Pulling together multiple comments from Christopher Gray:

<<Walentas ... has hired French architect JeanNouvel [who] wants to design
something like the (ultra-Romantic-modern) Sydney Opera House on part of the
riverfront site, where *the homogeneity of the gritty industrial vistas*
presents an ancient majesty.

The Times writer, Herbert Muschamp, observes several NY projects underway by
prominent foreign architects, a list including the Austrian Cultural
Institute at 11 East 52nd Street (Raimund Abraham) and the Vuitton building
at 15? East 57th (Christian
de Portzamparc)... Why does a Sydney-Opera-House-in-Brooklyn appeal to me -
even while the Austrian and Vuitton buildings are/promise to be so awful?>>

Perhaps also an issue of "photographic architecture" here-- the tendency to
laud a building or buildings for the quality of the Architectural Digest
photo layout, rather than its real-world (3D) appeal in context? Both gritty
industrial vistas and uber-designed 'ARCHITECTURE' often look great in a
well-composed photograph, but are less than satisfactory in person.

-Heidi (waiting for all the Modernists to mug me in the parking lot...)