Even before the doors open, the architecture reviews have started for Barclays Center. Architectural Record, earlier this week, published more of a feature than a critique. The New Yorker review, out Wednesday, is a critique, but only of the building's exterior, its scale.

Alexandra Lange's review is more about the lessons learned from the process rather than the arena. She wonders if the building, unable to fit into the "context" of the surrounding neighborhoods, would have been better if it came after the towers Bruce Ratner intends to build on its periphery. She cautions those who are about to see it for the first time that "it is big."

"At the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush, the arena is a powerful suggestion, a building block, one that now seems so big, but may eventually be dwarfed,"she writes. "Its size and scalelessness, its aggressive form and color, its otherworldliness, condition the rest of the development site for more of the same."

• The Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, Reviewed - Alexandra Lange - The New Yorker