Spillover Crowds, Strong Words Mark AY Hearing
By all accounts, yesterday’s public hearing on the Atlantic Yards project was crowded, raucous and long. There’s ample coverage of the blow-by-blows on the links below. While The Times notes that the two sides of the issue appeared to have hardened, Norman Oder notes that more public figures are heading the opposite direction: There was…
By all accounts, yesterday’s public hearing on the Atlantic Yards project was crowded, raucous and long. There’s ample coverage of the blow-by-blows on the links below. While The Times notes that the two sides of the issue appeared to have hardened, Norman Oder notes that more public figures are heading the opposite direction:
There was some evidence of a push for compromise. Borough President Marty Markowitz, though vague, offered his most forceful words for a project scaledown. Assemblymembers Roger Green and Jim Brennan reminded the crowd of their effort to subsidize a 34 percent reduction in the project’s size. And Kenn Lowy, of Community Board 2’s Traffic and Transportation Committee, drew cheers from opponents when he declared that the project must be reduced by 60 percent.
Is compromise the inevitable course of action?
Raucous Meeting on Atlantic Yards [NY Times]
Hoop Dreams Draw a Foul [NY Post]
Sides Clash Over Atlantic Yards [NY Sun]
Supporters Out in Force, Opponents Go the Distance [AY Report]
AY: Brooklyn Deserves a Better Plan [Municipal Arts Society]
Brownstones are old and boring. Hopefully these new amazing Ghery towers will change the feel of Brooklyn.
Okay, I need a nap, but Gehry and the AY design just seem like old news to me. In-your-face architecture designed for a previous time – the old millenium – not the post-9/11, post-Katrina, global warming, we-need-to-address-sustainability-issues era that we’re in now. (Maybe the imperialistic AY invasion of Brooklyn looked like a good idea around the time anyone thought the U.S. invasion of Iraq made sense – well, that’s SO over now in the zeitgeist, isn’t it.) This Gehry expression already looks like a historical museum piece* to me, and it’s not even built yet.
Yawn.
*I should have smelled trouble coming down the pike when they had that huge Gehry retrospective at the Guggenheim years ago – that was the start of the propoganda (known today as “marketing”). Well, I’ve lost my naivete. Uh oh. Now there’s a Zaha Hadid exhibit at the Guggenheim. Do we like her?
Yawn.
Of course, human greed is timeless, so this urban design probably continues to look just fine to Pataki/Doctoroff/FCR/Gehry and the rest of the gang.
“Wait, so Dreadnaught, you don’t value intellectuals or their ideas, but you spend a lot of time trying to intellectually argue your own ideas…”
No, I didn’t say that…his arrogant disregard for people, and the thought that he thinks his ideas are more important than people makes him not suitable as an architect, particularly for housing which after all is about people.
He would do better as a sculptor, though I wouldn’t walk across the street to see something he made.
Whether you like him or not however, is not the issue the design and size of the design and what is appropriate for the neighborhood is.
Clearly by going AROUND zoning laws and community boards, Ratner and Gehry don’t think that matters.
all that matters for ratner is filling his pockets with taxpayer money.
Wait, so Dreadnaught, you don’t value intellectuals or their ideas, but you spend a lot of time trying to intellectually argue your own ideas…
“Is Dreadnaugth in fact Goldstein???”
Nope.
“fans of frank gehry are allowed to also drool over beautiful brownstones. believe it or not i’ve heard of people who like classical music and hip hop!”
No argument there. I didn’t care for Gehry or his work before this, in my opinion his stuff is novetly and sensation and will be eyesores in ten years (google his santa monica home, it already is an eyesore (he designed it in the 70s)).
My concern about him with AY are two fold:
from wiki:
“Gehry’s style is derived from late modernism. The tortured, warped forms of his structures are considered expressions of the deconstructivist (DeCon) school of modernist architecture. The DeCon movement departs from modernism in its de-emphasis of societal goals and functional necessity. Unlike early modernist structures, DeCon structures are not required to reflect specific social ideas (such as speed or universality of form), and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function.”
in other words he doesn’t consider the environment around him, or function. That’s fine when you’re designing a small museum but not a major cluster of buildings in an urban area. they are not designed for people, they are design for frank’s ego.
secondly, his arrogant attitude towards people in the neighborhood reflects this.
What’s the old saying an “intellectual” is someone who values ideas more than people.
Is Dreadnaugth in fact Goldstein???
a response to the poster at 2:15: its amazing, but believe it or not, it is possible to admire brownstones and modern architecture. fans of frank gehry are allowed to also drool over beautiful brownstones. believe it or not i’ve heard of people who like classical music and hip hop!
Brooklyn is going to have a beautiful skyline in 10 years! Woof!
DG is going to be a very rich man indeed. Last man standing makes a windfall. Ahhhhh… the virtues of capitalism. Right Dreadnaught? 😉