(8 Spruce Street, New York, NY)
At 76 stories, Frank Gehry’s new’ish residential tower in lower Manhattan is pretty ubiquitious. I like the tall, twisty form. Nocolai Ouroussoff called it “a turning point from the modern to the digital age.” I’m not sure, though, that this is “an attack on corporate standardization” as much as its latest instantiation. With computers and tons of money, with the right coordination of eye and hand, this is what you can do with any structure. The digital object takes shape in physical space. Is that what “culture” looks” like on the outside? Is this what religion looks like today, understood through the prism of new media?