Word: valkenburgh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Michael Van Valkenburgh says he does not rely on memorials to deal with his grief. But he found solace in choosing the design for the World Trade Center (WTC) memorial. Van Valkenburgh, the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), was one of 13 jurors to select the design that will eventually commemorate those who died on Sept...
...unmemorable,” suggesting that the populism of the process was its flaw and that the memorial’s design should be limited to entrants of the jury’s choosing. What Kimmelman proudly touts as “elitism,” Van Valkenburgh views as problematic. “Excellence isn’t necessarily the consequence of either picking a star or of a public process, but the consequence of the evolution of the design which has to be guided by a client,” Van Valkenburgh says...
...Valkenburgh compared the WTC and Vietnam memorials, finding the merits of each in their differential treatment of the dialectic of minimalism. “I think Maya’s project, the Vietnam Memorial, is extremely beautiful...but I don’t think it’s about absence. It’s a powerful object,” says Van Valkenburgh. He points out that in contrast, “[Arad]’s initial idea was that the Hudson flowed into these displaced tower voids...
Arad’s design is a simple contrast to the extreme verticality that once marked the WTC site, but Van Valkenburgh says the downward movement of water into the abyss will continue to mark the collapse that made this the site of tragedy. Van Valkenburgh believes the addition of the landscape component has made a compelling idea that much stronger. “What happened for me was when Arad added Peter Walker, he turned the upper level into a place with civic responsibility. I mean it was an austere and mean plaza initially. But Walker made...
...this balance between the sensitive and the shocking, the key ideas of remembering the event and the fallen are both embodied. What resulted from the strenuous jury process, Van Valkenburgh suggests, is the start to the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan...