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September 11, 2009
More new-arena-design deconstruction
Here's a selection of yet more reactions to Forest City Ratner's latest stab at an arena design (all images, SHoP Architects, PC).
NYObserver.com, A Brief History of Atlantic Yards Designs
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The Observer has a slide show of the evolution of the designs for Bruce Ratner's planned arena, which still — and may forever be — just a bunch of illustrations and models.
On Wednesday, developer Bruce Ratner unveiled new designs for his planned Nets basketball arena in Brooklyn, an Ellerbe Becket and SHoP-designed complex notable for a set of wavy, dark orange metal bands that wrap around its exterior. (Though it's worth adding that missing is any design of the rest of the $4.9 billion project—which envisions 6,400 apartments and a commercial tower—as the previous designs by Frank Gehry were dropped in the name of cost.)
Now that Mr. Ratner has pledged construction will start by year’s end, which depends on a successful financing of his arena and resolution of a pending eminent domain lawsuit, it seems worth a look back at some of the various renderings and plans over the years.
Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, Leon Freilich, Verse Responder: The Ratner Arena
The Ratner Arena
A whale that swallows
With avid ease
Tax-free bonds
And subsidies.
Noticing New York, The Surrounding Light Smears Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Arena
You can tell how eager the developer was (not!) for the public to see it by the fact that the design wasn’t released until just after ESDC closed its period for public comment. Here though is what we find to be the most fascinating element of the rendering which also convinces us that they don’t want the public to really see the design even now: Fifty percent of the colored rendering of the arena is not a rendering of the arena at all. It is a rendering which, borrowing the same colors in which the arena is depicted, shows with abnormal emphasis the blurred lights of the passing traffic on Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues! Gosh Golly! The lights of the passing traffic are going to be prettier than the arena itself?
NY Observer, New Atlantic Yards Design Less Bad Than It Could Be
The consensus on yesterday’s renderings of the new Atlantic Yards’ arena -- with its futuristic, clamshell shape and weathered steel facade – seems to be that the new design is, well, passable.
...While the new design may temper charges that Ratner pulled an epic bait-and-switch when he dumped Gehry earlier this year, the bean counters at the Independent Budget Office have already obscured the luminous glow of the new drawings. In a report issued today, the IBO said the arena will cost the city nearly $40 million dollars over the next 30-years. In 2005, the IBO had estimated the city would net a modest gain on the project.
Atlantic Yards Report, Deceptive rendering: where's Fifth Avenue traffic?
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, The "Sleeper House" Inspires the New Atlantic Yards Arena Design
Curbed, Ouroussoff: Hope for Atlantic Yards, Not So Much for Midtown
Can't Stop the Bleeding, Ratner Redux : Nets Unveil Spruced Up Airplane Hanger
UnBeige, Ellerbe Beckett and SHoP's Atlantic Yards Arena Designs Unveiled
ArtInfo, New Atlantic Yards Design Released
Posted by eric at September 11, 2009 8:54 AM