Hasta La Ideas

Over the years, you’d be hard pressed to find an architecture critic who generates as much press for his opinions than the NY Times‘ Nicolai Ourourssoff. Pages upon pages have been written about everything from how he loves starchitects too much or how some didn’t like when he said they’re weren’t any good architects left in New York. There was even a great, completely insane piece written about how his sole function was to spread “liberal paranoid social policy.” Heck, we even titled a post from a few years back, “Hating on Nicolai Ouroussoff.” So what would happen and where would all that energy go if one day he just wasn’t there anymore? It looks like we’re soon to find out, as the Architects Newspaper has gotten its hands on an internal memo sent this week at the NY Times which says Ouroussoff will be leaving at the end of June to focus on writing a book. Apparently the planned tome will cover “the architectural and cultural history of the last 100 years.” Thus far, the Times hasn’t released any official details of his leaving, but we’re sure they’re to come soon. Here’s a bit from A.R.‘s excerpts of the memo:

There’s a ton of Nicolai’s trademark ambition in the plan for his book, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which aspires to put a century of architecture into the kind of social and political context he always aimed for within the more limited constraints of newspaper writing.

We’ll miss him. He’ll miss us.

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