Creative studio DFA is proposing a 712-foot public observation tower in Central Park that would double as a sustainable filtration system to clean the hazardous Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir and turn it into a non-toxic, useable freshwater pond. Though meant to be temporary, the prefabricated tower would be the world’s tallest timber structure if completed, featuring a 56-foot-wide viewing platform and a glass oculus that showcases the tower’s functional elements. — 6sqft

An unmistakable irony creeps vinelike through Olmsted’s landscape theory: It takes a lot of artifice to create convincing “natural” scenery. Everything in Central Park is man-made; the same is true of most of Olmsted’s designs. They are not imitations of nature so much as idealizations, like the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School. Each Olmsted creation was the product of painstaking sleight of hand, requiring enormous amounts of labor and expense. — The Atlantic

“New York Horizon” would be virtually impossible to implement in the real world, given the actual urban landscape of the proposed site, which includes some of NYC's subway lines for starters. That being said, the criticism “New York Horizon” has sparked in recent weeks raises bigger questions — particularly involving the rise of “meme-tecture”, the cultural value of landscape architecture, and re-evaluating the setup of open ideas competitions. — Bustler

Last night, nearly 500 New Yorkers gathered at the New York Public Library’s main branch for a forum on the wave of skyscrapers that are rising along the Southern edge of Central Park. Skyscrapers that will, depending on whom you ask, either transform Central Park into a gloomy airshaft or create shadows as fleeting and insubstantial as a cloud moving across the sun. Concerns were raised, grievances aired and oligarchs denigrated. — observer.com