Prospect Park Gateway Design winner – architects, of course

[Trace One]

http://www.parkslopeciviccouncil.org/prospect-park-gateway

 

not that there is anything wrong with architects..

 

Desert rocks in Brooklyn..I hate it..

[Tosh K]

I appreciate the choice of change in the ground plane over architectural objects- a sign maybe that LA’s have a better chance in future projects. “Phenomenology of moving rocks” has me puzzled though – an homage to all the earthwork when creating the park?

[Heather Smith]

Had to log in just to say I think that winning design is hideous. I keep looking at it wondering how many bikers will fly over their handle bars and then when I read people could move them??? Wuh? Those rocks look incredibly out of place.

[earthworker]

Really, are you kidding me? Repositioning stones is the award winner? So a couple of things:
1. trip hazard/liability
2. how do monolithic rocks moving on their own (a phenomenon found only on dry lake beds in California) have the slightest relevance to the textured landscape of NY?
3. if these are ‘movable’ to allow for emergency vehicles, what’s to stop people from moving them so they can haul their Winnebago into the park?
4. if the intent is to have emergency vehicles drive over the bronze entry at some point, what do you think the weight of an ambulance or fire truck will do to that material and the ‘grooves’ the rocks will slide on?
5. What about snow/ice build up/removal?
6. What happens when 3 year old Tommy decides to stick his fingers in the roller bearing when his parents aren’t looking?

This will never pass the approval process for the various planning boards.I have seen designs like this win awards but when it comes down to building it and providing construction details, they end up nothing like the proposal. 5 bucks says it will end up being a couple of boulders set into Pavestone pavers. Hoooray for architects!!
If I proposed this to my municipality, they’d laugh in my face.

[Thomas J. Johnson]

This is a joke right!? You’re just putting me on Trace-1 because I made a comment about architects being able to do landscape architecture, right?

I don’t even know where to begin pointing out the absurdity of the design… Totally out of place? Check. Impractical? Check. Major hazard? Check. Stones of that size would not be movable (“hey everybody, lets push this giant boulder! It shouldn’t be much more difficult than pushing a garbage truck with the emergency brakes on. Wouldn’t that be fun!?”) Doesn’t the designer understand the implications of the iron age arriving after the bronze age? Bronze is soft. The tribes that still had bronze weapons lost to those with more advanced, harder, sharper iron weapons. The same thing will happen to the “bronze roller bearings”… they will fail because they are soft and those stones weigh as much as a small house… You would end up with bronze blob bearings…

Lets see… what else…? Is that person reading a book in the bus lane? Does that bus lane have a boulder in the middle of it? Is having 1’wide/4″ deep ruts across a major “gateway” entrance a good idea? Me thinkith not… It’s not a horrible design, just a horrible place for that idea…

In addition to the Japanese rock garden and the sailing stone precedents, they should have added “six channel DJ Mixer”

Speaking of the six channel mixer and the piano key neck tie, it would be more appropriate to have a giant piano keyboard installed, a la the movie “BIG” so that as people walked into the park, or road their bikes across it, it would play musical notes. Now that would be cool…

[Trace One]

Wow! I like the piano-key entrance..It would have to have Mugatu shrubbery – hair framing it,…

[Author]

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