Hasta La Ideas

Just blocks away from Core77’s NYC offices is the latest location of the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas, handsomely designed by Maya Lin and opened to the public in 2009. I live in the neighborhood, pass it frequently, and have been inside the beautiful interior several times. But what I find distressing is that less than three years after its opening, the exterior is starting to look like this:

In short, the once-beautiful wood of the initially spiffy exterior is not standing up to the ravages of New York’s brutal summers and harsh winters. So, I have a question for practicing architects: Whose responsibility is something like this—the architect’s, the structural engineer’s, the general contractor’s, the building owner’s? When an architect specs out a material like wood for a harsh urban environment, who steps in and determines the appropriate finishes required to protect it long-term? Is there a maintenance schedule handed over with the keys to the building, in the way that homeowners are advised to re-seal their backyard decks every few years?

I realize this problem is not limited to architecture, of course. A few feet in front of the Museum sits the row of parked cars common to every block in Manhattan, each bearing the scars of parallel parking:

Whose responsibility is that, the designers’, the plastics suppliers’, the car owners’? Surely these are not desireable signs of wear, and the manufacturer realizes their products will be driven in cities and parallel parked either by or among the clumsy or inconsiderate. Why is this acceptable? Do we simply accept, as with cell phones, that they must be protected by us purchasing aftermarket cases and “Bumper Badgers?”

In any case, these things occurred to me after reading about the sad and somewhat silly goings-on with the World Trade Center and its symbolic height. As a New Yorker unfortunate enough to experience September the 11th of 2001, it is not important to me how tall the new building is; it is only important that something be rebuilt. But it’s of tremendous significance to the Government that the building be precisely 1,776 feet tall as the number coincides with the year of this country’s founding. And that number is now looking doubtful due to technicalities and perhaps a design failure similar to the first two I mentioned, if those can be considered failures of design.

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