Greenwich Village AIDS Memorial
Triangle Trouble
02.03.2012
Competition winners announced for Village AIDS memorial, but residents have concerns
The winning entry in the AIDS Memorial Park Competition by studio a+i.
Courtesy studio a+i
In a closely watched competition to envision an AIDS Memorial at Triangle Park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, Brooklyn’s studio a+i took first place for their design, Infinite Forest, beating out more than 475 entries. The memorial is intended to replace a depressing garden and garage directly across the street from the former St. Vincent’s Hospital, where thousands of AIDS patients were cared for throughout the height of the epidemic in the 1980s. But while the competition captured the imagination of architects across the city, many Village residents feel the competition ignored their concerns.
The winners were announced just one week after City Planning approved plans for a community park on the 1,600-square-foot site to be built by Rudin Management and designed by M. Paul Friedberg and Partners. Triangle Park fulfills the developer’s open-space requirements in connection with their $800 million multiuse complex across Seventh Avenue on the site of the old hospital. But while the M. Paul Friedberg design included a memorial component, it was not a memorial. When approving the Rudin plan, Commissioner Amanda Burden of City Planning said she was “confident” the developer would find a way to integrate an AIDS memorial into the Triangle Park plan.
The Village Red, a runner-up, peels back the ground plane to reveal a museum space below.
Jonathan Kurtz, Christopher Diehl, Katie Ritzmann, Brant Miller, Mykie Hrusovski, and Dale Berlekamp
While the ULURP was getting underway, media-savvy Queer History Alliance (QHA) joined forces with Architizer.com and Architectural Record to sponsor a competition that would scrap the M. Paul Friedberg design in favor of a site-specific AIDS memorial. The group assembled a star-studded jury that included Whoopi Goldberg alongside architect Michael Arad, to name but two. The competition was announced at a community board meeting last fall but community members complain that they were not involved with the competition that ultimately attracted a huge response from firms near and far, including three runners-up from Singapore, Ohio, and Manhattan.
The five-person team from the Brooklyn firm studio a+i envisioned three walls that would bind the park with mirrors on the interior and slate on the exterior. The mirrors would reflect a grove of white birch trees. Park entrances are slotted into the three corners of the triangle. The space between the mirror and slate walls acts as both light wells and entrances for a museum intended to go beneath the park. There are no markers with names or dates for the 100,000-plus New Yorkers who died of AIDS; instead, visitors are encouraged to write on the slate walls with chalk, “creating an ever-changing mural which is refreshed with every rain,” according to the architect’s submission text.
Another runner up, Not Yet Open, Not Yet Closed, proposes a multi-layered approach
that would levitate to reveal a large subterranean amphitheater.
Rodrigo Zamora, Mike Robitz
Studio a+i’s design includes the site’s full 16,000-square-foot footprint as well as a below-grade basement space that has not been officially part of the park. The M. Paul Freidberg plan used 15,000 square feet, leaving 1,000 square feet for the use of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center—which the community hoped would become a much smaller memorial. Rudin Management has not yet agreed to cede the 1,000 square feet or the below-grade space. After the vote, Rudin chief executive William Rudin said that original M. Paul Friedberg design incorporated “place holders” for a “commemorative element” and that the company would continue to work with the community. He would not comment on the below-grade space.
Christopher Tepper, a co-founder of QHA, said that the use of the below-grade space was included in the impact study, but that the M. Paul Friedberg plan approved by the commission only used the space for tree roots, and its use as a museum or learning center wasn’t studied. In a statement after the competition winner was announced, Rudin noted that their design had already been approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Community Board 2, the borough president’s office, and the City Planning Commission. It goes before the city council in March.
One entry included a perimeter fence that transforms into an awning during the day.
Another entry proposed a large red pyramid that filters light for an interior contemplation garden
With the ULURP process complete, residents were miffed by the walled-off design, particularly after months at the community board were spent debating the entrances, number of trees, water fountains, and a short stair needed on the south side of the park. Early on, a representative from QHA reached out to Marilyn Dorato of the Greenwich Village Block Association, but Durato found their assurances shallow. “They were basically deceiving us; the community really wants a park,” said Dorato.
Four out of the five architects from the studio a+i team came from Rafael Viñoly’s office. Co-founder Mateo Paiva said their experience there taught them about the give-and-take process. “I’m not sure what it’s going to become,” he said of the winning design. “What we were trying to do is to communicate a strong idea—and we only had one page. But for every project on a certain scale you have to deal with the community, and that’s what makes it interesting.”
An oft-repeated concern at community board meetings was that a memorial should commemorate the 160 years of St. Vincent’s care that include survivors from the Titanic, as well as patients from the flu pandemic of the 1920s, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and the AIDS crisis. But most Villagers are reticent about attacking the plan out of concern for offending their neighbors while under the scrutiny of the media. “I’ve never seen a press push like this. It’s created a bit of antipathy,” said Dorato. “There’s a sense that they’re a group that should be sensitive to bullying, and now they’re doing it.”
Runner-up Forest of Memories provides acces to an underground learning center along a meditative reflecting pool.
Tom Stoelker
Copyright © 2003-2011 | The Architect's Newspaper, LLC
I don't like the winner.
Just go to Hoboken Pier A and look at their grey gravel yard with the same lined up trees.
1. It takes many years for the trees to grow to how they are shown.
2. That grey gravel is hot, dry and rather depressing (not that AIDS is a joyous thing... still)
3. The gravel goes EVERYWHERE. This is not a Zen garden here. You will not have rakers on full duty.
Meh.
Permanent AIDS Memorial in Greenwich Village Takes a Step Closer to Reality
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
a2t for Studio a+i
David W. Dunlap/The New York Times
a2t for Studio a+i
David W. Dunlap/The New York Times
Some might see an echo of the pink triangle and think of Act Up, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Some might see an echo of the letter lambda, the symbol of gay liberation when AIDS began decimating the gay population. Some might see a V for virus, or for St. Vincent’s, the hospital across the street where so many of the first victims went to die.
But most visitors to a new city park planned in the triangle bounded by Seventh Avenue, 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue would probably see only an angular, 18-foot-high canopy made of trellises densely planted with English ivy, Virginia creeper and honeysuckle.
It was that modest and multipurpose role that won the support of the Greenwich Village community board on Thursday night for what would be New York’s first prominent, free-standing AIDS memorial.
This is a very different concept from the “Infinite Forest” design shown to the public in January, which would have occupied the entire 17,000-square-foot triangle with a grove of birch trees surrounded by mirrored walls.
By contrast, the canopy would cover 1,600 square feet of the western corner of a more conventional city park, which is expected to open in 2014. The memorial aspect would be most obvious in the granite paving under the canopy, to be inscribed with narrative text, facts, statistics, quotations and poetry. A granite disc, glazed with a thin surface of running water, would sit under a circular opening in the canopy roof.
2×4 for Studio a+i Narrative text, facts, statistics, quotations
and poetry would be inscribed in the granite paving around a water feature.
What the proposals have in common is that they were both made by a new organization known as AIDS Memorial Park, founded by Christopher Tepper, 30, and Paul Kelterborn, 34. Both proposals were designed by Studio a+i of Brooklyn.
“Of course, the architectural interpretation is multifaceted,” said Mr. Tepper, whose day job is directing development and planning for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. “But the underlying metaphor is that of the shelter provided by a dense forest canopy and the visual impact created when trees in the grove are lost.”
In essence, Mr. Tepper and Mr. Kelterborn lobbed their memorial proposal into the already difficult negotiations among city officials, Greenwich Villagers and the Rudin family of real estate developers over the Rudins’ plan to build hundreds of expensive apartments on the site of St. Vincent’s Hospital, which closed in 2010.
Neighbors had long expected that a park would replace the fenced-in garden and windowless utility building that occupy the triangular block opposite the main hospital building, which now belongs to the Rudins. Just as they were getting to the finish line — or so it seemed — they were suddenly being told that an AIDS memorial would be built instead, one whose caliber and gravity would attract busloads of pilgrims.
“Making sure all the parties had a significant role in the decision-making process was the top priority for us in the Council when discussing the AIDS memorial,” Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, said. “Once we got everyone into a room and focused on the issue at hand, we were able to come to an agreement.”
As part of the overall redevelopment deal struck in March, the Rudins will turn over the triangular site to the city for use as parkland. The memorial design approved Thursday by Community Board 2 emerged from a series of four sessions in which neighbors and the memorial advocates met to work through differences and find points of agreement.
“It started off somewhat contentiously,” said Brad Hoylman, the former board chairman, who is now running for the State Senate. The situation was complicated by the seemingly finished quality of the “Infinite Forest” rendering.
Mr. Hoylman came in for criticism because he had voted for “Infinite Forest” as a member of a jury convened by the AIDS Memorial Park group to judge a design competition. “I was asked, ‘How could you have approved that?’” Mr. Hoylman recalled. “It was a matter of communicating that this was a starting point, a concept.”
Important as the community board endorsement is, there are critical steps ahead, as the memorial proposal is subject to the approval of the City Planning Commission. Its chairwoman, Amanda M. Burden, is a stickler for detail when it comes to the design of public space. The design must also be reviewed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, as the triangle sits in the Greenwich Village Historic District.
Should the plan be approved, the AIDS Memorial Park group would be responsible for meeting the $2 million estimated cost of the canopy, fountain and paving, as well as future operating costs, which would be covered through interest from a planned $500,000 endowment. Mr. Tepper said he hoped the memorial can open when the park does, in the winter of 2014.
New York’s first permanent, public AIDS memorial is a 42-foot-long inscribed bench in the Hudson River Park. It was dedicated in 2008.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...er=rss&emc=rss
New York’s AIDS Memorial Approved by a Beleaguered Community Board 2
by Tom Stoelker
The approved AIDS Memorial is on track for installation across the street from the
former St. Vincent's hospital. (Courtesy NYC AIDS Memorial)
It was a week of devastating lows and mild highs for Community Board 2. With NYU virtually assured of getting their 1.9 million-square-foot expansion plan through City Council next week, in spite of vigorous local objection, the mood at last night’s executive board meeting was decidedly grim. But a new design for the AIDS Memorial, to be incorporated into the proposed St. Vincent’s Hospital Park across the street from the former hospital site in Greenwich Village, offered some hope. The new design was in response to a demand that the designers incorporate community input, providing hope for some that that the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) was not a waste of time. “With ULURP being ULURP, I didn’t think this would happen,” Village resident Robert Woodworth said of the memorial designed by Brooklyn-based studio a+i.
View of the AIDS Memorial from Greenwich Avenue looking north.
The vote was nearly eclipsed by a visit from Council Member Margaret Chin who came to explain her position on NYU to the polite but angry crowd. Board Chair David Gruber didn’t mince words, telling the Council Member that the vote earlier this week was “monumentally tragic” in its disregard for the community.
The frustration with NYU made the memorial’s evolution that much more poignant. Community member Steve Ashkenazi drew a direct comparison. “This group has responded to the community,” he told the crowd. “It’s a beautiful, relevant design.” Strange as it may seem, the memorial and NYU do share commonality, both the modest AIDS Memorial and NYU’s huge expansion plan bid high in their initial proposals and eventually whittled the scale down after negotiating with the board.
Studio a+i's winning entry to the international competition for the AIDS Memorial
enclosed much of the square. Entrants were charged to dream big and included
the use of an underground space for a museum.
An oculus sits just above a reflective water element.
Indeed many had thought that a+i’s winning design resulting from the ideas competition, sponsored by Architizer and Architectural Record , would be realized as it was presented, encompassing the entirety of the triangular park. But as it tuned out, site-owner Rudin Management had a plan of their own for a much smaller park.
Under the banner of the Queer History Alliance, activists rallied media support for an AIDS memorial on the site, even as the board was trying to influence the design underway by Rudin’s landscape architect M. Paul Feiedberg. In the process the site for the public park evntually expanded to encompass the entire triangle, with 17,000 square feet set aside for the memorial.
The memorial’s planted overhead canopy will mimic the angles formed by West 12th meeting Greenwich and is supported in turn by three inverse triangles. Cross beams of planters will run the width of the triangles, holding English Ivy, Virginia Creepers and Honeysuckle. Slats running opposite the planters will hold a galvanized Greenscreen grid, giving the vine a surface to grow on. A large oculus will hover above a reflective water element and granite benches will run along the north and south border. Under foot, carved poetry texts find their way in a series of large intersecting circular pavers. Lighting, planting, and irrigation systems include a detailed plan for maintenance.
A side view of the memorial from Greewich Avenue.
The memorial’s co-founder Chris Tepper told the crowd that the compromise, which led to a much smaller memorial than the winning proposal presented last spring, still meets the group’s “policy goals.” He promised that he and co-founder Paul Kelterborn would remain committed to raising the $2 million for the memorial as well as $500,000 for a maintenance fund.
In a first exclusive look, New York Magazine‘s Justin Davidson gave the project a thumbs up. With such media savvy, there is little doubt that the the group, now officially called the AIDS Memorial Park, will have trouble raising the funds to build.
The evergreen ivy canopy for the memorial will rise 18 feet above the sidewalk.
A view of the memorial from 12th Street.
The proposed "St. Vincent's Hospital Park" incorporates the AIDS Memorial
on the west side of the site, represented here by the gray triangle at right.
http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/43127
Not my favorite entry, but it's quite nice. Something different for a change.
New York City AIDS Memorial Approved by Landmarks
by Jeremiah Budin
After almost a year of occasionally hilarious debate about the future New York City AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent's Hospital Park, the agreed upon design from Studio a + i received no opposition from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, who approved the proposal unanimously yesterday afternoon. Studio a + i's Mateo Paiva presented the plans for the "quietly abstract memorial," which will consist of a triangular steel structure covered in vines with a water feature underneath, taking up a 1,600-square-foot triangle in the northwest corner of the park.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/1..._landmarks.php
I would like to see the calcs showing this thing can stand up during a strong wind once fully covered in growth.....
The problem with most of these nice looking things is that they simply are not engineered.
Give me some good stalwart trees and open sky over this design any day.
It looks like a huge 1970's coffee table.
Village AIDS Memorial Loses the Greenery, Raises Funding
by Jessica Dailey
After raising $1 million in funding, the New York City AIDS Memorial released updated renderings showing a triangular canopy that's much in line with what the Landmarks Preservation Commission hoped to see. The updated 18-foot tall structure, designed by the Brooklyn-based firm Studio a+1, keeps the same general shape and the water feature, but it is no longer covered with ivy and flowers. LPC had raised concerns about the upkeep of the greenery, as well as how much light it would block. Paving stones beneath the canopy will feature poetry and quotes about the city's response to the AIDS epidemic.
The group is currently working toward a $4 million fundraising goal, and construction should begin some time next year, according to DNAinfo. The memorial shares a plot of land with what will become St. Vincent's Triangle park, and both will be built by Rudin Management, the developer who is converting the old St. Vincent's Hospital building into condos.
Village AIDS Memorial Group Releases New Renderings During Funding Push [DNAinfo]
NYC AIDS Memorial [official]
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/0...nding.php#more
That just looks... stupid.
Well, if Whoopi Goldberg likes the design - who are you to argue. HeHeOriginally Posted by vanshnookenraggen
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...q=aids&st=cse/
Excerpt - Ms. Lim said: “We were all brainstorming about AIDS, about how each of us at the office felt about it, and the first thought we had was of a forest, or maybe a sunken forest, and then we came up with the idea of the mirrors, three walls that reflect the forest to infinity.”
The firm has ample experience in major international design projects: four of the five people on the Studio a+i team formerly worked for the celebrated architect Rafael Viñoly, who has completed buildings worldwide.
Still, Mr. Paiva and Ms. Lim were impressed to learn that their entry had been selected. “When she found out we had won, Lily woke me up and yelled, ‘Whoopi Goldberg liked our design!’” Mr. Paiva said.
Indeed, she did.
“It was a humbling experience,” Ms. Goldberg said in an e-mail, “to sit among the other jurors and try and figure out what the best design would be for the neighborhood, the city, and, really, for the nation.
You know, when I see triangular metal ornaments, the first thing I think of is AIDS......
*wark*
Whoopi + the jury picked the design with trees + mirrors, not the pigeon pooping roost that some bureaucrats approved ...
The design chosen for an AIDS memorial proposed for Greenwich Village incorporates mirrored walls and birch trees.
Studio a+i
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