April 04, 2011 by Nalina Moses

I saw this Ron Galella picture of Robert Redford framed in a boutique on Madison Avenue, and then again in a magazine at the gym, and simply can’t get it out of my head. It’s brilliantly composed: the gleaming black sedan, the half-open door, the blinding flash in the star’s aviator glasses, and the contrapposto in his step. It doesn’t have the grainy, off-kilter look that most Gallela images have, as if they were snapped just one moment after something photo-worthy happened.

This is an image of male beauty. And this is a glamor shot of a star who’s most famous for being preternaturally relaxed. It’s often published with the white car in the foreground cropped out, but it’s that car that gives the photo texture as a paparazzi shot, placing the action in a narrow Manhattan side street. Robert Redford is as exquisitely groomed as if he’s in an editorial shoot, although I think this is simply what he looked like and what he dressed like. He’s from an era when there were fewer, better movie stars.

The movie “Vincere” tells the story of Ida Dalser, one of Benito Mussolini’s lovers. Mussolini abandoned her, his people silenced her, and she died in an insane asylum, asserting until the bitter end that she was Mussolini’s wife and the mother of his oldest son. The film exposed two passions of mine, both unsavory: The first for the romantic figure of the young Il Duce, at least as embodied here by Italian actor Filippo Timi. The second for fascist architecture.

The most famous monument of the Mussolini era is the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in the exurban Roman precinct EUR. It’s a textbook example of fascist architecture: scaleless, textureless, simplistic, and imagistic. Yet it’s forms are strongly suggestive, evoking Surrealism and antiquity. The Palazzo doesn’t feel as if it were assembled from steel and stone but as if it fell fully formed from someone’s (in this case, perhaps Mussolini’s) dreamscape. How can a brutal government produce an architecture so strangely appealing?

April 01, 2011 by Nalina Moses

March 30, 2011 by Nalina Moses

There’s no shortage of spectacular imagery in “Runaway,” Kanye West’ surreal, deeply-imagined, 34-minute movie fantasia. A sheep grazes on a hyper-green suburban lawn, a giant Michael Jackson head rolls through the desert, and a golden-skinned bird-lady falls from the sky.

But the most memorable image is a simpler one: two dozen black men and women sitting down at a formal dinner. They’re wearing modern, unadorned, massively elegant white suits and gowns by Phillip Lim. The cool, bluish lighting heightens the contrast of the clothing against their skin, shaping an image of startling glamor.

March 28, 2011 by Nalina Moses

Can prefab be pretty fabulous? Brooklynites think not. Developer Bruce Ratner is talking about building apartment towers in Atlantic Heights from locally-manufactured prefabricated units and residents are up in arms. In a borough crowded with new luxury hi-rises, it’s a curious drama. Part of the problem is that Ratner’s cost-conscious decision reduces the need for union construction labor. But the larger part of it might be public relations.

“Prefabricated” brings to mind shoddy workmanship, draconian design, and a welfare state. Designers are enthusiastic about using prefabricated units to shape single family homes but considerably less interested in employing them for larger buildings. There’s Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montreal. And there’s Kisho Kurokawa’s amazing Nagakin Capsule housing in Tokyo from 1972, a bundle of identical, washing-machine-like units that can be combined internally and replaced individually as required. Now the challenge is for architects to create prefab buildings that people might actually want to live in.