The Architecture Issue of the New York Times Magazine

[JNA]

Sunday May 16, 2004

Not really about structural; more about landscape architecture.
requires registration to read article contents.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html

Print Cover title: UnNatural Beauty The Making of a 21st Century Landscape
Print and Website Articles as follows

Without Walls
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
What if nature had an author? Landscape architecture's delights and disturbances

QUESTIONS FOR MARTHA SCHWARTZ
Can America Go Public?
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
The landscape architect says we should devote fewer resources to our bathrooms and more to the world beyond our front doors.

ESSAY
The Greening of the City
By JANE JACOBS
As offices move to the suburbs, nature takes up residence downtown.

Why Not a Park?
Four landscape-architecture firms reimagine ground zero.
• Interactive Feature
• Web Pulse: Which Proposal Is Your Favorite? | Results

The Anti-Olmsted
By ARTHUR LUBOW
Swimming in the gas tank. Gardening in the ore bunker. In Duisburg, Germany, Peter Latz has turned blighted factory ruins into a great urban park by leaving the blight and ruins intact.

Native Grounds
By JIM ROBBINS
An immigrant who loved the prairie, Jens Jensen worked his way up from parks-department laborer to become the Frank Lloyd Wright of the outdoors

 

[Wannaplan?]

I picked up the print version of the Sunday NYTimes yesterday because of the LA issue. I must admit, I was disappointed. Of course, I am probably looking at it differently than the typical NYC urbanite. Must be my training in urban planning. What disappointed me was the NYTimes typical lovefest/envy with the expansive and spacious suburban landscapes they use to tease their readers. For those living in NYC, a 500 square foot apartment is normal, right? The lush gardens featured in this issue seemed to be a little mean-spirited. But one can dream, right?

The story about the industrial park was cool. Would like to see more of those places in the US. Seems like a good way to get some topography here in the relatively flat midwest, eh?

The four "visions" for the WTC site were nice, but they seemed lacking. One seemed particularly outlandish - the greening of NYC was more like an LA's wet dream than anything else. These ideas were all pro bono and not submitted to Mr. Silverstein, so maybe not much thought was put into them, not like a competition.