The new edition of the AIA Guide to New York Architecture is due out this Autumn, and it has room for Bob Scarano:

NORVAL WHITE, one of the great figures of New York architecture, was cruising around Long Island City a couple of months ago when he came upon an unexpected sight. On Jackson Avenue, in this still scrappy-looking section of Queens, stood a newish co-op sheathed in luminous squares of blue glass. Its designer, Robert Scarano Jr., is one of the less beloved figures among the city’s architectural cognoscenti, and much to Mr. White’s amazement, he didn’t actually hate the thing.

“It’s definitely a cut above his other stuff,” Mr. White, his lean, 6-foot-5 frame tucked into the front seat of a gray Subaru Forester, acknowledged in his plummy baritone. “It has some quality. We’ll have to include Scarano in the guide.”

Not sure which building he is talking about, but I can think of a few other Scarano buildings that deserve inclusion on design merits (and yes, there are certainly a few that deserve that deserve inclusion as poster children for the Architecture of Excess). That’s more that can be said (design-wise) for the Axis of Banal that is responsible for most what we pass by every day.