Advocates for the preservation of modernist landscapes in Washington have taken on another fight. After beating back the National Geographic Society’s plan to demolish “Marabar,” the 1984 sculptural installation by Elyn Zimmerman on its campus, they are now battling the Hirshhorn Museum’s proposal to redo its sunken sculpture garden by the architect Gordon Bunshaft and the landscape architect Lester Collins. — The New York Times
As the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. gears up to restore its existing Gordon Bunshaft-designed facilities, landscape preservation advocates have voiced concerns over parallel plans to alter and reconfigure a series of Lester Collins-designed gardens that surround the iconic circular structure. A renovation plan led by architect Hiroshi Sugimoto aims to completely reconfigure the garden areas that front the museum.
Speaking with The New York Times, Charles Birnbaum of The Cultural Landscape Foundation asks, “Why are we applying a different set of standards to the landscape architecture than to the building architecture? We should have the same goals.”
3 Comments
'muricans are generally terrified of any space that is reductive or contemplative. The only surprise here is that there is not a food or coffee selling box plopped in somewhere to further "activate" the remuddled courtyard. Like all good remuddles these days, this proposal improves little to nothing, it just destroys a good work and replaces it with something different. Not better, just different.
I recall loving the museum's outdoor spaces quite a bit. We never talk about redoing art masterpieces that people don't line up to stare at, but for some reason if the art is human scaled it's fair game to bulldoze forever. Remember, there's no curated storage space for razed architecture.
The problem of casual landscape aside- Why would this drastic transformation of the National Mall be seen as acceptable?
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