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The U.N. Building
Published on the celebration of the United Nations' sixtieth anniversary. When it was completed in 1952 on a site on New York's East River, the United Nations building stood as a symbol of world humanitarianism, a beacon of unity after the Second World War. One of the most historic commissions of the twentieth century was seen through by architect Wallace Harrison, whose triumph put him on the cover of Time magazine.
Today, more than fifty years later, the building is regarded as one of the pinnacles of mid-century modernism. Its magnificent public spaces and assembly halls, as well as its artworks by Picasso, Chagall, and many others, make it one of the most visited sites in New York.
This publication presents a portrait of this fascinating building, through specially commissioned photography and illuminating essays that bring alive the historic events, speeches, and gatherings that have been central to the world's development since 1945. 200 illustrations in color and black and white.
Today, more than fifty years later, the building is regarded as one of the pinnacles of mid-century modernism. Its magnificent public spaces and assembly halls, as well as its artworks by Picasso, Chagall, and many others, make it one of the most visited sites in New York.
This publication presents a portrait of this fascinating building, through specially commissioned photography and illuminating essays that bring alive the historic events, speeches, and gatherings that have been central to the world's development since 1945. 200 illustrations in color and black and white.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2005
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January 13, 2023
Before the United Nations Building underwent internal renovation in 2007, Ben Murphy spent 15 months photographing its interiors. The result is a highly visual, absorbing book that shows how since the 1950s an intensely-used, complex set of spaces was adapted to daily use. Murphy was allowed access to reserved, private areas where sensitive discussions are normally conducted away from prying eyes. He evidently enjoyed pointing his camera at the visual chaos of the UN’s strangely opulent interior mishmash.
Architectural and design purists might have worried about how the original 1952 interiors had been messed about with, but - attentive to light, colour, and compositional richness - Murphy seems to have been fascinated by the bad-taste alterations which over the years, had made the building impure, and for that reason authentically democratic. His most evocative pictures are not the grand auditoria (with rows of colour-coded armchairs for differently ranking diplomats) but the back spaces: cramped cubby-holes for translators, the women’s restrooms that look across midtown towards the Chrysler and Pan Am buildings, and most touching of all, the Secretary General’s tiny kitchen high up in the Secretariat Building, where we imagine the great man himself thoughtfully making coffee amidst squeezy bottles of washing up liquid, a clock hanging crookedly on the yellow tiled wall, and a juice extractor.
The most famous of the formal rooms - often seen on television - is the General Assembly Chamber with its elegant horizontal internal windows, from which interpreters look down at the green carpet and the marble-fronted desk where the SG sits in office, flanked by two deputies. Because the UN is international territory, every country has contributed furniture, tapestries, paintings, even whole rooms in national styles. By 2007 the originally coherent modernist interiors, by New York architect Wallace Harrison, had become overlaid with uncoordinated kitsch additions, as though a polite but rather vicious contest had been going on between the nations, to see who could “contribute” more to the interior decor and thus - who knows - subliminally influence some negotiation or other.
A repulsively ugly, enormous light beige leather sofa from Thailand, with matching armchairs that look as if nobody ever sat in them, had been “parked” in one of the lobbies outside the General Assembly Hall. The Security Council Chamber was adorned by a tasteless mural, presented by Norway, filled with cavorting mythological figures representing “Man running free in the green meadows”. The Islamic Republic of Iran had contributed a row of framed woven silk portraits of all the SGs from Dag Hammarskjöld to Kofi Annan. These transcended their own naiveté to become modern, as if painted by Gerhard Richter. A giant 30-foot-long tapestry donated by China showed the Great Wall looping from mountain to mountain, in a hyper-realistic Mao-era style. Underneath it, the space of the North Delegates’ Lounge was a roomful of worn, dated-looking furniture in different styles,with ageing computers sitting on wood laminate trolleys, and sad pot plants that surely nobody ever noticed.
Murphy’s photographs captured the whole building enigmatically deserted like the Marie Celeste; the squeaky leather chairs looked still warm, as though recently vacated by busy, intelligent, intellectually skilled people who had worked the building hard.
In an incisive introduction, illustrated with period photographs and drawings, Aaron Betsky describes how the land for the UN was acquired in 1947 via a series of less than transparent New York land deals, and how the project was then hammered out by a multinational committee that included Le Corbusier. The compromises that this teamwork necessitated, followed by the only average quality of the built project by the Harrison & Abramovitz practice, resulted in a somewhat watered down international style which - as Betsky perceptively notes - is good, not bad, at expressing the spirit of an organisation like the United Nations as “an ensemble both neutral and emblematic” not set apart from the city.
As Rem Koolhaas approvingly notes, the UN Building is “merely another of Manhattan’s enclaves, a block like the others”. Murphy’s photographs prove that interior design can only provide an initial scenario, which actual use will modify in unpredictable ways.
Architectural and design purists might have worried about how the original 1952 interiors had been messed about with, but - attentive to light, colour, and compositional richness - Murphy seems to have been fascinated by the bad-taste alterations which over the years, had made the building impure, and for that reason authentically democratic. His most evocative pictures are not the grand auditoria (with rows of colour-coded armchairs for differently ranking diplomats) but the back spaces: cramped cubby-holes for translators, the women’s restrooms that look across midtown towards the Chrysler and Pan Am buildings, and most touching of all, the Secretary General’s tiny kitchen high up in the Secretariat Building, where we imagine the great man himself thoughtfully making coffee amidst squeezy bottles of washing up liquid, a clock hanging crookedly on the yellow tiled wall, and a juice extractor.
The most famous of the formal rooms - often seen on television - is the General Assembly Chamber with its elegant horizontal internal windows, from which interpreters look down at the green carpet and the marble-fronted desk where the SG sits in office, flanked by two deputies. Because the UN is international territory, every country has contributed furniture, tapestries, paintings, even whole rooms in national styles. By 2007 the originally coherent modernist interiors, by New York architect Wallace Harrison, had become overlaid with uncoordinated kitsch additions, as though a polite but rather vicious contest had been going on between the nations, to see who could “contribute” more to the interior decor and thus - who knows - subliminally influence some negotiation or other.
A repulsively ugly, enormous light beige leather sofa from Thailand, with matching armchairs that look as if nobody ever sat in them, had been “parked” in one of the lobbies outside the General Assembly Hall. The Security Council Chamber was adorned by a tasteless mural, presented by Norway, filled with cavorting mythological figures representing “Man running free in the green meadows”. The Islamic Republic of Iran had contributed a row of framed woven silk portraits of all the SGs from Dag Hammarskjöld to Kofi Annan. These transcended their own naiveté to become modern, as if painted by Gerhard Richter. A giant 30-foot-long tapestry donated by China showed the Great Wall looping from mountain to mountain, in a hyper-realistic Mao-era style. Underneath it, the space of the North Delegates’ Lounge was a roomful of worn, dated-looking furniture in different styles,with ageing computers sitting on wood laminate trolleys, and sad pot plants that surely nobody ever noticed.
Murphy’s photographs captured the whole building enigmatically deserted like the Marie Celeste; the squeaky leather chairs looked still warm, as though recently vacated by busy, intelligent, intellectually skilled people who had worked the building hard.
In an incisive introduction, illustrated with period photographs and drawings, Aaron Betsky describes how the land for the UN was acquired in 1947 via a series of less than transparent New York land deals, and how the project was then hammered out by a multinational committee that included Le Corbusier. The compromises that this teamwork necessitated, followed by the only average quality of the built project by the Harrison & Abramovitz practice, resulted in a somewhat watered down international style which - as Betsky perceptively notes - is good, not bad, at expressing the spirit of an organisation like the United Nations as “an ensemble both neutral and emblematic” not set apart from the city.
As Rem Koolhaas approvingly notes, the UN Building is “merely another of Manhattan’s enclaves, a block like the others”. Murphy’s photographs prove that interior design can only provide an initial scenario, which actual use will modify in unpredictable ways.
Displaying 1 of 1 review