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September 24, 2009
Too Much of a Good Thing
Frank Gehry isn't going to design Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development, and that's OK.
Slate
by Witold Rybczynski
The writer/architect is not so sorry that Frank Gehry lost his Atlantic Yards exclusive.
It is a shame that Gehry wasn't given a chance to build his transparent, landscape-topped arena, but it is hard not to cheer the fact that the rest of his plan for the Atlantic Yards has also been abandoned. The 22-acre site was to contain 16 mostly residential towers, some more than 500 feet high, all designed by Gehry. Some architecture critics have praised the project as a "single cohesive scheme," but cohesion is precisely the problem. As Jane Jacobs taught, one of the preconditions for urban vitality is heterogeneity—in the uses, ages, and yes, designs of buildings. Surely we've learned by now that having large chunks of the city designed by one architect, no matter how talented, is not a good idea.
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Atlantic Yards Report, Slate critic, disremembering Lethem, says it's fine that Gehry's gone
Posted by eric at September 24, 2009 8:44 PM