… someone standing on a stage designed by David Rockwell! This weekend’s Times reports on D-Rock’s latest “immersive environment,” a stage set that, according to Rocky according to the Times, “will redefine the show’s DNA.” There will be screens, people sitting in different places, and the ultimate titillation of a “new, curvaceous thrust” of a stage.

It’s an intriguing move for an architect like Rockwell to get involved with the glitzy-but-boring Oscars, but it makes so much sense that it just possibly very likely might completely work. This is the architect of the new choreography-inspired JetBlue terminal at JFK; the designer of this year’s Venice Biennale Hall of Fragments, an interactive pair of curved screens that set a playful and Matrixed tone for the rest of the Corderie’s Zahas and UNSTudios; the guy who set an entire restaurant-design precedent with his cherry blossoms and river rocks at Nobu. Rockwell is a storyteller, an inventor of histories, a re-creator of emotions. He’s an Official Edificial Top-Five-To-Seven, and so we’re signing off on this one. If anyone can make the nineteen hours of “Slumdog Millionaire!” theatrical, exciting, and actually interesting, our recession pennies are on D-Rock.

We’ll be off for most of Washington’s birthday, by the way. Mostly practicing our squealing.

The Oscar Ceremony Gets a Makeover, Thanks to the Man Who Designed Its Home [New York Times]