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PARTISAN REVIEW
BLDD:
What do you think of as your greatest contribution? Is it a
particular building, or an idea or theory, or even an attitude?
PJ:
It infuriates me to believe it, but probably my major influence
is that I talk so much, and that I favor the young, so, naturally,
they reciprocate by thinking I must be good. I have five or six
young architects whom I like a lot, and we have a mutual admira–
tion society.
If
they become good architects, then my reputation
will be perfectly safe, because that will mean good architects will
say I'm good.
BLDD:
For what would you like to be best known?
PJ:
For my buildings, naturally.
BLDD:
Are there any that you would cite especially?
PJ:
I guess I can't help but be known for the glass house, but I
always feel that my newest building will be the best- the one in
Boston, for example, or the project that's coming up in Times
Square .
BLDD:
What
is
coming up in Times Square? Can you describe it
briefly?
PJ:
Times Square is in very bad shape. The city and the state of
New York, mainly through the brilliance of Richard Kahan, a
former head of the Urban Development Corporation, have laid
out the edges around Times Square and let it out to a developer.
We're building four buildings that will be more or less the same–
sort of a Rockefeller Center for that part of town, only somewhat
larger. We're putting up some four million square feet there that
should be a new center for New York.
BLDD:
Is there a particular type of building that you haven't de–
signed yet and would like to?
PJ:
Yes, I had hoped to get the commission to do an architectural
school. I did the design, but I guess we aren't going to get the job.
But I would like to do something like that. I'd also like to do a
museum. I haven't been asked to do a museum for twenty years.
I'd also like to do a house.
BLDD:
You say that both historians and architects make very bad
prophets, but if there were a prophecy you'd care or dare to make,
what would it be?
PJ:
It would be that we are entering an unbelievably glorious age
of melange, eclecticism of random choices and leadership that
should be the greatest period architecture has ever seen .
Barbaralee Diamonstein is a commissioner of the New York Landmarks
Preservation Commission.
