Look at the Buildings

Once again, the emperor has no clothes. The cover story on architect Michael Maltzan’s career success by Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff (“Drafting a Career,” June 23) accepts at face value that the work for which he has built his reputation and success is even worth noting.

Ouroussoff and the wider architecture and art communities and their supporters seem devoid of the ability to apply simple empiricism. Collectively, the work of Maltzan, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry and others in their artistic camp manifest little more than gimmicky concoctions of soulless geometric forms and a lot of pretentious explanatory discourse about their meaning. Ouroussoff even goes so far as to compare Maltzan’s mentor, Gehry, with Frank Lloyd Wright. What an insult to Wright, a true genius.

What is sorely lacking is the simple act of taking a step back, honestly assessing a thing and fairly articulating that, well, “it’s a piece of junk.” The only morass those in the architecture community need to find their way out of is the elaborate false impression that this work has merit.

JEFF SOFTLEY

Los Angeles