Back to the drawing board might be the right answer

Muschamp opines this morning on visions.

Five architecture teams have prepared designs for an Olympic Village, to be in Long Island City, Queens, to help New York win its bid to be host to the summer games in 2012. The designs were unveiled yesterday and will be on view for the next two weeks at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal. A winning design will be chosen in May. After that, who knows?

With luck, maybe it will be back to the drawing board.

Of course, to be scrupulous, it is impossible to tell much from the article -- the accompanying slide does not help much more -- about the site plan, as no one seems to think that the public can read them, so no ever includes them. Nor is there any attention to the details of the project such as how many acres of ground or the condition of the surround neighborhood etc etc. But for me, of course, the fact that Muschamp likes any of them -- and the ones he likes explicitly harken back to the worst of the '60s -- raises a bit more than mere suspicions that there is another potential fiasco looming.

But take a look at the slide show yourself (the article deserves to be skimmed rapidly). Here's Hadid's "vision." :)

In some quarters, this is what passes for architecture.

UPDATE Responding to BK Miller's comment:

Definitely, the Classicists are generally correct. But they seem to get carried away with the "columns" business and mix-up architectural (i.e. building detail) with larger site-plan (i.e. Three Rules) questions -- to the confusion of themselves, the decision-makers and the general public.

The first question to ask when creating an Olympic Village is "What do you want as The Legacy?"

The Legacy is the gimmick which Olympics' organizers use to cajole the local populace into putting up the vast amounts of dough require to stage an Olympics. The pitch runs "You get a great party and then you get The Legacy"...some set pf physical improvements to the city or region. It's a beguiling notion and it is usually spun-out as a something for nothing deal. I shouldn't be so skeptical; there will be A Legacy besides a mountain of bills and so you might as well create a useful one. But I find the ulterior motive behind The Legacy to demean the nobility of the Games themselves. It's like getting married for the wedding presents or having friends over in hopes that you can put away the good bottles of wine which they bring and serve only Two Buck Chuck.

But the reality is that The Legacy is the driver. So for what Legacy should people ask? What should be the standard by which to judge the design?

The answer, to me, is going to be a no-brainer: you want a neighborhood. Especially in New York City, you want a residential neighborhood. So the standard is pretty simple: which design produces the best permanent residential neighborhood while (of course) satisfying the very temporary needs of the athletes.

The good news is that the short-term and long-term goals can be pretty-easily reconciled.. The bad news is that the long-term goal may be too simple to be grasped. Or perhaps a fellow like Muschamp simply has no standards.

***

John Massengale notices, too.

Comments

[Brian Miller]

Looks like the Triffids have landed.

Why are most "Olympic Villages" always so bad. While not visiting in person, the photos I've seen of "progressive" Barcelona's Olympic housing areas are stunning in their bleak, geometric banality.

Despite my own taste for modern minimalism at the small scale, I increasingly wonder if the Classicists aren't completely right when it comes to the vernacular and the streetscape. Give me Celebration, Florida, over this.

[Bill Seitz]

Might the best urban design decision be not to have the Olympics here?

It always seems like a wealth transfer from the taxpayers to the people who make low-quality buildings and t-shirts.

[Brian Miller]

Well, as a rejectionist atheist regarding the world's TRUE religion, organized sports, I wouldn't disagree with you there :)

[Brian Miller]

The "Legacy" is usually only huge profits for connected businesses. :)