New Lanark gets world heritage status...


AJ

Originally nominated for the World Heritage List in 1986, it was re-nominated in June 2000 by the late Scottish First Minister Donald Dewar. The status means New Lanark will join 690 sites from across the world which are valued for their “outstanding universal value”.

How not to impress the public...

NYPOST.COM : ARTISTES PROVIDE LANDFILL OVERKILL By GERSH KUNTZMAN

December 10, 2001 -- Metro Gnome

A MOUND of decaying trash at the Fresh Kills Landfill will be home to a memorial to World Trade Center victims. That much, we know.

After that, it's anyone's guess what will be done with Staten Island's mothballed garbage dump - and I say that even after getting a sneak peak at six competing plans to convert it from one of the nation's most notorious dumps into one of the world's largest urban parks.

The six finalists in the Municipal Art Society's design competition "Fresh Kills: Landfill to Landscape" were unveiled Wednesday night at the Staten Island Institute for Arts and Sciences.

The gala opening drew a mix of Manhattan's hip urban-design crowd, with their rimless eyeglasses, trendy East Village clothes and impenetrable architectural jargon, and Staten Island community leaders, with their aviator frames, sensible brown suits and hopes that the plans will include mundane, but much-needed, resources, such as ball fields, roadway improvements and community centers.

"I'll like the idea of making that area beautiful again, but it's got to have plenty of recreational space, too," said Russ Nicholson, who, at 71, is on every local board, advisory committee and community group.

"People gotta live!"

Nicholson liked a few things he saw on Wednesday night, but mostly, he was overwhelmed by pretentiousness. I was, too.

Often, a bad idea can look good "on paper." Well, in a design competition, even the best ideas can look lousy on paper.

For instance, one design, pompously called Lifescape, presented a series of "threads, islands and mats" that combine to form "an expansive green matrix of infinite horizons and newly connected ecosystems." Whatever. Perhaps it would've made more sense if the diagram looked more like a park and less like a Pollock.

Another finalist broke up the site into five "seeds": "Experimental Field," "Material Datum," "Depositional Edge," "Tectonic Zone" and "Event Surface." I would tell you what the designers envisioned, but, frankly, I don't have the slightest idea . . . except that it involves trees.

Even professional architecture people were flummoxed by the vague schematics and self-important explication.

"It's typical pretentiousness," said Philip Nobel, a critic for Metropolis and ArtForum. "These designers are just building a wall of attitude between their actual ideas - whatever they are - and the public."

That's not to say there weren't good ideas buried among all the "network of transects," "vertical zonation of species" and "eco-spheres" to create a new city landmark 21/2 times the size of Central Park.

One design, called rePark, envisions an outdoor movie theater, equestrian trails, gyms, ball fields, a memorial forest, a golf course, a water park made out of reused garbage barges, and a 3-mile-long, U-shaped picnic table made out of recycled laundry-detergent bottles.

Another scheme, called Fresh Kills Parkland, has many of those amenities, plus a nifty meadow that would focus the eyes toward lower Manhattan.

On Saturday, all six finalists will present their designs at the Richmond County clerk's office. A jury will select the winner, who will then spend the next 35 years galvanizing public support, wrangling permits, finagling budget allocations and, if we're all lucky, building the damned thing.

Saturday's session is open to the public, so expect a room packed with Staten Islanders who have been waiting 40 years for someone to plant oaks instead of offal at Fresh Kills. The voice of the people won't count in the voting, but don't expect this silent majority to remain quiet.

"We want people to have strong opinions," said Ellen Ryan of the Municipal Art Society. "And we certainly won't stop them from booing or cheering."

You heard the lady.

AJ's preview of the above

AJ

A swathe of wide ranging reforms were announced in the long awaited Planning Green Paper, published yesterday.

DTLR | Planning Green Paper: Planning: Delivering a Fundamental Change

Department for Transport,
Local Government and the Regions
Planning Green Paper
Planning: Delivering a Fundamental Change

Couple of things to note:
Proposal to abolish structure plans, local plans and unitary development plans and replace them with a new Local Development Framework (LDF), prepared by district/unitary councils.

Statutory Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS) to replace current system of Regional Planning Guidance. RSS will be much wider ranging than current guidance and better integrated with other regional strategies.

Prince Charles gets down and dirty

"However, I can also imagine that my presence is about as welcome as a police raid on a brothel."

Celebrity Landscape Architects Death Match
The Dutch square off against the French, in low country home territory...

"Absent Architecture
December 3, 2001

On Thursday evening the Berlage Institute organised a discussion in conjunction with the Alliance Française and Archilab on the theme of hybrid landscapes. A new generation of French architects uses nature in a playful way to create artificial landscapes, thereby breaking open the traditional relationship between city and countryside. The evening opened with a short presentation the work of Dominique Lyon, Jakob MacFarlane, and Francois Roche. In attendance were Winy Maas Adriaan Geuze and Aaron Betsky."

ArchiNed News: hybrid landscapes