----------------------------Original message----------------------------
So, French architect Dominique Perrault is in the running to do
MOMA's extension. Good luck to the administrators and future users
of this prestigious establishment if the result turns out to
resemble that of the French National Library (BNF) in Paris!

Should that happen, employees and visitors would be well advised to
show up wearing masks, helmets, thermal underwear and, in winter,
cleated soles. Hip boots will be useful when it is necessary to
rescue collections from floods like the one the BNF had last
January, during which the detection systems failed to function.

It is well known that the naming of the BNF's architect was a
political choice and that Mr. Perrault was picked by the French
President's chief of staff, but does MOMA face the same constraints?

Despite the warnings of many professionals, the BNF's architect
finished (finished off would be more apt) an edifice toward which
judgments, outside a small clique, range from "hostile" to
"sinister."

The conceptual failure is apparent at a glance. Four eighteen-storey
towers that Perrault fondly explains symbolize open books are placed
at the corners of the huge rectangular space the library occupies,
separating as far as possible from each other the thematic bodies of
knowledge they contain and the staff who maintains the collections.

The scale model of the BNF seduced Perrault's political benefactors,
but from the model to the realization it seems the project lost
whatever redeeming qualities it may have had. Readers face all
manner of challenges just to get inside. The several dozen steps of
the wide external stairway present more of a rebuff than a welcome
and, in a mocking contradiction, after climbing this barrier one
then descends to the entrance! Made of wood, in winter the staircase
becomes as slippery as an ice skating rink and can only be climbed
by clinging to the bannisters recently installed to reduce the
number of falls. (In keeping with the architect's penchant for
austerity, the bannisters are made of steel and are freezing to the
touch.)  Distances are colossal and the angle of the moving ramps
that lead down to the entrance--there is no other option--too steep.
(After the library's president fell on one, the speed was slowed to
a crawl.)

The heating and cooling system has to be entirely redone. In order
to satisfy his "esthetic" preferences, the architect chose to
install pipes of inadequate caliber. Employees have to bring
individual heaters not only in winter but in the summer when the
outside temperature may be 28C (82F). Everywhere, the air is
glacial. The public entrances are open to the outside, allowing an
invasion of cold and snow. The method of creating vestibules is
being discussed, and it appears necessary to go around just about
everywhere constructing supplementary structures to correct Mr.
Perrault's errors of youth.

Mr. Perrault didn't foresee the air currents his towers would
generate and which make it difficult for the three hapless elevators
at the foot of each tower to close their doors. Not only that, the
lifts' machinery on the roof will not function in hot weather. Three
elevators would already be few for an 18-storey building, but they
also cover five underground levels. Long waits provoke staff to take
the staircases, but since those were expected to be employed mainly
in emergencies, cheap plastic door handles were installed and many
have now broken off from use.

Each month there is a test of the emergency electrical generators.
These run on diesel fuel, but since the ventilation system is
defective the fumes arrive in the offices and the staff has to be
evacuated. Mr. Perrault claims to be seeking a solution! His first
suggestion was to conduct the tests when the wind was blowing the
other way.

Another "flaw," and perhaps not the least was Mr. Perrault's failure
to make provision for BOOKS, a small matter of course for the
architect of a library. The thousands of books that arrive each day
and their temporary storage in the offices of the staff who
processes them encountered a total void in Perrault's functional
notions.

Perrault's attack on books was multi pronged. His choice of linoleum
to cover the kilometers of corridors where heavy carts would pass to
transport the millions of books arriving from the old library almost
defeated that process. The linoleum was quickly turned into ruts
over which the carts would not move and it has to be removed. Should
books actually make it to the shelves, Perrault had a fail-safe
mechanism. The glass towers as originally designed would be
beautifully transparent. The party was spoiled by enough pressure by
those concerned by what the sun would do to the books that a wall of
wood was finally placed inside the glass perimeter.

Poor Mr. Perrault. His other attempt at openness was to plant a
fully grown forest at which users of the research reading rooms
could gaze but upon which no human could set foot. Unhappily,
account had not been taken of the comings and goings of people in
the corridor between the desks and the picture window. A wooden
barrier had to be thrown up to block the view.

Dominique Perrault is certainly an ace when it comes to making
models, but for MOMA it would be prudent not to rely too much on the
advice of the clique. The financial abyss that the French taxpayer
has accepted with resignation might not be to the taste of the
Museum's administrators.