A random encyclopedia of New York
The Project for Public Spaces, a non-governmental and non-profit organization elaborating and initiating the design of public spaces, recently held two workshops in Budapest. They represent a peculiar role of the planner: that of the animator and facilitator of participatory design processes. A few weeks aqgo I visited them in their fancy Broadway office.
Sunday, Beth’s performance. I’m happy I could make it. A small theater space on an upper floor of the West 18th Street, just a few minutes walk from Union Square. I arrive early, have some time to look around, and read further my book, still Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. We enter the hall, and walk up the stairs to sit down. A tiny little space, with about 40-50 seats, family atmosphere. The show starts with Beth’s solo dance, and this is exactly what I was looking for on this grey afternoon. Magic. Filling my hangover emptiness with scents of travelling, of bodies, of movements, irreplaceable with words.
Sunday afternoons want me to stay in Brooklyn. But I resist the seduction of the Madison Street, and head for the New Museum. I met several times with different members of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, but I was interested in Damon: he’s next on my list of interviews. The subject of the talk in the Lower East Side, and long-time residents’ organization to avoid displacements and rent increases. The discussion starts in a predictable way, but after a good half an hour it takes a sudden turn. A question from the audience introduces an idea whose significance is hardly recognized. She talks about the ecological footprint, a notion omnipresent in the politically and environmentally conscious press of the US. She doesn’t articulate clearly her question, but I continue her train of thought. There sould be a way to think about our social footprint. To have a set of information about where I move: who lived there before, how can I avoid changing the rent structure of the neighborhood and to make it lose its rent-controlles status, how can I contribute best to the local economies, how to participate, how to engage? We all know the dynamisms of ‘cutting-edge’ neighborhoods, but often fail to personalize the responsabilities.
Again, the evening starts at Storefront. My second home, as Raju calls it, woke up from its winter sleep, and susprises me with the intensity of its program. two events a week, screenings, discussions, sometimes voluntary newsletter-foldings. I feel like returning to a betrayed place, lost somewhere behind. A refreshing 20-25 minutes walk from the DCP, I like to launch the evening with a visit at the Kenmare Street. This time a French-Italian couple, Louise Lemoine and Ila beka presenting their film about the afterlife of Koolhaas’s Bordeaux house. Afterlife, because we often forgot about buildings after they’re completed and filled the pages of all important architecture magazines. The film follows the daily trajectory of the building’s cleaning lady, who definitely is the persion who spends the most time in the house – more than in her home – and knows surprisingly lot about its functioning and mechanics. She doesn’t understand it all though – she smiles about the fancy, snobbish but apparently impractical features. In another video, Koolhaas himdelf comments on the video: “What we see is a clash of two strong concepts. The architect’s concept of the house with the cleaning lady’s vision.”
Two Community Board 5 meetings this week, in two different available spaces in Mid-Midtown. This is not the equivalent of the infamous public hearing procedures well-known in Budapest. Community Boards are formal groups representing a certain district and articulating the consensus reached among the community members. The CB expresses its opinion about each development projects in its neighborhood and approves or disapproves it. CBs have no right to veto – but they are influential in emphasizing the problems and weaknesses of the projects, and thus affecting the further procedure.
The recent developments plans in the CB 5 are very illustrative. Jean Nouvel’s MoMA extension in the 53rd Street and Norman Foster’s new Lexington Avenue tower will both change the Midtown skyline, and will significantly charge the area with people, deliveries – traffic. The Board is not intimidated by the star architects: its membership includes Rockefellers and prominent real-estate attorneys, ie. professionals who are totally aware of the area’s development potentials and have their own vision about it. The nimby-attitude is also represented, of course. But the point is elsewhere: on debate and the public clash of interests and ideas.
