Reply With QuoteEverytime they roll out a new architect model of a Gehry project I wonder, "who dropped it?" as they pull the veil off of it.
Let me shower it with Brooklyn praise: it is better than Scarano or Bricolage!
Give it time. Those are study models. As the design develops, Gehry's trademark brilliant surface treatments will gradually emerge, as at IAC.Originally Posted by Gulcrapek
Right now he's still studying the massing; surfaces generally come later. You like Ms. B better because it's further along in the design process, that's all. The others will catch up.
A project like this develops; it can't spring full-formed from Zeus's head.
Everytime they roll out a new architect model of a Gehry project I wonder, "who dropped it?" as they pull the veil off of it.
Let me shower it with Brooklyn praise: it is better than Scarano or Bricolage!
Base jumpers, rock climbers and other thrill seekers will have a field day on this one ...
Amen. Ratner is a sure-fire emetic in the NY real estate development world.
But my problem today is Mr. Gehry's hubris. He speaks of harmony? Nothing has been changed to ameliorate his plan’s aggressively alien presence. The design - likely conceived in a mansion overlooking Malibu - bears no trace of a relationship with its modest address. I cringe envisioning a future when this silhouette could be the image of Brooklyn conveyed to Middle America.
Generations have celebrated Brooklyn's economic and aesthetic distance from Manhattan. Those who aspire to luxury, high-rise living can take the traditional walk over the bridge. In the meantime, if Mr. Gehry (or Ratner) wants to understand the "essence" of Brooklyn, come to Park Slope to be hen-pecked, or to Bensonhurst for a much-needed beating.
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I think it already has been. It's certainly shorter than it was or ought to be. You can expect the NIMBYs to dumb it down some more.
Then will come the aesthetes. That'll be the coup de grace.
Don't get your hopes up. This is New York: millions of architecture critics. That alone isn't bad, but they have the power to change things, and that is bad.
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People who don't want it built at all are going to hate it no matter what it looks like.
It's extremely so-so looking. Ms. Brooklyn's mid-section is terrible. Her top and bottom look good, but the top doesn't culminate at all. The arena has become too incorporated into the other buildings. I like the idea of blending it into the base of the towers, but it seems to have gone a step or two too far. I'm still kind of hating the site plan = Flashy towers in a park.
To me it has a uniquely brilliant silhouette, I love the fact that it is so different than any other scraper we've ever seen and that it is right in a fork in road to prevent obstruction from other buildings (is this a preview of what Beekman could look like??). But it sure could use a nice spire or crown to give this tower a resounding finish that could be seen from the distances.
I don't like how the arena was concealed so that it has a too subtle presence. The Stoop is a great idea but it has to be very prominent in order for it to have its full effect.
May 12, 2006
Developer Defends Atlantic Yards Plan for Brooklyn
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Frank Gehry, center, architect for the project, said pains had been taken to complement the surroundings. With him yesterday were James Stuckey, left, of Forest City Ratner and Laurie Olin, landscape designer.
Video: Frank Gehry & Laurie Olin
From across the room, the new plastic-and-wood model of Brooklyn's proposed Atlantic Yards project — revealed by the developer Forest City Ratner at a news conference yesterday — looked a lot like the old one sitting a few feet away: a 22-acre swath of glass, brick and metal towers that would loom over the surrounding neighborhoods and alter the borough's otherwise sparse skyline.
But in an hourlong presentation of the project's latest design, Frank Gehry, the project's architect, and Laurie Olin, its landscape designer, emphasized details that they said would harmonize the planned arena and commercial and residential buildings with the neighborhoods they would border.
They described shorter and thinner buildings on Dean Street, where the project abuts a mostly low-rise neighborhood; extensive use of glass walls at street level; and what Mr. Olin described as "the biggest stoop in Brooklyn," a sort of public porch planned for the southeast corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.
"It still feels like Brooklyn," said Mr. Olin.
But their presentation also made clear that the developer and its opponents still have vastly different visions of what, exactly, Brooklyn should feel like, at least in this corner of the borough, where the downtown commercial district shades into a quiet neighborhood of brownstones to the southeast.
"They should've been picketing Henry Ford," Mr. Gehry said yesterday, dismissing critics who have questioned the pace and scale of development in the borough. "There is progress everywhere. There is constant change. The issue is how to manage it."
Opponents of the project have criticized the density of Mr. Gehry's designs, among other issues, and the government's possible condemnation of property to make room for them. They have backed alternative plans for the site, including proposals by rival developers that would include mostly low-rise buildings and not require eminent domain. (Forest City Ratner is the development partner of The New York Times Company in building its new Midtown headquarters, a project that itself involved government condemnation of private property.)
Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, said the new design "puts a Gehry sheen on top of repudiated 1960's-style urban renewal."
He continued, "It's still way too big, and does not change the fact of 16 skyscrapers slammed on top of and next to low-rise, historic neighborhoods."
Mr. Goldstein also criticized Mr. Gehry for declining to meet with area residents. The project "remains an urban planning disaster," he said, because "Mr. Gehry and Mr. Ratner continue to ignore the community."
Yesterday's orchestrated presentation — Junior's, the famed Brooklyn cheesecake place, catered breakfast — came amid a contentious period in the two-and-a-half-year struggle over the Atlantic Yards.
The developer's decision last month to pare back the project's size by about 5 percent has done little to mollify its most astringent critics. And in the next few months, the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency sponsoring the project, is expected to release a draft study of its potential environmental impacts that will almost certainly be the subject of legal action.
The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, an association of about 40 Brooklyn community groups, announced yesterday that it had hired Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, a real estate planning firm, to review the draft study.
Earlier this week, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn announced the formation of an advisory board to help with fund-raising, outreach and education. The board includes celebrities who live near the proposed site — such as the novelists Jonathan Lethem and Jhumpa Lahiri and the actors Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams — as well as preservationists, activists and politicians.
Yesterday's presentation is unlikely to temper the passions that have rallied them against Forest City Ratner. Though Mr. Gehry had previously suggested the project would be scaled back significantly, he was more elusive yesterday, saying that he had been "paring back" the design. "It is a process," he added.
Mr. Olin dismissed criticism from some community leaders and outside architects that the project's roughly seven acres of open space were too isolated from surrounding streets to be welcoming to residents.
"I don't think one has to worry about trying to draw people into open space in New York City," he said. "If there's open space that isn't closed or fenced in, people find it."
Much of yesterday's discussion focused on the project's 18,000-seat basketball arena, designed after a lengthy survey of arenas around the country. It is designed to "create intimacy" in an otherwise vast space, Mr. Gehry said, with tiers of seating structured so that "the people in the cheap seats are no longer second-class citizens."
Mr. Gehry spoke in sweeping language of his efforts to create "different levels of iconicity," varying the buildings' degree of unconventionality to create a skyline that would fit into the area. A few buildings would still be adorned with Mr. Gehry's trademark undulating panels, including the project's tallest, dubbed "Miss Brooklyn," which he described as a bride with flowing veils.
On the Dean Street side of the project, spaces between buildings have also been widened significantly from some early renderings to create better lines of sight from one side of the project to the other."We didn't take this lightly," Mr. Gehry said. "We spent an enormous amount of time studying Brooklyn."
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Last edited by Kris; May 12th, 2006 at 06:12 PM.
B'klyn Atlantic Yards plans unveiled
By Barbara Barker
Newsday Staff Writer
May 11, 2006, 7:09 PM EDT
Photo Gallery
Architect Frank Gehry unveiled a revised plan for a proposed Nets Arena complex in Brooklyn Thursday, one that the project's developer is touting as a friendlier, scaled-down version of the mini-city that also includes a hotel, office buildings, apartment towers and retail space.
The new proposal keeps the 18,000 seat sports arena, but reduces the maximum size of the Atlantic Yards project by more than 400,000 square feet, down to under 8.7 million feet. Most of the reduction will come from the elimination of market-rate condominium units, though the project remains Oz-like in scale, including 16 towers, ranging in height from 19 to 58 stories.
The site of the proposed $3.5 billion project is at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Half of the project's 4,500 apartments will be reserved for low- and moderate-income families, according to Jim Stuckey, executive vice-president of Forest City Ratner Companies, the project's developer.
"We've spent an enormous amount of time studying Brooklyn, trying to get a sense of what is Brooklyn and what is special about it," Gehry said at a news conference Thursday.
What is special about Brooklyn, according to one opponent of the plan, will be violated by a project of this scale.
"The arena is really a front for a larger land grab," said Daniel Goldstein, a spokesman for Develop -- Don't Destroy Brooklyn. "We're talking about 16 buildings here. (The new plan) puts a Gehry sheen on top of repudiated 1960s-style urban renewal. It's still way too big and does not change the fact of 16 skyscrapers slammed on top of and next to low-rise historic neighborhoods."
Bruce Ratner, the president and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, is also the principal owner of the Nets. According to Stuckey, the company is hoping that the arena will be completed in time for the 2009-10 season.
Gehry is sort of the Michael Jordan of name-brand architects, but, having grown up in Canada, is more of a hockey than basketball fan. He said he visited arenas around North America -- his favorites were the Toyota Center in Houston, Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis and Air Canada Centre in Toronto – to see what worked and what didn't. He also talked to players and fans and found out what they craved most was a sense of intimacy, which he noted is somewhat of a challenge in an 18,000-seat venue.
Among the more innovative features of the arena is the steep rise from the court, which allows fans to be closer to the action. It is also designed so the scoreboard – though not the court – can be seen through windows on the street. The roof of the arena will be landscaped green space, part of which will be accessible to tenants of surrounding buildings.
When asked about the critics of the project's plan, Gehry seemed unfazed. Said Gehry: "They should have been picketing Henry Ford…There is progress everywhere. There's constant change. I think the issue is how you manage change."
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
Exactly.
Can't see that in the model.
Gehry really is a terrible architect.
MB on the left is not my favorite tower. Of course, this is a model and one that is not particularly realistic so its just an approximation of what the final tower would look like. Actual materials and construction will alter the impression it gives.
The best part of this plan IMO is the massing of the rest of the towers on the right.
Definitely New Yorkish.
Or is it New Yorker-ish?
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