ZAHA REVEALS SOFT SIDE
Zaha Hadid, who’s been known to address her employees with a colorful array of expletives, seems to have an equally charming relationship with her prottggs at Yale. A chuckling onlooker reports that, at a recent open studio, the firebrand designer and Yale visiting professor was so unhappy with her students’ progress that she informed her teaching assistant that he should be shot.. And then, I saw her dealing with this pair of students,, the source continues. They were pointing to the bathrooms in their project’s plan, and she was like, I don’t need to know where the bathrooms are. Next you’ll be telling me how to use the bathrooms!” We’re told the same students then wound up casually sitting at Hadid’s feet (by choice, we assume) before asking if they could move to a more comfortable spot. Comfortable? I’m not here to make you comfortable,, Hadid snapped. I’m here to make you uncomfortable!! An also-present Yale insider confirms that Hadid was a bit harsh that day, but chalks it up to pedagogic tough love. She’s so devoted to her students that, afterwards, on her way back from a lecture at Harvard, she made an impromptu visit,, the associate says, just to see how they were doing..

IT’S GREAT, BUT….
Before everyone gets too excited, we’ve learned that doubts are indeed being raised about the recently unveiled $325 million plan by Liz Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and their recently elevated partner Charles Renfro to redesign parts of Lincoln Center. At issue among preservationists are the proposed upheavals of Dan Kiley’s early 1960s North Plaza and Pietro Belluschi’s 1969 Juilliard School. In general, we feel positive about the approach that Lincoln Center and the architects are taking,, says Kate Wood, executive director of Landmark West, the organization that recently got Lincoln Center listed as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (read: lengthy review process). But I do concede the alterations they’re proposing are pretty radical,, she adds. Groups like Landmark West, DOCOMOMO, and the Historic Districts Council are still reviewing the plan and members we spoke with stress they don’t necessarily have problems with DS+R’s design. However, two things are being lost here,, one member explains, and that’s not to be taken lightly..

MOSS GROWS IN SOHO,
SOHO GOES APE
Murray Moss is at it again. The highly influential SoHo retailer is adding another 1,800 square feet to his eponymous 7,000-square-foot design emporium on Greene Street. Moss tells us the new spaceein an adjacent Beyer Blinder Belle-designed building now under constructionnis going to be a venue for experimental works and installations that will be mounted in rotating five-week exhibitions, much like an art gallery. The expansion, Moss’s second since 1999, is scheduled to open this fall and will boast theatrical lighting, newly created by FLOSS and probably a signature walll installation by the Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana…Meanwhile, the fashionable Tokyo designer Masamichi Katayama has been tapped to design a boutique, also on Greene Street, for the hyper-trendy Japanese street clothier A Bathing Ape. The three-level, 3,100-square-foot shop, which is the first U.S. venture for both the label and architect, is also set to open this fall.

LET SLIP:achen@archpaper.com