The Great Park - Destined to fail or?
Irvine is spearheading a 1300-4000 acre redevelopment of an ex marine airstrip here in Orange County. This could be the defining space of the OC, or it could just be more sprawl. They just selected Landscape Architect Ken Smith of New York to do the Master Design. OCGP Selects Ken Smith who was amongst some heavy hitters, Olin, Hargraeves, Haag, and 2 offices from Spain. I was slightly disturbed on the selection process, I looked at some of the entries, and they all looked pretty rudimentary for a project of this stature and prestige. Link to Design Concepts at OCGP The city councilmen traveled to many different cities looking for examples of work and for inspiration. One councilman swayed the vote after, "Visiting the 9-11 monument park by Smith, and coming to tears." Do tears = good park design, maybe, but I think the selection should have been made on the conecpt of the park, not on the tears of one council man. Smith is a good selection, I just hope he can handle something of this vast scale and complexity.
I find this pretty interesting; I listen to NPR, and on the show "Which Way LA", Ken Smith compares this park to Yosemite. I think it has potential, but fear it will miss his design goal, he is from a dense city where Central Park is a jewel, in OC everything is spread out and people think differently. It will be fun to follow, and maybe in the future work on projects related to it. There was a letter to the editor in the paper; following are my cynical thoughts.
In my outsider opinion, having just moved to the area, this park is the gift of the region to all those who shot down CentreLine and the Airport. Here is a gift certificate for 400 million, forget our real problems of transportation, education, and water quality. Lets build a giant playground so we can pretend to have a balboa.
Atleast people won't drive their H2's to San Diego in the future, just to the ITC parking lot. Not for the Metrolink of course... ;)
"Few seem to question Smith's creativity; it's the practical work of assembling such a big project that likely will keep Great Park Corp. board members nervous for a few years."
Smith is the designer in this effort; he should hire an excellent program manager to do the implementation planning and day-to-day management under Smith's artistic guidance. The designer of Canberra, the American from Chicago, Walter Burley Griffen, had no exterior planning forces to work with, however he had to move to the Austrialian Continent for 15 years to see out his design, which in the end was hardly realised, and he was castrated from the mainstream design world afterwards.
If you read a detailed account of how other very large and diverse projects were carried out (for example, the Chicago exposition of c. 1890) I think you will see that the creative folks (like Smith) are seldom good at managing the implementation process; they should oversee it to ensure appropriate design content, but not do the real day-to-day management of it. The roles are entirely different.
We will see how this park comes together or doesn't.
I find this pretty interesting; I listen to NPR, and on the show "Which Way LA", Ken Smith compares this park to Yosemite. I think it has potential, but fear it will miss his design goal, he is from a dense city where Central Park is a jewel, in OC everything is spread out and people think differently. It will be fun to follow, and maybe in the future work on projects related to it. There was a letter to the editor in the paper; following are my cynical thoughts.
In my outsider opinion, having just moved to the area, this park is the gift of the region to all those who shot down CentreLine and the Airport. Here is a gift certificate for 400 million, forget our real problems of transportation, education, and water quality. Lets build a giant playground so we can pretend to have a balboa.
Atleast people won't drive their H2's to San Diego in the future, just to the ITC parking lot. Not for the Metrolink of course... ;)
"Few seem to question Smith's creativity; it's the practical work of assembling such a big project that likely will keep Great Park Corp. board members nervous for a few years."
Smith is the designer in this effort; he should hire an excellent program manager to do the implementation planning and day-to-day management under Smith's artistic guidance. The designer of Canberra, the American from Chicago, Walter Burley Griffen, had no exterior planning forces to work with, however he had to move to the Austrialian Continent for 15 years to see out his design, which in the end was hardly realised, and he was castrated from the mainstream design world afterwards.
If you read a detailed account of how other very large and diverse projects were carried out (for example, the Chicago exposition of c. 1890) I think you will see that the creative folks (like Smith) are seldom good at managing the implementation process; they should oversee it to ensure appropriate design content, but not do the real day-to-day management of it. The roles are entirely different.
We will see how this park comes together or doesn't.
posted by Andrew Rivlin @ 7:26 AM
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