How It Stacks Up Architecturally

By Richard Lacayo

When he wanted a design for the 21st century, James Stewart Polshek, architect of the Rose Center, went to the 18th. His solid sphere set in a mostly glass cube has its origins in one of the abiding fantasies of the architectural world: the unbuilt ball that French neoclassical visionary Etienne-Louis Boullee conceived in 1784 as a memorial to Sir Isaac Newton. Boullee knew a simple sphere would state with full authority the grandeur of the cosmos. Polshek knew it too.

His firm is best known for subdued historical renovations, but he and partner Todd Schliemann conceived the Rose Center as a brisk geometric eruption, like I.M. Pei's Louvre pyramid, that shakes up the buildings around them. The old Hayden Planetarium, demolished to make way for the Rose, had blended all too well with the museum's flavorless north end. Polshek's forms, by contrast, operate on our deepest fantasies about the order of the universe. His sphere is covered with steel panels that inscribe it with meridians and latitude lines, so it stands in easily for the earth. But see it from the side, within sight of the floating models of Jupiter and Saturn, and it's the sun. Get underneath, next to the giant tripod that supports it, and it's the underside of a sci-fi space pod. Stand back in a properly reflective mood, and it suggests the expanding bubble of creation itself. And maybe also that famous perisphere at the 1939 World's Fair--not all the associations here are cosmic.

As for the glass cube, it admits a view of the New York City sky, or as much of it as high-rise, heaven-deprived Manhattan allows. Even the threadwork of exposed cables and clamps that holds the glass in place hints at the tug of forces that bind the universe together. "If you push these comparisons too far, you fall into kitsch," says Polshek. But push them just so, as he does, and you climb to the stars.

--By Richard Lacayo