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About DDDB
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there are 51 community organizations formally
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and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.
We have the financial support of well over 3,500 individual
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Welcome to the FantasyDome: Frank Gehry's New Atlantic Yards Renderings
Ladies and gentleman, your new Frank Gehry design for Atlantic Yards
(well, for Phase 1, Phase 2 is an afterthought—designed by nobody—that
could be parking lots for the unforeseeable future post Ratner-demolition; See
related story in today's NY Post "The
Future is Blight."). One might say we've gone from the absurd to the
ridiculous, but we won't say that.
Take note that the oddly named "Miss
Brooklyn" has been disappeared—the name, that is—and now
it is the decidedly more modest Building 1. Good-bye Miss Brooklyn, we hardly
knew ye, but we knew ye enough.
The Daily
News, which
has the exclusive new renderings, leads with a headline that Miss Brooklyn/Building
1 has been "slashed by 100 feet." That's not news. As Norman
Oder explains on his Atlantic Yards Report that reduction from 620
feet to 511 feet was announced on December 20, 2006 as a "last minute concession"
on the day the Public Authorities Control Board approved the project. Though it
is the first time a rendering of the 511 foot tower has been released.
So what the Daily News headline writer does ("Atlantic Yards'
Miss Brooklyn is slashed more than 100 feet in massive redo")—one
day after giving
Ratner an opinion column and an uncritical, regurgitating Cliff's Notes guide
to the column—is allow Ratner to pretend he has downsized his building once
again. He hasn't; he has just shown it for the first time. So that historical
context is important.
There are all sorts of opinions on Frank Gehry's work, and clearly he is world
famous. But all can agree that he is not a magician. And it would take a magician
to make Atlantic Yards work architecturally and in a planning context. It's just
too much for the planned space, too cramped. But we have a sense that this design
is not going to be any better received than the last one (this is at least the
3rd design.) And let's be clear, Gehry can re-work his designs on a weekly basis
and it won't change the core fact that Atlantic Yards is an inappropriate, developer
driven, out of scale, overly dense, overly subsidized, eminent domain abusing
land grab, approved without any democratic procedures.
Notice there is an odd, but patriotic, red, white and blue theme to the new renderings.
And notice that Phase 1 apparently would be built not in Downtown Brooklyn, not
in Prospect Heights but, rather, in a black void of darkness. Compare that to
the Municipal
Art Society renderings in today's NY Post which show the project
built out in the neigborhood context, or built only in part surrounded by blank
lots and parking lots, but also in the neighborhood context. Note that the NY
Times archiecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff just 2 weeks ago, wrote an article
about intentionally misleading, sleight of hand, architectural renderings (Now
You See It, Now You Don’t and from AYR Now
he tells us: NYT's Ouroussoff criticizes "distorted reality" of project
renderings).
One thing is realistic about the rendering. It doesn't show Phase 2. That makes
sense as the developer has given no timeline to build that phase, which would
include the bulk of the project's proposed "affordable"
housing; and the State
Funding Agreement specifies no timeline for Phase 2 either.
Anyway, ladies and gentleman, now you see it, now you don't...Frank Gehry's
new Atlantic Yards Phase 1 renderings:
Posted: 5.05.08
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