United Nations Secretariat Building, NYC, 2021.
All the pixels, none of the motorcades or protests, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51381729335
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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.
Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.
I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.
An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.
@mattblaze@federate.social Speaking of, Robert Moses secured the land for the U.N. building. It was a dicey thing. In an alternate universe close to ours, the U.N. building is in Boston
@mattblaze@federate.social I watched a movie couple nights ago - Mister 880 - with a scene at the interim UN building in Flushing Meadows. The movie only showed a few interior scenes so I looked up the exterior. Totally generic Euro-bureau-palace, like the League of Nations but smaller. So that's what the current building was reacting to.
@mattblaze@federate.social we visit my in-laws in Chandigarh every year and that is about Le Corbusier as it gets.
https://chandigarh.gov.in/know-chandigarh/general-information#:~:text=Le%20Corbusier%20conceived%20the%20master,cultural%20and%20educational%20institutions
@mattblaze@federate.social Took me three tries not to read "Oscar Meyer" (as in weiner). [Yes, I'm that immature]. But then I started to wonder if "hotdog architecture" is a thing.
@mcr314@todon.nl That would be Googie, I'd think.