My Google skills are average at best, but given the specificity of the event, it seems I can conclude only the Tribeca Trib covered the presentation “last month” (they didn’t even bother to dig up a date; jesus) of five finalists for a proposed memorial at the African Burial Ground on Duane Street. The interesting things is, attendees clearly were in favor of nothing. Not as a matter of critical opinion of any one proposal, but as a concept. The competition, being run by the GSA, didn’t muster support of the majority of folks willing to show up for the presentation. Instead, they are asking the site be left as is, with the possibility of relocating the memorial elsewhere.
One image, and supporting text, is available for each entry at the ABG site, though the renderings range from servicable to poor (given the quality of the image provided to the Trib, this is an unfortunate administrative oversight). The entry from Rodney Leon of AARRIS Architects is the most successful, given the constraints of the presentation — and the site. The entry featured in the Trib, by McKissack & McKissack (a radically different image from the ABG site), while polished, falters when you consider the size of the site (far smaller than you might imagine from the Trib rendering). The actual scale of most of the solutions run the risk of seeming trite, mostly due to modest scale, potentially appearing koisk-like. I find that scale it is the trickiest element in memorials. The Irish Hunger memorial and the Museum of Jewish Heritage (both in Battery Park City) strike me as poorly scaled. Too much squeezed into too little space. That, and the ever increasing number creates a conveyor belt/World’s Fair sense of consumption of memorial. So I’m with the angry dissenters. The site as it stands is dignified and reserved. The blank space is compelling and slightly confusing, which I don’t think is inappropriate symbolism.
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Trying hard to not make a back of the bus joke.
My Google skills are average at best, but given the specificity of the event, it seems I can conclude only the Tribeca Trib covered the presentation “last month” (they didn’t even bother to dig up a date; jesus) of five finalists for a proposed memorial at the African Burial Ground on Duane Street. The interesting things is, attendees clearly were in favor of nothing. Not as a matter of critical opinion of any one proposal, but as a concept. The competition, being run by the GSA, didn’t muster support of the majority of folks willing to show up for the presentation. Instead, they are asking the site be left as is, with the possibility of relocating the memorial elsewhere.
One image, and supporting text, is available for each entry at the ABG site, though the renderings range from servicable to poor (given the quality of the image provided to the Trib, this is an unfortunate administrative oversight). The entry from Rodney Leon of AARRIS Architects is the most successful, given the constraints of the presentation — and the site. The entry featured in the Trib, by McKissack & McKissack (a radically different image from the ABG site), while polished, falters when you consider the size of the site (far smaller than you might imagine from the Trib rendering). The actual scale of most of the solutions run the risk of seeming trite, mostly due to modest scale, potentially appearing koisk-like. I find that scale it is the trickiest element in memorials. The Irish Hunger memorial and the Museum of Jewish Heritage (both in Battery Park City) strike me as poorly scaled. Too much squeezed into too little space. That, and the ever increasing number creates a conveyor belt/World’s Fair sense of consumption of memorial. So I’m with the angry dissenters. The site as it stands is dignified and reserved. The blank space is compelling and slightly confusing, which I don’t think is inappropriate symbolism.