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MOST RECENT ARTICLES BY:

Justin Davidson

Architecture and Classical-Music Critic, Curbed and New York Magazine
@JDavidsonNYC

Justin Davidson has been New York Magazine’s architecture and classical-music critic since 2007 and was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2002. He is the author of Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York.

  1. street view
    JAPAN-ARCHITECTURE-CULTURE-LIFESTYLE-TOILETS
    Tokyo’s Public Toilets Will Leave New Yorkers SobbingWith civic envy and political fury.
  2. music review
    Amid the Alerts, Two Lightly Earthshaking Philharmonic DebutsKarina Canellakis and Alice Sara Ott powered through the bleeps.
  3. street view
    CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK, USA - SEPTEMBER 15, 2023. Sightseeing tourists waiting to take photos for social media in a popular viewpoint in Central Park
    The Supertalls Have Walled In Central ParkFrom the Sheep Meadow or the Reservoir, they’re impossible to not see.
  4. street view
    Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Was More Than Her Hyperorganized KitchenA new show devoted to the Austrian architect reveals her idealism and ambition.
  5. classical-music review
    Klaus Mäkelä Brings Back the Wild Streak in StravinskyThe young Finnish conductor had even his own orchestra stomping with enthusiasm.
  6. street view
    The Streets of Pre–New YorkThe New-York Historical Society shows the city through its earliest maps — and it remains, if faintly, recognizable in ours.
  7. opera review
    At the Met, Great Voices and Overwrought Choices in La Forza del DestinoSoprano Lise Davidsen knows what’s needed here; director Mariusz Treliński does not.
  8. street view
    The Googleplex Is GrowingGoogle’s new St. John’s Terminal headquarters, meant to lure workers back to the office, is a city within a building.
  9. street view
    The Showman Becomes the RealistBjarke Ingels and the limitations of building in New York.
  10. street view
    A Brewery Conversion in Harlem That Looks Like DUMBOAt the Manhattanville Factory District, the very old fuses with biotech and movie production.
  11. street view
    A Bad Office Can (Maybe) Become a Good ApartmentThe challenges and complexities of cubicles out, bedrooms in.
  12. opera review
    An Epic Set in Xenophobic Limbo: Huang Ruo’s Angel IslandFrom the walls of an immigrant detention cell to the opera stage.
  13. street view
    Our Radical, Practical NYCHA MakeoverFor Curbed, Peterson Rich’s architects propose balconies, energy efficiency, and adding mixed-income low-rises.
  14. 2024 preview
    23 Classical-Music Performances We Can’t Wait to Hear in 2024Adams’s El Niño, the Weimar Republic’s artistic richness, and Rachmaninoffamania.
  15. carmen
    Opera Review: A Maybe-Midwestern Carmen With No Ticket OutAn attempt at modernization that diminishes the opera’s timeliness.
  16. street view
    Making Headway on the Perfect New York StreetTwo years after our last close look, real signs of progress.
  17. street view
    Los Angeles After the FreewayA less car-dependent L.A., already in motion, may have something to teach the rest of the country.
  18. opera review
    Steam Till It Wilts: The Met’s Florencia en el Amazones“Couples converge, turn away, and re-embrace aboard a jungle Love Boat.”
  19. street view
    The New Jersey Hindu Temple Covered With 10,000 SculpturesMarble elephants, ample parking, and a federal investigation into how it all got built.
  20. street view
    Thomas Heatherwick Thinks Nearly All New Buildings Are BoringA critique of his critique.
  21. street view
    Light-Drenched Offices Fill the Shell of Domino SugarA refinery with a dirty past, spotlessly reimagined.
  22. street view
    Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World Was in QueensA museum to a cultural legend emphasizes his unpretentious life at home.
  23. street view
    Need Housing? Need a Rail Line? Stack Them Up.Studio V’s proposal for a Borough Park rail cut.
  24. street view
    Janette Sadik-Khan on Getting Congestion Pricing Right‘We don’t look ready.”
  25. architecture
    Inside the City’s Gleaming New Performance CubeThe Perelman Performing Arts Center is a standout at the reconstructed World Trade Center site. Will people come?
  26. fall preview 2023
    25 New Classical Music Performances to Hear This FallIncluding a fresh Metropolitan Opera slate, a night of Phillip Glass, and more.
  27. street view
    The Two Newest Luxury Towers Are a MoodCharcoal and bronze dominate at Brooklyn’s tallest building and Adjaye’s latest.
  28. city people
    What Dan Doctoroff BuiltUnder Mayor Bloomberg, the power broker remade the city with astonishing speed. Now, as New York is again mired in crisis, he faces his own.
  29. street view
    Reconsidering the Grand Civic StaircaseAt Steven Holl’s Hunters Point Library and across the city, a familiar architectural gesture has become a trap.
  30. street view
    David Adjaye, Falling StarchitectCelebrity architects are propped up by a hive of workers. His may undo him.
  31. street view
    Two Penn Station Plans That Finally Look PromisingCould they converge to make the nation’s worst rail hub much better?
  32. street view
    Is the Spherical Listening Room at the Shed an Innovation or a Gimmick?Trying out the Sonic Sphere.
  33. street view
    Lever House Gets a Squeaky-Clean RestorationPrecisely reproducing its opening-day sheen. Next up: the Waldorf.
  34. institutions
    Mostly Mozart Festival Gains a Music Director, Loses Its NameJonathon Heyward in; Wolfgang demoted.
  35. street view
    Congestion Pricing’s Pitfalls and How to Avoid ThemLessons from London’s 20 years of experience.
  36. opera review
    A Magic Flute With a Few Too Many TricksSimon McBurney’s production draws power from some inventive stagecraft but gradually swamps its singers.
  37. classical-music review
    At the Philharmonic, Dudamel’s First Is Mahler’s NinthHe delivers a showy 2-D performance of a 3-D symphony.
  38. street view
    Developing Governors Island in Order to Save ItA plan that aims to preserve both its low-rise nature and the earth.
  39. opera review
    In Don Giovanni, Ivo van Hove Can Turn Even Mozart DissonantThe director seems to be fighting his musicians and singers.
  40. architecture review
    The American Museum of Natural History Enters Its Modern Stone AgeThe new Gilder Center has folds of pink granite outside, rough shotcrete swoops within.
  41. street view
    The Mexican Architect Making Sublime Modern Buildings From Clay and Pine NeedlesUsing traditional Oaxacan techniques, Juan José Santibañez’s museums and schools have a tactile beauty.
  42. getting around
    This Penn Station Plan May Be the One Everyone Can Live WithAssuming the Garden doesn’t move, most of the stakeholders are gravitating toward a new scheme.
  43. opera review
    In Terence Blanchard’s Opera Champion, Not Every Punch LandsA boxing opera comes to the Met, with a jazz-infused score, powerful movement, and wobbly storytelling.
  44. opera review
    A Lohengrin Where You Might Root for the Bad GuyThe Wagner opera returns to the Met for the first time in 17 years.
  45. street view
    The Bronx Children’s Museum Is Just Antic EnoughLike a peek into a happy kid’s brain.
  46. street view
    MoMA’s ‘Architecture Now’ Exists in Some Other New YorkOne that has fewer impediments and more money.
  47. classical music
    Gustavo Dudamel Will Take Over the New York PhilharmonicBut not until 2026.
  48. street view
    The Upper West Side’s Zone of Pedestrian DeathThe area around 96th Street is dangerous. And it’s hardly the worst in town.
  49. street view
    One Way to a Better City: Ask Disabled People to Design ItWouldn’t everyone fare a little better if (to take just one example) airport luggage-screening counters were lower?
  50. street view
    Two Supportive-Housing Projects Make the Case for Building Many MoreThey’re cheaper than the alternatives, acceptable to the neighbors, and successful among people who were living on the street.
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