasses a record of renderings, images, models, and plans... offering an opportunity to reevaluate the present in terms of the possible.--Alexandre De Looz "Bomb Magazine" a unique look at New York through various historical eras, such as the Gilded Age and the mid-20th century. And yet the concepts covered in Never Built New York don't seem entirely unfamiliar. Indeed, they reveal a concern for the environment and a preoccupation with space that are still on the minds of New York City residents today.--Katie Hiler "Science Friday" the impression one gets from flipping through Never Built New York is one of visionary ambition for a city that's often remained architecturally conservative, partly due to space limitations and partly because of bureaucratic city planning.--Allison Meier "Hyperallergic" Compiling nearly 200 plans that came to naught, Never Built New York (Metropolis Books) imagines an alternative city of fairy-castle skyscrapers, pneumatic tubes, man-made islands, and river-spanning jetports.-- "Elle Decor" If you believe New York City's ongoing infestation of sliver towers and chain stores is ruining the town you love, you may find some small cheer in knowing how much worse things could be. Never Built New York provides detailed, copiously illustrated accounts of citywide plans spanning a century - a few intriguing, others fanciful, many examples of outright vandalism - that highlight how technological change commercial exigencies, and architectural vanity could combine to distastefully ill effect.--Albert Mobilio "Bookforum" Retro and futuristic, Never Built New York is perfect for dreamers, conceptual-design lovers, and those with an inclination towards paradoxical "what ifs?" An architectural and philosophical tour-de-force.--Amber C. Snider "The Culture Trip, Editors' Top Pick 2016"