Also in other Delhi news experts feel that the city lacks a proper transport policy with constant altering, or scrapping of proposals creating an ad-hoc system. “The city’s transport policy like the BRT corridor experiment shows gaps between design and implementation phases,” says Mr. Roy.” Read more at the Hindu - Delhi lacks proper transport policy: Experts

As the clock counts down to the 2012 Olympics London and the venues are finished including the Park it appears that many are now turning an critical eye to the park, its history, design and the legacy plans (James Corner Field Operations has been appointed to undertake the Legacy Master planning).

Edwin Heathcote – architecture critic at the Financial Times has recently critiqued  the park in “It’s a cover-up”. Heathcote comes across in the article as dismayed that the industrial past of the site and has been wiped out with little indicating the history of the site.

“Nothing survives from centuries of manufacture – it is as if the city is ashamed of its past. Something could have been made of a place of such distinctive character. I yearned for something to remind me that this was a place of work – perhaps small workshops around the edges” – Edwin Heathcote, “It’s a cover-up” | FT.com

The park was designed by Hargreaves Associates (in association with LDA and many others)with 250 acres of bio-diverse park  with meadows, wetlands, playgrounds and varying topography. I can see how not retaining some of the industrial history could leave a sense of longing for visitors. Sometimes the history of the place is erased due to bad memories of the past or in the case of industrial sites, the heavy pollution left behind can become a future liability. I agree with Heathcote that reusing the industrial buildings that previously existed on the site would have been beneficial in preserving some of the history the area, however the important issue now is the legacy plans that will create a vision for a vibrant place for Londoners to live, work and play.

The blog post continues on about the loss of fine-grain red-brick, the “shin-high flower fences running along most of the periphery, a tripping hazard“, the faux-Olmsteadian(sic) benches and finally the “particular curves of the flowerbeds and tree surrounds appear to be neither circular arcs nor ellipses, but instead the kind of spline-corner-curve that you get when you don’t change the default settings on Adobe Illustrator.”

I applaud that Curbed:NY is allocating resources and space to architectural writing and there needs to be more writing about architecture, landscape and critiquing of design. However, there are a few issues I have with the critique. For a author to rave on about  how “The original park achieved powerful effects with delicate, even minimal, means.” and show no images of the before leaves the reader wondering how fantastic the space was and why was it ruined. So I took upon myself to search through the ever powerful web for some before images(See Flickr Image from 2009 pre-renovation). Sadly, images I found are all rights reserved, however as you can see from the linked image, I am hard pressed to understand how the loss of widely-spaced red brick(although good for permeability but bad for tripping and prams etc) and some overly clunky timber benches can be seen as being “ruined”.

The next issue I have with the post is the fact that is seems the writer hasn’t undertaken some background research and spoken to the City, Parks Department or the designer. This is something that irritates me a great deal about many architectural writers. I understand that they wish to remain impartial but when your critiquing to such a degree of detail, I wonder if the writer had more of an insight into the reasoning behind some of the design decisions it would allow the writer to create a post that is more informed. As designers and landscape architects we have all had designs altered or changed due to maintenance or liability issues, not that its correct but often designs change occur due cities policies, committees or community input. Often urban furniture (seats, bins, etc) is selected by the city for a whole precinct due to costs(reduction through bulk purchasing) and maintenance issues(easier to maintain with standard materials).

From what I can gather from the before images(flickr) and after (Curbed:NY) published in Thomas de Monchaux’s post, I feel that the renovation has improved the space with the increased the amount of planting and removed some of the harshness of the concrete and redbrick. I haven’t been to the space (before and/or after the renovation) so I can’t comment on whether the spatial arrangement and the park uses have been compromised, however I think that de Monchaux was a little heavy handed with this critique. I look forward to the next Defenestrated post to read more about architecture in New York and hope that this new blog column encourages more publications, designers, academics to start critiquing the world around them.

“I do worry and despair that our government won’t understand that you need a proactive role,” states Correa and this is one of the most important points made during the interview. The point reiterates my worry about leaving cities to be developed by the market. With the speed of urbanisation increasing with the creation new cities and redeveloping existing cities in Asia it important for governments to realise that leaving the design, development and creation of spaces to private enterprise will lead to ‘cookie-cutter’ cities with generic developments that contribute very little to the urban fabric of cities.

Correa’s interview is at NY Daily Times – “India’s top architect warns of urban breakdown”

UPDATE
Also, the Freshkills Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh provided an update on Fresh Kills Park with North Park said to be “95 percent complete” and to be open in the summer. The south park is fully designed however, currently has no funding allocation with the hope that once the permits where approved over the next year that funding could be found. The New Springville Greenway is expected to be designed by October and to begin construction in 2013.

GOATS TO CONTROL INVASIVE VEGETATION
Freshkills Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh also announced that Fresh Kills is going to be using goats as an experiment to see if we can get rid of the invasive vegetation. I applaud the use of biological control(goats) for invasive vegetation and the need for low-cost alternatives but are goats the answer?

I have fears that the the goats will cause more issues than they solve with the possibility of seeds being disseminated across a broder area and spreading the invasive vegetation to other areas of the park that are currently free of invasive species. It will be interesting to see how effective this experiment will be in the long run.

SOURCES:
WNYC News Blog: Mayor Pulls Plug on Waste-to-Energy Site at Fresh Kills
NY1: Staten Island Week: Locals Fight To Keep Former Landfill For Park Usage
SILive:At Staten Island’s Freshkills Park: Look for goats, off-road biking and more

The president of the Project for Public Spaces, Fred Kent critises the playground on Pier 6 as ”Where in the world are playgrounds separated into different pockets surrounded by trees, and you can’t see from one into another?”, well even though Fred travels over 150,000 miles a year he mustn’t have stepped foot in Asia recently as I have seen numerous playgrounds surrounded by trees(good for shade and stopping skin-cancer) and broken up into different sections for different age groups or activities. Creating a playground with a few pieces of equipment placed on a flat rubber surface with full-visibility is about appealing as eating green vegetables to most kids.

I understand that organisations like Project for Public Spaces feel the need to come out and criticise public space design as it creates a dialogue between the designers, stakeholders and the city. However, sometimes it feels that these groups are criticising to justify their existence and generate publicity for their cause. I am especially wearying of  organisations who criticise a design when it has only been partially implemented and a large percentage of the project is still to be built. I’ll leave the last words for Matthew Urbanski from MVVA

Mr. Urbanski says the park will be, when completed, “more of a neighborhood park at the entrances, and a regional park in the middle. We never thought, from an urban design standpoint, that the park is made to support the buildings,” he says. “On the contrary, we think the buildings support the park.” - Conflict in Park Plans – Wall Street Journal