New Dean at the GSD

The new dean is going to be... Mohsen Mostafavi, the now former Dean of Cornell University (since 2004) . For me, this is good news. He's been associated with the GSD before, but he has left and worked at other schools (Cornell, AA). As reported by the Architect's Newspaper, Toshiko Mori seems to have been lobbying hard for the position, but given her current association with the GSD I think it's a good thing to go outside the school for new leadership. Toshiko has done very interesting things while at the GSD, but as a student I would have to say that a new direction is a good idea. In the current pedagogy at the GSD there is a strong focus on Celebrity Architecture, and given our current global situation, environmental uncertainty, and political strife, this position for "fashionable" architecture is less interesting than it was a decade ago. There are a good number of students at the GSD who are more interested in the core issues facing architects today, and weather or not Mostafavi will cultivate a different agenda remains to be seen. Competitions like the Gazprom Tower in St. Petersburg (shown below) seem instantly obsolete.

The formal exploration and formal explorations that seem to be completely self-fulfilling blur into the background of contemporary work. This must be why Rem's proposal is the only orthogonal one, and many of his other current projects have a similar language.

This project (above) is the "Dubai Renaissance" by OMA, and the collage explains about everything you need to know about why it is designed the way it is. Rem is back to the idea of a container, rather than overt formal experimentation. Here is a writeup about the project, and there is something nice about basic form, espically in Dubai, where people seem to be trying things just because they can. It seems like we need to be more responsible than that.