“The public is invited into the process very late,” said Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic, referring to the decision by the Museum of Modern Art and its architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, to tear down the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, which stands in the way of MoMA’s recently announced expansion. And Ouroussoff was right: Eight hundred people turned out for what was, in effect, a town hall meeting on the demolition of the Tod Williams Billie Tsien building, which heated up a Manhattan auditorium on a very cold night. But then, after nearly two hours of debate, Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA, declared, “We’ve made our decision”—dashing the hopes of anyone who thought the discussion might change things.
There was talk of saving the diminutive building’s bronze façade, and, a bit less seriously, of preserving its odor. “I’m interested in the building’s olfactory signature,” said Jorge Otero-Pailos, a Columbia architecture professor and panelist.
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