Burn: Oroussoff on Atlantic Yards

Nicolai Oroussoff's review in the New York Times of the Ellerbe Becket design for the Nets new arena at Atlantic Yards is scorching. It is at once an indictment of the project's current state, but also decries the most odious aspects to large-scale urban development today: greed and a lack of concern for the public realm, Oroussoff writes:

"Its low-budget, no-frills design embodies the crass, bottom-line mentality that puts personal profit above the public good. If it is ever built, it will create a black hole in the heart of a vital neighborhood.

"But what’s most offensive about the design is the message it sends to New Yorkers. Architecture, we are being told, is something decorative and expendable, a luxury we can afford only in good times, or if we happen to be very rich. What’s most important is to build, no matter how thoughtless or dehumanizing the results. It is the kind of logic that kills cities — and that has been poisoning this one for decades."

But he also gives Frank Gehry's design its due, acknowledging its thoughtfulness and creativity, regardless of what early detractors said.

Go-Go-Gowanus

I love the idea that Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal is both eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places and a proposed Superfund site.

The Gowanus Canal is an industrial waterway, flanked by industry, overpassed by a subway viaduct, and surrouned by yuppified/gentrifying neighborhoods (Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook). It is a strongly industrial place marred by pollution, but also a cultural landscape that has remains due to continued use. Originally the area was tidal wetlands and creeks that were host to early millworks. The canal was built to meet the needs of increasing industrial production in the mid-1800s. Marshes were drained (more on those in a future post) and the 1.5 mile Gowanus Canal quickly became an important maritime and commercial hub. But after more than a century of industrial and municipal pollution, the Gowanus Canal is so degraded it may become a Superfund site.

So environmental and preservation groups are as interested in what happens as the state and local government are. But what’s next for the Gowanus Canal remains anybody’s guess:

• The Gowanus Canal Conservancy has a vision for the Canal’s environmental restoration and green development.
• New York City Department of City Planning has issued its Gowanus Canal Corridor Framework for rezoning 25 blocks around the Canal to reflect the retreat of industrial uses and make way for housing, mixed-use development on appropriate sites, while maintaining some industrial presence.
  
• The Army Corps has studied the canal, and New York State may designate the canal as a Superfund Site, and there are lots of strong opinions on both sides of this debate.
  "Gowanus Canal, Polluted for Many Decades, May Become Superfund Site" (NY Times, April 10,2009)
  "On the Gowanus Canal, Fear of Superfund Stigma" (NY Times, April 24, 2009)
• A 2008 Columbia Historic Preservation Studio studied the Canal’s resources. This year, Pratt students completed a studio on the industrial landscape. The Municipal Arts Society recently surveyed the Canal’s historic resources.

Today's industrial canal may yet be tomorrow's historic waterfront property.