On giant piles of trash left by a generation of New Yorkers, landscape architect James Corner is building a park that has the power to change the way we see the past and the future of the city. Read
What a great article. To anybody that honestly thinks theory is irrelevant, I would point them to this as a clear counter-example.
"At Field Operations, he is attempting to expand the idea of ecology to include not just rivers and streams but also subway lines, movements of capital, and weekend traffic."
These are ideas that have come straight out of the academy, and now have serious traction in culture at large.
His ideas, to a certain extent, have already been made operational by Alphand and Olmsted. Corner's ideas are not strictly from the academy, but have gone from practice to the academy and back to practice again. Little of it is also theory, but rather some nuts and bolts restoration ecology [though the soils bit needs more detail], civil engineering, etc. In short, it is landscape architecture, but with better graphics.
Nope. I'd argue that Landscape Urbanism in general, as a way of working that's based on this equivalence between different systems in the abstract, is a totally new, totally coherent set of ideas. And further, that it's a set of ideas that could only have been developed within an academic framework first, and then applied and understood within a larger cultural context, which is what we're seeing here.
Sure it's rooted in practice, but it's had the time and space to develop at Penn, and I think the coherence of it comes directly out of that.
Look at how easily the New Yorker, a pretty 'secular' publication, is able to take those complex core ideas and turn them into a simple hook - it's about process, not picturesque.
read some alphand and look at the bois de boulogne and then tell me that it is not landscape urbanism. landscape urbanism is a term for people who didn't take landscape history classes.
it is not new, just relabeled. until waldheim started flogging the phrase around, corner was just practicing landscape architecture. central park and the fens were also about process. corner is just more explicit about process, but if you read olmsted's writings about the construction of CP, there is lots of process to chew on.
ps. when FK is finished, it's going to look picturesque as well, and only the practioners/academics will know about the process.
why is this referred as an argument between academy and practice?
isn't this project about land use, trash dumping, real estate, and urbanism? as well as landscape architecture?
there is a place for academy in 99.99% of the architects' past.
these are long shot projects and take decades to germinate, usually wearing out several administrations as indicated in the article.
i'm just being pedantic about the historical antecedents of the project. i just think the design is a very nuts and bolts approach to a difficult problem.
cowerd, I'm totally agreeing with you that Landscape Urbanism isn't without precedent here, I'm just saying that this is the first case where people are being absolutely explicit about the primacy of these systems and processes, and using them to make the forms after.
I've never read Alphand, but I've read plenty of Olmstead, and while I appreciate that he does talk about processes in very contemporary language, it's always with scenography as a starting point or an end goal.
And Orhan, it's not about anything versus anything else, I'm just interested to see a case here where once abstract academic ideas seem to be shifting people's perceptions at large about what landscape is. Watching cultural perceptions shift is kind of fascinating.
765,
It is interesting that in both this article and the NYT's one on FO and their work on the Highline from last week that both authors did focus explicitly on the idea of process and its primacy over form as Corner articulates.
fred,
do we know if it is a shift, spiral or what not? does it matter?
almost all new ideas cook up in schools first.
how abstract is this park anyway? to me it is pragmatic and tangible all at once. it will (i hope) have a huge value as far as the interest it creates. cubic meter by cubic meter of garbage world generates is not uniue to new york. at this scale, it has a relatively large chance of establishing new technology and many projects about how to deal with urban waste. definitely this project is a bench mark, there have been many experiments with things james corner is talking and applying about. i am fascinated he got this project underway. it is much more than a park but an important example and guiding specification.
there was environmentally alarming scene in jersey coast in the past when i personally observed medical waste on the sand.
i am fascinated too.
Nov 24, 08 3:18 pm ·
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What a great article. To anybody that honestly thinks theory is irrelevant, I would point them to this as a clear counter-example.
"At Field Operations, he is attempting to expand the idea of ecology to include not just rivers and streams but also subway lines, movements of capital, and weekend traffic."
These are ideas that have come straight out of the academy, and now have serious traction in culture at large.
His ideas, to a certain extent, have already been made operational by Alphand and Olmsted. Corner's ideas are not strictly from the academy, but have gone from practice to the academy and back to practice again. Little of it is also theory, but rather some nuts and bolts restoration ecology [though the soils bit needs more detail], civil engineering, etc. In short, it is landscape architecture, but with better graphics.
Nope. I'd argue that Landscape Urbanism in general, as a way of working that's based on this equivalence between different systems in the abstract, is a totally new, totally coherent set of ideas. And further, that it's a set of ideas that could only have been developed within an academic framework first, and then applied and understood within a larger cultural context, which is what we're seeing here.
Sure it's rooted in practice, but it's had the time and space to develop at Penn, and I think the coherence of it comes directly out of that.
Look at how easily the New Yorker, a pretty 'secular' publication, is able to take those complex core ideas and turn them into a simple hook - it's about process, not picturesque.
read some alphand and look at the bois de boulogne and then tell me that it is not landscape urbanism. landscape urbanism is a term for people who didn't take landscape history classes.
it is not new, just relabeled. until waldheim started flogging the phrase around, corner was just practicing landscape architecture. central park and the fens were also about process. corner is just more explicit about process, but if you read olmsted's writings about the construction of CP, there is lots of process to chew on.
ps. when FK is finished, it's going to look picturesque as well, and only the practioners/academics will know about the process.
why is this referred as an argument between academy and practice?
isn't this project about land use, trash dumping, real estate, and urbanism? as well as landscape architecture?
there is a place for academy in 99.99% of the architects' past.
these are long shot projects and take decades to germinate, usually wearing out several administrations as indicated in the article.
i'm just being pedantic about the historical antecedents of the project. i just think the design is a very nuts and bolts approach to a difficult problem.
cowerd, I'm totally agreeing with you that Landscape Urbanism isn't without precedent here, I'm just saying that this is the first case where people are being absolutely explicit about the primacy of these systems and processes, and using them to make the forms after.
I've never read Alphand, but I've read plenty of Olmstead, and while I appreciate that he does talk about processes in very contemporary language, it's always with scenography as a starting point or an end goal.
And Orhan, it's not about anything versus anything else, I'm just interested to see a case here where once abstract academic ideas seem to be shifting people's perceptions at large about what landscape is. Watching cultural perceptions shift is kind of fascinating.
765,
It is interesting that in both this article and the NYT's one on FO and their work on the Highline from last week that both authors did focus explicitly on the idea of process and its primacy over form as Corner articulates.
fred,
do we know if it is a shift, spiral or what not? does it matter?
almost all new ideas cook up in schools first.
how abstract is this park anyway? to me it is pragmatic and tangible all at once. it will (i hope) have a huge value as far as the interest it creates. cubic meter by cubic meter of garbage world generates is not uniue to new york. at this scale, it has a relatively large chance of establishing new technology and many projects about how to deal with urban waste. definitely this project is a bench mark, there have been many experiments with things james corner is talking and applying about. i am fascinated he got this project underway. it is much more than a park but an important example and guiding specification.
there was environmentally alarming scene in jersey coast in the past when i personally observed medical waste on the sand.
i am fascinated too.
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