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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Captured with the Phase One Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR-Digaron lens, with the back shifted down 8.5mm to maintain the building's geometry. I brought out contrast in the sky with a polarizer, but otherwise used no color contrast filtration. The camera was positioned across the avenue about 10 meters up from the plaza level (at the bottom of the "canyon" of the skyline reflected in the bottom center of the building).
Love them or hate them, mid-century rectangular glass curtain buildings like this are easy to dismiss as being "boring", but I think that misses something.
Reflections of the surroundings become part of the facade, which changes at different angles and throughout the day. I visited several times and made dozens of photos, all quite different, before I settled on this one, and there are infinitely many photos others could make, all unique. (Similar to the new World Trade Center in this regard).
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.
@[email protected] 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
@[email protected] 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#%3A%7E%3Atext=Le+Corbusier+conceived+the+master%2Ccultural+and+educational+institutions
@[email protected] 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.
@[email protected] That would be Googie, I'd think.
@[email protected]
> Reflections of the surroundings
Reflections are what make Cloudgate (AKA The Bean) in Chicago so mesmerizing. It's interesting in pictures but on an entirely different level in person. I hope if you get to Chicago you get a chance to view it (if you haven't already.)
@[email protected] A (younger) me reflected in The Bean.