Michael Friedlander, Urban Architect of Offbeat Designs, Dies at 63
He was best known for the Spring Street Salt Shed, a crystalline structure that appears, with a little imagination, to form a coarse grain of salt.
Michael Friedlander in 2007 with a model of what ultimately became the Department of Sanitation building at the corner of 55th Street and 12th Avenue in Manhattan. He worked for the department for 40 years.Credit.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
April 1, 2021
In the 1970s, Michael Friedlander was an architecture student at the Cooper Union, his head bursting with bodacious, unconventional designs. On graduating, he settled for a stopgap job with the City of New York, which had him working on prosaic assignments like drafting blueprints to renovate locker rooms for sanitation workers.