Tags: design

Just found this on Where: a critical response to the Freshkills Park plan prompted by last November’s New York Magazine feature.  The thrust of the critique is that the Field Operations’ design of Freshkills Park will create a landscape that can be falsely “consumed without guilt:”

All the capping and veiling and the sealing tight are carried out not only to elude dealing with material run-off of the waste, but also to distract from what that waste means and implies and reflects (the architects and the city want to avoid any leaks, physical or moral).

FIGMENT, the arts organization partnered with the Governor’s Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC), is building a mini-golf course on Governor’s Island.  And they’re holding  a design competition for single holes, which you can enter.  Governor’s Island is an interesting project and, with FIGMENT, GIPEC has been able to keep the island enviably well programmed. 

Urban Omnibus has posted a terrific project portrait and interview video with artist George Trakas about his Newtown Creek Nature Walk in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  As a Percent for Art artist, Trakas piggybacked on the Department of Environmental Protection‘s $3 billion upgrade of the wastewater treatment facility to create a handsomely designed waterfront park/plaza where employees and locals can relax. 

Freshkills Park and landscape architect James Corner, principal of Field Operations, have been featured in a huge story in the current issue of New York Magazine. We’re happy to get this kind of exposure, though the story does seem to incorrectly suggest that when you visit the site you see a heap of trash.