The owner and designer behind Queens’ first ever energy-efficient “passive house” rebuffed critics of the three-story home’s Lego-like façade Tuesday.
The future home of Tom Paino and his partner at 45-12 11th St., which Paino called “The Climate Change Row House,” features black, grey and white tiles in a sky pattern that local bloggers maligned in a barrage of posts last week.
But Paino compared the naysayers to yokels who attacked three-dimensional paintings during the Renaissance.
“People tried to throw rocks at the pictures because they weren’t used to paintings that had depth,” he said. “This house is going to be an example in the architecture world.”
But Paino’s design provoked viral putdowns on the web last week. Real estate blog Curbed ran a post about the house entitled , "Could this row house be the ugliest building in Queens?,” and popular local blog Queens Crap wrote that the house must have been designed by "Frank Lloyd Crap" in a Wednesday post.
A more supportive blogger admired the façade because the cloud design "reminds me of Legos," but Paino said he isn't paying any of them any mind.
"I have no idea who these people are," said Paino. "All I can tell you is that the façade is dramatic enough so that people walking by stop to look at it."
Ah, leave it to the Daily News to feel it necessary to get the crapmaker's side of the story when blogs poke fun at the crap. Here's the major part of the story that they left out:
Tom Paino bills himself as a preservationist. In fact, he was once a board member of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. For years, he claimed he was "restoring" his early 20th century rowhouse. Instead, he rebuilt it like this. Hypocrisy knows no bounds, especially in Queens where actual preservation is a joke, and this house is a punchline. But at least people are stopping to look at its dramatic façade!
You can either laugh at this stuff, or cry.
