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Eavesdrop: Aric Chen

Eavesdrop: Aric Chen

COLUMBIAN CALAMITY
Things are heating up again in the ongoing search for a new dean for Columbia’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. With the almost-hired Zaha Hadid now out of the picture, rumor has it that interim dean Mark Wigley and Beijing architect Yung-Ho Chang are running alongside recently ousted Institute of French Architecture director Jean-Louis Cohen and architects Dagmar Richter and Mark Angelil. A source close to several selection committee membersswho include Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Michael Bell, Laurie Hawkinson, Elliott Sclar, and othersssays that Wigley and Chang are leading contenders. People say Mark is a good administrator,, our chatterbox reports of the less-than-inspired reasoning, while Chang has access to the whole feeding frenzy going on in Asia.. However, we hear Sclar, an urban planning professor, may have problems with Chang’s own planning (dis)inclinations while Hawkinson, our source says, is making trouble, effectively shooting down every name that comes up.. In fact, the source blames Hawkinson for causing the school to lose Hadid, who has since won the Pritzker Prize. Laurie wanted to force [the London-based Hadid] to sign something promising to spend a certain amount of time in New York,, the source continues, though it’s also kind of scandalous that [Hadid] wouldn’t do it.. A committee member confirms that people are complaining about Laurie,, but adds that it baffles me because I think she’s one of the more open ones.. Hawkinson couldn’t be reached for comment.

SKYSCRAPER, HAI!
The first visitors to the Skyscraper Museum’s permanent new home, which opened early this month in Battery Park City, were found on the subway. The Morimoto family of Nagoya, Japan, wanted a snapshot in front of a Lexington Avenue subway car when Tishman Construction’s Richard Kielar, on his way to the museum’s opening day, picked them up. They asked me to take their photo and told me they were going to the Statue of Liberty,, Kielar recalls, so I said, Why don’t you first come see the newest museum in town?? The family then followed Kielar to the new digs, designed by Roger Duffy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and built by Tishman, both of which donated their services. They were happy and excited to be the first,, Kielar continues. We took their pictures..

WEDDING BELLS FOR BETSKY
Netherlands Architecture Institute director, former SFMOMA design curator, and transatlantic fixture Aaron Betsky is about to tie the knot with his longtime partner, artist Peter Haberkorn. The June 26th wedding ceremony will mark the couple’s sixteenth anniversary and will take place in Hollanddwhich accords equal status to same-sex marriagessat Rotterdam’s City Hall. We hear Steven Holl will document the occasion in watercolor while Peter Eisenman sings Ave Maria and Daniel Libeskind jumps out of a cake.

NAME THAT HOTELIER
Which prominent, design-savvy hotelier got so messy at a Los Angeles party not so long ago that, thinking it was a cigarette, he lit a scrap of paper rolled into a straw (Gee, what was that being used for?) and singed his eyebrows? We’re told a subsequent tussle with a lady friend also resulted in the caps on his front two teeth being knocked out to complete his not-so-pretty new look.

LET SLIP:achen@archpaper.com


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