Monday, November 27, 2006

Koolhaas, Wright, Sullivan score in Overnights

Publications love to act like the doormen of Club History, indulging the fantasy of Leopold Bloom (Brooks, not Joyce) of going down the line, pointing as they winnow, "You, and you, and - not you." Architects have crashed the party in two current lists.

The first is Time Europe's 60 Years of Heroes, where Rem Koolhaas appears, just below the Beatles, in the "Business & Çulture" category. He's cited by the magazine as "the man who simultaneously resigns himself to the chaos around him and sees in it an opportunity for an altogether new kind of order."

Meanwhile over at the Atlantic Monthly, the December cover story selects The 100 Most Influential Americans. Ten "eminent historians" ranked the lucky centurions, placing Abraham Lincoln at number one, with the usual suspects of Washington, Jefferson, FDR and Alexander Hamilton filling out the top five, but two architects also make the cut. And while Frank Lloyd Wright gets top billing in Frank's Home, the new play, featuring Peter Weller as Wright and Harris Yulin as liebermeister Louis Sullivan, which began previews at Chicago's Goodman Theatre Saturday night for a world premiere December 5th, on the Atlantic Monthly list, Sullivan, at position 59, ("The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American building: the skyscraper.") aces his former draftsman ("America’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the visionary artist at odds with capitalism."), who lands at 76, between Babe Ruth and Betty Friedan. Jane Adams is listed at position 64, P.T. Barnum at 67, with Richard Nixon at 99 bringing up the rear, squeaking past Herman Melville at 100.

How the three architects fare with the key 18 to 49 demographic won't be known until final national primetimes are released later this week.

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