A bit late

Simple Pleasures

I took my son to the Imagination Playground yesterday, at Burling Slip. All the press, and most of the photos, have emphasized architect David Rockwell’s movable blue foam blocks, designed to put the free play back in playground, along with the fact that the park would be staffed by “facilitators” to enhance its educational function. Somehow I imagined it as a stage for building, the children suddenly dwarfed by these new toys. How could that not engage differently than our round of neighborhood parks?

What I found was rather different. The blue blocks were over in a corner, unattended, but being out to good use as a raceway by three 7-year-old boys. They aren’t that big, two feet at the most. They don’t dominate the space. It was a hot day, so most of the kids were in the water area, a wading pool with spraying fountains at the east end of the oval. A few of the blue blocks had been brought into the water as dams and bridges, but mostly it looked like ordinary fun, less dangerous and less complicated than that at the new Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6. In all these new parks, I feel like I am searching for atmosphere, a designed quality above and beyond the ordinary spaces for children, and I am not finding it. At least they have put up a few umbrellas for shade here, and there is a breeze off the river. Otherwise the block play might feel like torture.

At the west end was a vast sandbox, with a running stream and a set of slings that could be used for sand flinging or swinging. The openness of the sand area, relative to its size, was great, turning it into more of a landscape than most of the contained boxes. I wondered about the fuzzy edges, though. How much sand is lost every day? And how many trip over the sand-colored foam edges of the area, where it is hard to see the difference between one surface and the next? Why only one slide, one change in level? My son had asked if there would be a climbing structure, and the answer was basically, no. Because it felt more ordinary, he had every right to expect the usual palette of things to do.

What my son gravitated toward was a shady area at the far east end, under the playground’s curving ramp. There a set of seafaring rope ladders have been installed safely over sand, and then accessorized with a series of knit and woven cloths, tied on to the deck and the ladders like hammocks. This was something new. But I wonder if it was intentional? The pieces of cloth were frayed and dirty and various (one was printed with palm trees), nothing like the precise polish of the showcased blue blocks. The attendants, all young women, congregated over at this end, tying the cloths on and spinning children. My son loved it, clambering (with help) from one to the other, chilling out and sucking his thumb, sticking his head in one and yelling at another kid. It was an entirely new landscape.

I wonder how long it will last. Are the cloths legal? Many seemed to be swinging awfully close to the steel ramp supports. One of the swinging attendants knocked my son flat in the sand, since she wasn’t watching her back. Only one seemed to have an idea about how best to tie them in knots. While the cloths seemed partly to make up for the lack of block drama, and were truly a new, soft, movable play element, they lacked some of the other qualities Imagination is supposed to possess. Most importantly, the kids couldn’t do it on their own.

The Personality of Parks

Until Pier 6 at Brooklyn Bridge Park opened, my only experience of parks as a parent had been of neighborhood parks. The sandbox, the little house, the frog park, as my son calls them, in eternal morning and afternoon rotation. Occasionally Carroll Park, but I found that to be too much of a scene. Sometimes a jaunt to Pierrepont or Chapin in Brooklyn Heights, where I often discovered other Cobble Hill moms desperate for a change. At some parks I always see someone I know during the week, but on the weekends, a whole new crowd rolls in, heavy on the dads. Where does everyone go? I have never been able to figure it out.

What all these parks have in common is small scale and a lack of amenities making them worthy destinations. They are ordinary parks, some shadier, some more climbable, some with swings, some with sand. So everyone who uses them is from around here, and we all follow the same unwritten rules. We close the gate behind us. We (try) to share our trucks. We stop others’ children from escaping. We talk to strangers, because we are all, usually, moms.

But Pier 6 is different. Pier 6 feels like the city, not a neighborhood. One resident of Willowtown wrote to protest the traffic in his/her sleepy neighborhood. They are going to do something about the dangerous approach. Everyone there is passing through, trying out the new equipment, looking for the next thing over the rubber knoll. They come in packs from other places, chatting about the World Cup and which restaurant they are going to try tonight. After opening day, I’ve never seen a friend. The gates are left open, too much traffic to keep them shut. The older kids run wild, having their adventure. I’m not sure I would talk to a child, much less try to find their parent, for fear I’d be seen as interfering.

To go is to go as a family, focusing on your child’s enjoyment and potential for injury, but you have to move as a unit, trying not to upset the other units. You have to check the map, keep to yourself, move swiftly along the paths, make eye contact when necessary. You’re not in the neighborhood anymore, and anything can happen. Is this the adventure in adventure playground? I think not. But it is a by-product of popularity, and a microcosm of the sense of safety and scale we experience in the city as a whole.

Via bobulate: New York City as business

bobulate: Mayor Michael Bloomberg runs New York City like a business. It started three years ago:

[O]n Earth Day, the Mayor launched PlaNYC, a comprehensive, long-term sustainability plan that has become recognized by other cities not only for its exceptional achievements, but for the innovative process with which it was developed. Mayor Bloomberg championed PlaNYC and shepherded its creation using pragmatic principles borrowed from the business world: an emphasis on innovation, a disciplined focus on goals and cost-benefit analysis, and a commitment to accountability made possible by tireless efforts to measure and analyze data. A new case study, PlaNYC: The Process Behind the Plan, shares the full story for local leaders eager to replicate New York’s success.

This is completely new:

This process required a new level of coordination between City departments that didn’t previously exist. All too often in municipalities, as in any organization, projects and programs are siloed within departments that don’t communicate. To resolve this, the Mayor created … a central office to drive the creation of PlaNYC and manage collaboration between departments. Cooperation wasn’t optional, since Mayor Bloomberg made clear his personal commitment to the plan.

I like this. Required cooperation. And even better news: Bloomerberg’s model (hire the brightest people and get out of the way) is taking root in cities all over the United States.

Yes, but: the jury is still out on how much all those bright people got (and will get) done. Bloomberg has been clever to take charge of Governors Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park, two projects initiated long before his administration that could eventually be seen as his major urban successes. This despite the fact that initially he and Dan Doctoroff were more interested in buildings than open space: Hudson Yards, Williamsburg/Greenpoint. Bloomberg did recognize the attractions of the High Line while still an candidate, but his greening has been incremental and not a little bit self-serving. He is on trend, that’s for sure. Whether his model is sustainable or replicable seems very much to be seen.

Governors Island, ca. 2014?

Image from the long-under-wraps West 8 master plan for Governors Island. City takeover announced Sunday. I remember the mounds from Round One, but I am waiting to see a plan. More here.

The unrenovated island opens to the public June 5. FIGMENT is already planning a new art mini-golf course, and an architect-designed pavilion a la P.S.1.

Has the High Line Ruined Us?

Ouroussoff reviewed it Friday (no further comment). D-Crit student Frederico Duarte fills in the backstory. I went to Brooklyn Bridge Park on opening day in the pouring rain with stroller. Never has the lack of snacks and bathrooms seemed so desperate. So I went back this morning for a real look. It was sunny. Everyone seemed to be having fun. Line out the door at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. Lawns, big stairs, binoculars closed. Playground open, with warning about stainless space bumps: too hot. Conversation with husband looking at Lower Manhattan: Which is worse, late chunky modernism or early shiny postmodernism? Cesar Pelli looking better with age.

In the foreground, I found myself staring at the wide avenue of asphalt ringing the outer edge of the park. A sturdy row of benches made from old-growth pine recycled from adjacent warehouses follows the edge of the pier, but behind it there is a good 20 feet of black, ordinary asphalt. It looked banal. Around the lawns, a set of fences made of logs and wire had appeared since the opening, suggesting a sort of retro, national-park aesthetic. But in other places, minimal rails powder-coated black separate traffic from bushes. Which is the “real” railing? Is this park urban or rugged? The lawns, the sod an unearthly green, look lovely but limpid. What should we do here? If there was a message, I found it hard to read. And then I felt churlish, since this is only a fifth of the park, and it isn’t even done yet. Since when did a lawn and a view become not enough?

Since the High Line, that’s when.

The real challenge for Brooklyn Bridge Park may be that the High Line has ruined our expectations for park design. Every part of that park reinvents the wheel, from the akimbo water fountains to the custom sidewalk planks to the underslung lighting. It is, as I wrote last year, park as industrial design, park as gadget.

Each element, whether path, street furniture, flower bed, has to function in multiple ways to keep the landscape from getting cluttered. To put it another way, the High Line is a park as designed object — emphasis on object, since all parks are designed. The parts of the High Line, as well as the whole, are all as carefully considered as a tool that has to fit in your hand.

This approach has come with unintended consequences: I have never seen the fountain work, the combination of delicacy and intensivee use have made maintenance perpetual, and now Phase 2 has been put off to 2011 as the Friends search for more funding. Michael Beirut even argued that it was too designed.

Everyone understands that Brooklyn Bridge Park is in a different category, without DVFs and Dillers waiting in the wings. (When I suggested to a Brooklyn Bridge Park official that they should look for a single donor for the $4M it will cost to add a bridge from Squibb Park on the Promenade, she suggested no one in Brooklyn was rich enough. To me it seems like a golden naming opportunity.) It is park on a budget, park in Brooklyn, park for families. Different in so many ways and yet, I wanted the paving to have interest. I wanted the lighting and fences and benches and future concessions to tell a single story.

This is the design critic’s paradox: why design if paint and lawn chairs are enough? My answer would be that I don’t think they are enough. Jeanette Sadik-Kahn’s squares aren’t really places yet, they still need edges, foci, personality. Like Brooklyn Bridge Park, they currently rely on their views. That is enough for casual visitors, but I don’t think it is enough for ongoing fascination. I think Brooklyn Bridge Park is going to grow up to be somebody, but I don’t know who it is yet.

Playground Apps

This morning my mind started mashing up two articles from the Times of the past few days, one on the mommy blogger conference, the other on the success of foursquare and other mobile location applications (the Times seems noticeably obsessed with foursquare). All the articles I have read about the latter convinced me that it would never be of benefit to me, since they stress its after-hours usefulness, and I hardly go out. But I wonder if the young, male inventors haven’t missed a big market: moms. Thinking about my neighborhood, I realize how often I have probably missed a friend at the playground, or could have rendezvoused at Trader Joe’s. The blocks are small in Brooklyn, and everyone takes a different route. The target time would be 3:30, rather than 7:30, or 11:30, but the idea of checking in with friends likely to be in the same 10-block radius seems similar.

I had this idea, and surely others have too, but I am not so sure I want it to take off. I have judgment about the Blackberry moms at the playground, watching their tiny screens and not their tiny tots. Not so much about the potential dangers in the sandbox, but about the divided attention. I think the slight spaciness of the playground is a gift you can give your child. At home you are always trying to make dinner, or pick something up, or fold a load of laundry. Outside you have fewer things to do with your hands, and I think kids notice when you try to inch away mentally. So foursquare for moms—maybe playgroup, momdezvous?—use it to check in, and then put the smartphone away.

Petting Zoo

WRT Urban Garden Room at One Bryant Park on Vimeo.

On Thursday I took my class on a field trip to One Bryant Park, the sustainable skyscraper that is almost complete at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue. We received a three-hour tour from project architect Serge Appel from Cook + Fox, including everything from the ice stored in the basement to the inside of the crystal crown. Next week they will all turn in reviews of the building (their first was on the High Line). My favorite moment of the tour was my first encounter with the building: I popped up from the subway on Sixth Avenue and saw through the lobby glass a set of wild green shapes. As soon as I was through the big glass doors, all the noise of the avenue stopped, and I was in a tall transparent room with three oversized aliens growing moss, vines and lichen on every side. A few others had found their way in and were eating lunch at cafe tables like those in Bryant Park across the street. It turns out this is a privately-owned public space, the Urban Garden Room, open to anyone, just off the building’s lobby proper. In summer the glass fronting the street will slide up, making it an outdoor eating spot. The verdant aliens are the work of landscape architects WRT, albeit derivative of Patrick Blanc. Few seem to know about the space yet, so if you work in midtown, I would make it an immediate lunchtime destination. It is a new iteration of pocket parks like GreenAcre and Paley Park (just up Sixth) and it will be interesting to see if it succeeds like those or fails like so many others.