The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

49
The Double Erasure of Times Square
tion of stories resides in the combinatorial replay embedded in the codes of
a computer memory, in the technical apparatus of simulation, in the regulatory
controls of urban design. These devices have become this era’s mirrors
with a memory.
Consequently, Times Square as a quintessential public space of an
American city has been transformed into a simulated theme park for commercial
entertainment. Once Robert A. M. Stern was put in charge of the
interim plan for “42nd Street Now!” (giving the project a decidedly razzledazzle
orientation), many hoped that architects would remember that the
real star of the show was Times Square—“our most democratic good-time
place.” 56 Calling for just the right kind of alchemy, the architectural critic of
the New York Times reminds us that “this Crossroads of the World has long
been a symbolic intersection between art and communication. Here, advertising
attains the dimension of a cultural monument, while theater sustains
intermittent hope that art should aspire to broad popular appeal.” 57 It appears,
however, that the guiding light behind the 42nd Street revitalization
plan is Robert Venturi’s 1966 proclamation that “Main Street is almost alright.”
New Yorkers will be given an opportunity to “learn from 42nd
Street” as they once learned from Las Vegas, for the double coding of the new
plan—paradoxically based on a principle of unplanning—is a set of design
guidelines that extrapolates from the realism of the street’s popular and
commercial features and returns it to privileged spectators who then can relish
the commercial illusion in a sanitized and theatricalized zone. Each of
the thirty-four refurbished structures that line the street between Broadway
and Eighth Avenue must now be wrapped and layered with spectacular
signage—some animated and some lighted, but all legible from a distance,
and all with outstanding visual impact. A chart of coordinated colors has
been developed; diversity in styles, scales, and materials encouraged; and a
melange of restaurant and retail types expected. 58 The New York Times architectural
critic reports:
In short the plan is devised to reinforce the street’s existing characteristics.
The layered accretion of forms over the past century. The
mix of styles and scales. The lack of visual coordination. ... Above
all, the street will be unified by the prominence given to signs:
video screens, painted billboards, theater marquees, faded murals
from the past, LED strips, holograms—an uninterrupted commercial
interruption. 59
This play with popular forms, drawn from America’s imagesaturated
commercial landscape, helps destabilize the position that architecture
once held in the city. Architecture no longer determines a city’s