🏛️ Architectural Excellence Recognized 🏛️
The work of George Ranalli Architect has been honored in several major publications, with architectural historian William J.R. Curtis offering profound insights into the Saratoga Avenue Community Center for the NYC Housing Authority in Brooklyn, NY.
In El Croquis, Curtis describes:
"Another shared area of investigation would be ornament. Contrary to a simplified myth modern architecture never really abandoned ornament… I think for example of recent buildings, the Saratoga Community Center in Brooklyn by George Ranalli, a remarkable building combining a worthy social purpose and astute transformations from Wright and Scarpa…....... This is one of those buildings that stands out completely from current fashions but has to be considered in any critical map of recent architecture."
In The Architectural Review, Curtis further connects Ranalli’s work to architectural greats, writing: "Kahn, then, has never been entirely absent: he continues as a subterranean channel which surfaces here and there, often in unexpected places. The Saratoga Avenue Community Center in Brooklyn designed by George Ranalli… is haunted by Kahn in its luminous central, communal space with its soffit floating above and its light entering at clerestory level and at the corners. There are echoes too of Wright and of Scarpa, but Ranalli has absorbed these influences over the years and established a language and a craft of his own." Critics agree this is a masterwork!
