In a telephone interview, Mr. Meier said he was “open minded” about the aesthetic of the new crossing, and said that he hoped the final product would be “something people think of in a positive manner.”
“When you think of the great bridges in New York City, you think of the Brooklyn Bridge, right?” he said. “From any point of view, it’s a beautiful bridge, and one would hope that what happens here is of that quality.”
— The New York Times
Architect Richard Meier, Jeff Koons, and the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P. Campbell are some of the six experts whom New York State Governor Cuomo has named to review the design elements of the three bids the state received for the Tappan Zee bridge project.
4 Comments
"Artist’s Touch"???
... like he wants architecture?
Discouraging.
Calatrava would probably be a better judge of bridge design that Richard Meier and Jeff Koons. I wonder what the reasoning behind the selection of these "experts" was.
Since when did aesthetics have anything to do with bridge design? Aesthetics in this case is a by product of good engineering.
It is partially true that aesthetics are a product of good engineering but what does that mean? What is good engineering? Surely the first criterion is a bridge that doesn't fall down. It should not sway in the wind. It should last one hundred years. These are all things that can be calculated and quantified on pages and pages of excel spreadsheet printouts. What about the stuff that can’t be quantified? The elusive stuff that we as designers try and make a connection to through our work. The stuff that can’t be boiled down to ones and zeroes? Infrastructure and transportation on a daily basis affect more people than any of the work we as an architectural community are responsible for on a daily basis. If there is anything that should be making a contribution to our built environment it is a project like this bridge. It doesn’t have to be Calatraveqe, I would settle for a 1950s-60s WPA Project Bridge.
I will bet 100 bucks that they just end up painting the bridge in some bright color.
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