Ugly Architecture in Brooklyn

I just accidentally wound up hearing the Leonard Lopate show about ugly architecture, in Brooklyn and otherwise.

I hadn't wanted to tune in because I was annoyed by the attitude I thought it held, the design snobbery, the self-righteous indignation, the habit of demonizing things.

The show wasn't like that at all. Christopher Gray argued with most everyone who called to villify a building, finding a way to embrace it.

Someone spoke of that building in Red Hook that is completely enshrouded in blue tarps, that place is fantastic, I want to go there to worship.

Miss Heather was on the air, defending the Greenpoint building she had submitted, defending the people who live there from the kind of closed minded dismissive snobbery I'm so scared of.

Here in Brooklyn, some of us love the sacred and the profane. The profane sacred, the sacred profane. The high concept and the low. There's life in the mix, and as Christopher Gray would say, humanity. We don't live here to pretend that the human race isn't a train wreck. To avoid all sore thumbs. We live here to embrace the mess, to ask questions about it, to explore it. Or else we'd be living in a gated community somewhere.