Good morning!
Those who know me know how deeply interested I am in architecture and the built environment, and if there’s anyone I can point to who paved the way for this life-altering interest, it’s the Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, the guest on the latest episode of Time Sensitive—a “site-specific” recording captured inside the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Early on in my New York media life, around 2010 or 2011, I went through what my twin brother has called my “Goldberger phase,” reading everything by Paul that I could, including his 2009 books Why Architecture Matters and Building Up and Tearing Down. Which then naturally led me to the writings of other architecture critics, including Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, and Alexandra Lange. The truth is, I owe Paul a debt of gratitude for helping open up this obsession. I’ve written and spoken about architecture enough at this stage that I’ve even been called an architecture critic myself.
Now, I also owe Paul another debt of gratitude, for contributing his beautifully written foreword to the new book Design: The Leading Hotels of the World (Monacelli), the first in a multi-volume series reenvisioning LHW as it nears its 100th anniversary in 2028, which The Slowdown is overseeing the editorial direction and production of (I’m serving as the series’ editor-in-chief, with the inimitable Cynthia Rosenfeld as executive editor). Just last week, to celebrate the book’s upcoming release, Jacqueline Terrebonne, the editor-in-chief of Galerie magazine, moderated a conversation between Paul and me at the Greenwich Hotel. Then, by a cosmic production-schedule coincidence, the Time Sensitive episode—my first-ever extended conversation with Paul—came out this week. (Earlier this year, I also interviewed Paul for a Town & Country story I wrote about Philip Johnson’s Brick House.)
To say that speaking with Paul inside the Glass House, and then alongside him at the Greenwich Hotel, has been an honor is an understatement. There’s the old saying “don’t meet your heroes,” but in the case of three of mine—the drummer Billy Martin, the novelist and author Jhumpa Lahiri, and Paul—that has proven very, very false.
Also last week, I interviewed the architect Billie Tsien, a founding partner of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA), for an event at the New York City showroom of the Swedish rug-maker Kasthall (we’ll share a link to the recording in the newsletter soon), and in researching for it, there Goldberger appeared once again, writing in The New Yorker in 2011 about TWBTA’s now-demolished American Folk Art Museum, which was a gem of a building. Every interest has its root, and even before reading Paul, mine in architecture began to grow after listening to Tod and Billie speak at my older brother’s high school graduation, in 2002. I was 16 at the time. Before that, I hadn’t thought much about the power of architecture, but the subtle way in which they spoke about buildings ignited something in me.
On theme, I began typing this note in Finland, where I was speaking at the Spirit of Paimio conference inside the Alvar Aalto–designed Paimio Sanitorium (1933). From Billie to Paul to Paimio, this adventure in the world of architecture continues, and I’m so pleased and grateful that so many of you have come along for the ride.
—Spencer
