Barclays Center in Brooklyn, one of three buildings featured in the first episode of "Cool Spaces!" (EPSTV / SHoP Architects)

It would be easy to dismiss "Cool Spaces!," a new series on contemporary architecture that will make its KCET debut at 10 p.m. Thursday, as a superficial if very earnest example of the dumbing down of American culture. The title of the show - especially its exclamation point - is enough to give you a sense of the smiling and credulous tone that prevails.

Sorry: the smiling and credulous tone that prevails!

And in fact the three buildings featured in the first episode - the Cowboys' AT&T  Stadium in Dallas, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, home to the NBA’s Nets - are presented in a breezy tone that occasionally verges on Robin Leach-like ogling of 1% privilege.

Host and series creator Stephen Chung, a Boston architect, has this to say about the Barclays interior: “The club called the Vault may be the most exclusive destination, with 13 individual suites that radiate out from a glittering champagne bar.”

Chung, who wrote the first episode with director Dan Frank, follows that up with a question about the role played in the club’s detailing by Jay Z, who used to own a small fraction of the Nets. An interior designer tells him, “Every time we showed him a rendering, it was sort of, ‘Make it more gold! Make it more gold!’ So we had a lot of fun with that.”...Continue Reading

> via LA Times