The Useful and the Beautiful - Meet Here

Once more, Art, meet Wonk...Wonk, meet Art.

See?! HERE’s what I mean about The Municipal Art Society (MAS).

MAS, in conjunction with Brooklyn Speaks , has just reminded us about their June call for Forest City Ratner to revamp its plans for the Atlantic Yards Project (16 skyscrapers, 18,000 seat arena), citing 5 design and planning principles:

1. Respect the character of existing nabes (i.e. reduce the density of the project and don’t build megaskyscrapers).
2. Public streets should not be eliminated (keep 5th Ave open)
3. Create a real public park (don’t pretend that strip of green behind the skycrapers is going to be geographically inviting for locals who don’t have access to proposed skyscrapers)
4. Promote lively streets ( by promoting the small businesses that characterized the area, and not overshadowing them with skyscrapers)
5. Deal with the traffic increase that will be created (by actually coming up with a plan for it, including improving public transit).

Check out the featured Brooklyn Speaks slideshow contrasting the current Ratner “vision” with what is and could be. You can also add your name to those who support the Brooklyn Speaks.

I keep the 2003-04 Annual Report for MAS on my desk, because in addition to being the most useful and beautiful (my two principles for anything) annual report/ advocacy tool combination ever, it quotes, over a photo of the lawn at Bryant Park, their founding members from 1893:

“To make us love our city, we must make our city lovely.”

Art Meets Wonk

The Architectural League is one of those many places in my adopted hometown that so consistently and constantly produces fascinating projects that I’m often overwhelmed by its opportunities. Of all the Don’t Miss exhibitions, competitions, panels, and projects they are always offering, Architecture and Justice: Criminal Justice as Urban Exostructure is Definitely Don’t Miss.


This particular exhibition and program look at mapping incarceration and return rates in different American cities, and the policy implications of those patterns.

But it also reminds me of other policy implications in the relationship between architecture and incarceration. My work sometimes takes me to a small town upstate; the big shiny new high school is built on a site originally meant for a prison. When the town's NIMBY elements managed to block the prision, to save money the municipal authorities used the same blueprints for the prison to build the school, changing key features but also keeping the cellblock system in place. The shape of a building - at least in theory - says everything about its function, and the message to the kids who attend is obvious. That’s some policy implication.

And-
The Architectural League is housed in a gorgeous building at 457 Madison Avenue that is The Urban Center with another of my favorite NYC art-meets-wonk agencies, the Municipal Art Society, which champions urban design and planning and “believes that the physical city -- its light, air, land and open spaces -- and its sensible development are critical to New York's continued economic health and social well-being.” Check it out.