High Times

I finally got to see the new NYTimes building up close this week, during my meanderings to and from the Javits Center. It’s a mighty impressive exterior. NYT design director Khol Vinh just got to move into the building, and has high praise for it:

It’s early yet, but I think I’m completely enraptured by this building. Maybe it’s just my first time being exposed so intimately to fine, contemporary architecture, but the whole structure feels energizing to me. And it makes a certain kind of sense, too; Piano eschewed organic curves and aesthetically suspect design flourishes in favor of a wonderfully, wonderfully rectilinear construction. It’s an ornate, beautiful grid, in essence; of all the buildings in Manhattan, I feel like this is the one that makes the most sense for me to spend my working days. Forgive me, but I feel like a lucky bastard today.