Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the The New Yorker, announced his list of the ten most positive architectural events of the year. At the top of the list is New York City’s new High Line Park, created by James Corner’s Field Operations along with Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and horticulturist Piet Oudolf (see earlier post). The New Yorker writes: “Far and away the most uplifting thing to happen in New York this year was the completion of the first segment of the High Line, the magnificent promenade/public park atop the old elevated freight line running through West Chelsea. [...] it is crisp, fresh, inviting, and comfortable, and if there is any shortcoming to this brilliant design, it is that it has made this area even more chic than it was before.”
The list also highlights the new make-over of Times Square into a pedestrian public space free of cars. Goldberger says New York City may become a bike-friendly city under the creative management of Janette Sadik-Khan, the NYC transportation commissioner. “2009 really was a good year for public space in New York, since it also brought the conversion of Broadway in midtown into a pedestrian mall, thanks to the city’s extraordinary transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Kahn, who seems able to accomplish in a brief time what has frustrated others for a generation. The key here wasn’t just closing a portion of Broadway, it was in recasting the entire street before the closure for a mix of cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, phasing out the cars block by block. New York may yet become a bicycle-friendly city.”
Other architectural events in New York noted by Goldberger: the new Cooper Union academic building designed by Thom Mayne / Morphosis, which is at the “cutting edge of sustainability”; Citi Field and the new Yankee stadium; Saratoga Avenue Community Center in Brookyln; the renovation of Lincoln Center, including Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s new Alice Tully Hall; the Guggenheim Museum’s facelift and exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work to mark the building’s 50th anniversary; and two new books: ”Wrestling with Moses” by Anthony Flint and “Twenty Minutes in Manhattan,” by Michael Sorkin.
There were a few non-NYC items of interest as well: President Sarkozy’s new planning efforts for Paris, including the commissioning of ten new master plan proposals, and Chicago’s celebration of the centennial of the Burnham Plan, “still the greatest plan any U.S. city has ever commissioned.”
Also, check out the ”best of 2009″ list offered by Blair Kamin, architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune. Kamin’s list also features the Burnham Plan centennial celebration, which included two new pavilions commissioned from Zaha Hadid and Ben Van Berkel for Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Image credit: Inhabitat
