Several years after arriving in New York from Lisbon, MoMA Curator for Contemporary Architecture Pedro Gadanho offers his perspective on the city's architecture scene.
Portuguese architect, critic, and writer Pedro Gadanho moved to New York in 2011 after being named Curator for Contemporary Architecture at MoMA. He spoke with Satellite about his impressions of the city's design community.
Gadanho discusses his surprise at finding architecture events, organizations, and conversations more inward-focused than those he was used to in Europe. He also bemoans what he sees as an overly market-driven mindset. "The economic pressure in the city makes it more difficult to have alternative creative practices that are not just driven by commercialization and try to push the boundaries of the profession," he said. "In a city in which the pressure to survive economically is so strong, at a certain point people have a real difficulty maintaining an independent discourse."
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