Sensible Projects and Crazy Pipedreams

[ablarc]

We all know what Burnham said about small plans, but somehow when someone proposes a plan that is not small, it pretty much invariably brings out the sensible, levelheaded pragmatist in us.

Thank God we don't usually prevail; if we did, the following crazy pipedreams would have succumbed to our collective good sense:

1. Eiffel Tower.

2. Guggenheim Museum

3. Statue of Liberty

4. Quincy Market recycling

5. Channel Tunnel

6. Suez Canal

7. Brooklyn Bridge

8. World Trade Center (the first one)

9. Panama Canal

10. Boston's Big Dig

11. Times Square reclamation

12. Haussmann's boulevards

13. Mt. Rushmore

14. Transcontinental Railroad

15. Seaside, Florida

16. Venice

17. every Gothic cathedral everywhere...

I'm sure you have your own favorites to add to the list. Just remember it's an exclusive list: a requirement to be included is that large numbers of us sensible people were there to pooh-pooh it.

Right now in New York, we levelheaded grownups are about to show the good sense to rebuild the World Trade Center at a reasonable size, while hardly a week goes by without some sensible pragmatist's new proposal to expeditiously finish St. John the Divine. On budget.

Meanwhile, those wild and crazy guys in reckless Shanghai have put up a Maglev to the airport and are zanily constructing the world's tallest building.

Of course, they don't have representative government and open debate to keep them sensible, but we did when Central Park was approved... How could we have let it happen?

Most times it makes sense to build nothing, or lacking that, as little as possible. Think of all the money you can save.

[James Kovata]

BRAVO to the preceding post.

[Kommissar]

Amen. If you ask me, you're not thinking big enough. If you want wackos, check out the Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering. (http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/engineering.html)

[tone99loc]

What is the Quincy Market "recycling" refer to? *Thanks in advance to all who can help me out.

[ablarc]

Quincy Market was an old wholesale meat market that like Meyer Lansky had been in the process of dying most of its life. Trouble was, it was terrifically atmospheric in a grubby kind of way, like Covent Garden, and architecturally it was incomparable: maybe the greatest Greek Revival structure in America (1820's).
The preservationists and some members of the public could see that it was far too good to tear down, and far too inflexible to adapt to another use; or so they thought. They tried burning it down, but the fire department got there too soon.

Architect Ben Thompson had a crazy pipedream: to expensively restore all three of these fairly vast market buildings as a kind of Tivoli Gardens of good taste and good food. He twisted the arm of an extremely skeptical James Rouse, who agreed to bankroll it as a kind of charitable gesture toward architecture. And to do it at breakneck speed in time for the 1976 Bicentennial.

The rest, as they say, was history: thus was spawned, against all commonsense development wisdom, the world's first Festival Marketplace, a formula happily repeated by Rouse and others ad nauseam: South Street Seaport, Baltimore Inner Harbor (both Ben Thompson projects), etc., etc.

(Edited by ablarc at 9:48 pm on July 5, 2003)

[dbhstockton]

Let's get multicultural.

Taj Mahal
The Great Pryamid
Hagia Sophia
The Great Wall
Angkor Wat
Three Gorges Dam

Blah, blah blah

[ablarc]

Here are some fairly recent big projects where the sensible guys won:

Les Halles redevelopment
Covent Garden redevelopment
Maginot Line
Munich Agreement, 1938
Penn Station redevelopment, 1965ff
Singer Building redevelopment
Montparnasse Tower
Co-op City
Coney Island (housing) redevelopment
Interstate Highway System

(Edited by ablarc at 1:01 am on July 6, 2003)

[Fabb]

How do you know about les Halles redevelopment ?
Do you live in Paris ?

(Do you mean the transformations currently envisioned or the destruction of the metallic structure by Baltar ?)

[ablarc]

Les Halles, the belly of Paris, covered an area about twice the size of the Columbia campus with vast glass-roofed metal sheds by Baltard. These sheds had very great architectural distinction –indeed they were mind-boggling since they even covered the streets-- but the real reason to visit Les Halles was the tumult.

Through these sheds in the wee hours of every morning passed all the fertile countryside's bounty to be consumed fresh daily in the great city that day, whether to be distributed through myriad tiny food purveyors scattered throughout the city or through the restaurants for which Paris was and is renowned. Les Halles was the wholesale food market through which all this fresh produce passed daily on its way to three million stomachs.

You can imagine what a raffish place this was, like Fulton Fish Market at 5am, but fifty times as big (no, 100 times). The basic underlayment was frogs in blue smocks pushing handcarts, Gauloises glued to their lips and  bobbing  manically in rhythm with irascible banter. The next layer was hotties in miniskirts with their elegant escorts in Gucci loafers, fresh from platters of pig’s feet and liter mugs of Alsatian beer. Tourists came also to stuff themselves and gawk at all this pre-dawn commotion.

Some came for the ladies, all lined up in doorways along the rue St. Denis, awaiting after-work visits from their favorite blue smocks and whoever else might happen by with a 500 franc note. The bars started to hop around 6am, as quitting time neared. At 10 am, all was quiet; you would find a calmer  crew of blue smocks, languidly sweeping up cabbage leaves with willow brooms.

Think Irma La Douce.

Well, you can imagine the truck traffic all this generated, though fortunately in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the neighbors who wanted to get rid of the trucks; the neighbors were the ladies and they loved the truck drivers. And it wasn’t the truck drivers; why, they loved the ladies. Nor was it the restaurateurs and  shopowners: not those who served the market or those who bought there.

No, it was the sensible guys. They knew that rationally this activity belonged in the suburbs, near the highways that lead from the country, in spacious, antiseptic, purpose-built, orderly and up-to-date facilities featuring: loading docks! parking regulations! fire lanes!

So they packed up the whole Rabelaisian scene and moved it to Rungis. Well, not quite the whole thing: most of the ladies stayed behind and cultivated a new clientele, while the restaurants and bars tried hard to retain their raffish charm. But without their human props they were forced into vaguely Disney poses: they now had to cultivate their atmosphere; it no longer came on a silver platter.

But here comes the good part. In all this, the sensible guys had not cooked up a plan for what to put in Les Halles’ place. The one thing they knew was that they did not want to keep all that cast iron and glass architecture; it looked too…well, unprogressive. So, because they could not agree, they did the only logical thing: they held an international design competition. With Phillip Johnson as chairman of the Jury.

The Jury picked some Winners, but the public didn’t like any of them, and neither did the politicians. The public missed their messy markets, and so did the tourists. So the politicians ignored the Winners, and after five or more years of bickering over a now-bleak construction site, they finally came up with…a park and a suburban shopping mall!!

They were slightly ashamed of the suburban shopping mall, so they put it mostly underground. The suburbanites cruise in to visit their mall, where they feel comfortable, and think they have spent the day in Paris.

Like South Street Seaport, but without any old buildings, and pretty much underground.
Rational. Progressive. Sensible. Not a pipedream…




Fabb,
One spring semester, I attended the Sorbonne.
You want to See how Les Halles was?: Rent the Billy Wilder movie, Irma La Douce, with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon.
You want to see how it is?: go down to your local mall in maybe Passaic or Huntington.

[Kommissar]

New York wouldn't have been the gateway to the midwest without *the Erie Canal. The canal took forever to dig, it didn't have any reputable engineers designing it and was expensive. There was terrible pressure to give up on it's construction with derogatory names like Clinton's Folly or Clinton's Ditch (after the Senator who pushed for it's construction) because no one thought it would work. Even Thomas Jefferson described the concept of a manmade waterway linking the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean as "little short of madness."

What it *did* do was establish NYC as the most important coastal city for trade with Great Lakes, Ohio and Mississippi River cites. Not bad for an expensive ditch.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Someone ought to construct in New York a really tall skyscraper and use the top as a mooring mast for blimps!

[TLOZ Link5]

Quote: from NYatKNIGHT on 4:31 pm on July 7, 2003
Someone ought to construct in New York a really tall skyscraper and use the top as a mooring mast for blimps!

Hehe, that's a tongue-in-cheek allusion to ESB if I ever saw one.

[dbhstockton]

Oh yeah, let's not forget the UN.

[Kris]

And Rockefeller Center.

[enzo]

great post!

and I know Les Halles well........it looks like it's sucking central Paris down a drain into Hell!

I'd have to add a couple crazy pipe dreams to that list;
*Washington, DC. A work in progress but who'd have thunk?
*The Reichstag II - A British Architect...........
*Remote controlled rovers on Mars.
*Moscow Metro.
*Rebirth of the Mini catching on in the USA
*Skidome in Tokyo
*Dubai, period
*The World Wide Web
*St. Louis Arch
*Paper currency

[ablarc]

LES HALLES

This was one of the most photogenic parts of a city that is a photographer’s dream. It is surprisingly hard to find old photographs of it on the internet. I guess people want to forget what they lost.

How it was:

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-01.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-02.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-03.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-05.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-06.jpg http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-07.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-08.jpg http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-09.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-10.jpg http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-11.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-12.jpg


How it sat for a period of years while they squabbled about what to replace it with:

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-13.jpg

What they replaced it with:

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-14.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-15.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-16.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-17.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-18.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-19.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-20.jpg

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-22.jpg

The sanitized market in the suburb of Rungis (no smoking):

http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-23.jpg http://ablarchitecture.com/images/tom/les-halles/les-halles-24.jpg

[JonY]

^ V. nice ^

...a couple for N.Y.C. itself:

Buckminster Fuller's 1920s' idea for putting most of Midtown under a some kind of bio-spheric dome:

http://www.bfi.org/patent_small_graphics/rbf_NY_bubble.jpg


Antonio Gaudi's N.Y.C. 360m/1180ft scraper for 1908. Still possible?:

http://web.lavanguardia.es/lavanguardia/img/20020531/gaudi310502b.jpg__http://www.juxtapoz.com/newimages/featuredartists/37/laffoley.jpg

Interior:

http://www.gaudiclub.com/ingles/i_vida/nyhotel/hotelny2.jpg

[DominicanoNYC]

Guess we're under achivers in the eyes of Mr. Fuller. :lol:

[NoyokA]

lol.

[tmg]

Prize for crazy NYC project I'm happiest never saw the light of day:

Robert Moses' Lower Manhattan Expressway
http://www.nycroads.com/roads/lower-manhattan/

[Agglomeration]

That expressway, proposed by Robert Moses, would have cut off the Lower East Side from the rest of the city. Good thing it never got to see the light of day.

[TLOZ Link5]

I agree. Forget the traffic; the areas that would have been razed for the LME are now some of the nicest neighborhoods in New York.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Tsk, tsk. The geniuses at NYC Skyline completely misunderstood this topic. :roll:

http://www.theopinion.com/newyorkcityskyline/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=rebuild;action=display;num=106546807 4

[JMGarcia]

LOL!!!

You made my night with that one. :lol:

[ablarc]

Can it be?

Are there such dimwits?

Lol.

[TLOZ Link5]

Has no one any sense of irony anymore?

[JMGarcia]

Has no one any sense of irony anymore?

Its quite ironic really. ;)

[NyC MaNiAc]

Let them complain.

It gives them a sense of self-being. :lol:

[Jjrlong254]

Tsk, tsk. The geniuses at NYC Skyline completely misunderstood this topic.
:oops: :oops: :oops:

Anyway, I have some additions to the list:

Empire State Building
Chrysler Building
Sears Tower
Taipei 101 (set to offically open fall 2004; WTB until Shanghai WFC)
John Hancock Center (Chicago)

I wonder if this counts:

USAF Museum

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/pa/cf.htm

This is in Ohio.
It houses numerous planes in these hangars and it is currently in the middle of a major expansion plan.

[JonY]

Yes, definitely The Chrysler;
the most sensible and beautiful project ever conceived in and for the modern world.

http://www.esto.com/portfimages/85m16_8.jpg

Anymore wacky 'n zany pipedreams though?, esp. for

http://tubes.ominix.com/art/a/food/apple-green.png

[pianoman11686]

Hudson World Bridge

An architect's proposal to span the Hudson River would be a gathering place like no other.

By Fred Bernstein
April 18, 2007

In 2002, I reviewed a show of designs for "A New World Trade Center" at the Max Protetch Gallery in Chelsea. One proposal, by Eytan Kaufman, stood out from all the others. Kaufman's project included a bridge across the Hudson River near Ground Zero. Kaufman realized that the redevelopment of Ground Zero could and should extend beyond the original World Trade Center site. (In fact, as subsequent events have proven, trying to squeeze a memorial, office buildings, stores, museums, train stations, and parking lots into 16 acres shortchanges them all.) And Kaufman had realized that a building over New York Harbor had the power to be especially stirring, not only because of the evocative power of water, but because that one body of water contains symbols of Freedom (the Statue of Liberty) and diversity (Ellis Island). My own Twin Piers proposal was directly inspired by those aspects of Kaufman's bridge.

Five years later, Kaufman is back with a proposal for another bridge over the Hudson River, the Hudson World Bridge. This time, there is no direct connection to 9/11. The bridge, designed in consultation with Ove Arup engineers, would span the Hudson at 34th Street, and would be not so much a transportation corridor as a destination, providing the city with a gathering place like no other. The surface of the bridge, nearly a mile long and 200 feet wide, would provide more than 10 acres of green park and plaza to be used for cultural and commercial activities. Hanging above the park would be a capsule-shaped building containing hundreds of thousands of square feet of meeting and exhibition space. At either end are hotels and ramps for emergency and service vehicles. (Automobiles would not be permitted on the bridge, but there would be escalators, moving sidewalks, and cable cars.) With its 34th Street location, the bridge could supplement the Javits Center, and would do so in far more spectacular fashion than the addition now planned. It could also do something the Javits Center has so far failed to do: attract development to Manhattan’s Far West Side.

New York is where the suspension bridge and the skyscraper – the engineering marvels of the 19th and 20th centuries – came to fruition. In recent years, the city has ceased to be the world's leader in design technology. Kaufman's scheme would allow New York to reclaim that distinction.

***

Hudson World Bridge Team :

Eytan Kaufman (Principal Architect), Andrea Ljahnicky (Architect, Associate Designer), Martin Newton (Architect, Digital Rendering), Kazushi Miyata Digital Drawing)

Project Engineers: Ove Arup and Partners: Pete Tillson (Associate Principal), Iraklis Lampropoulos (Engineer)

Eytan Kaufman, Int’l. Assoc. AIA, started his New York City design and development practice dedicated to conversions in SoHo and Chelsea in 1977. Born in Israel, he received a B.Arch degree from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and came to the United States in 1966 to study and teach with R. Buckminster Fuller at Southern Illinois University where he received a M.Sc. degree in 1968. Kaufman taught Urban Design at New York University and Pratt Institute from 1971 to 1976.

Fred Bernstein has written about design for more than 15 years. He also contributes to the New York Times, Metropolitan Home, Oculus, and Blueprint.

© 2007 ArchNewsNow.com (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/129/390088839_6bd4c29612.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.incli-nation.com/architecture/&h=375&w=500&sz=192&hl=en&start=8&um=1&tbnid=lXc384kQiPGiZM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhong%2Bkong%2Bcondo%2Btower%26svnum%3 D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG)

***

Project website (http://www.hudsonworldbridge.com/home_1.htm)

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_01x.jpg

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_02x.jpg

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_03x.jpg

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_04x.jpg

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_05x.jpg

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_06x.jpg

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/images/Feature0225_07x.jpg

http://eytankaufman.com/gallery/images/hudsonworldbridge_09L.jpg

http://eytankaufman.com/gallery/images/hudsonworldbridge_10L.jpg

http://eytankaufman.com/gallery/images/hudsonworldbridge_06L.jpg

[TREPYE]

Awesome project, but cant see it happening. No one in this city with enough scrotes to do it. :rolleyes:

Very nice and detailed pics though...to bad that in the end it is going to be wasted time for the illustrator.

[ablarc]

^ The voice of reason.

[Dynamicdezzy]

That proposal is amazing, what's sooo disappointing is the reality that it won't happen.

[BigMac]

I think the important thing is that the Hudson World Bridge and other proposals become part of the public imagination, as has my Columbus Circle Compass (http://www.columbuscirclecompass.com/) proposal.

http://www.columbuscirclecompass.com/cccdaythumb.jpg http://www.columbuscirclecompass.com/cccnightthumb.jpg

Even if they never come to fruition as conceived, they often make for good future references.

[NoyokA]

The good Kaufmann.

[RandySavage]

On the topic of grand proposals that didn't quite make it:

NYSE Tower
http://words.grubbykid.com/images/20050629-freedom-nyse.jpg

Messina Straight Bridge
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/03/italy/image/messina.jpg

Lindenthal's 57th Street Bridge
http://www.bridgemeister.com/imgpc/pc29.jpg
http://www.bridgemeister.com/imgpc/pc30.jpg

Met Life North
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/photopost/data/500/2404metlifnorth.jpg
http://www.infocustech.com/iftstore/prodimages/met%20life%20proposed%201024.jpg

Larkin Tower
http://www.infocustech.com/skyscrapers/larkin%20tower.jpg

Gondolas to Governor's Island
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/02/16/nyregion/gondola583.jpg

Television City
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/41181733/original.jpg

[Fahzee]

Met Life North is freakin' beautiful.

[BPC]

The gondola makes my blood boil every time I see it.

[ablarc]

^ Why?

[Derek2k3]

They need to finish that Metlife North tower. I would think we still have the zoning to do it.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2320/2205215874_71f74a4173_o.jpg
Imagine it here...

[RandySavage]

Some recent crazy pipedreams that actually made it off the drawing board.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1197/1213545027_841d1c0158_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7455207@N05/

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2185/2200860072_3878ab9a47_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2375/2196425042_468f3b12d5_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22518972@N06/

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2393/1978223244_7f871c7afd_o.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamma-infinity/

[Alonzo-ny]

Whats so pipedream about the millau viaduct?

[RandySavage]

^I think it's height, length, beauty and engineering rank it as modern wonder. It strikes me if something similar were proposed in the US, say from Palo Alto to Freemont, CA, it would be written off as a crazy pipe dream.

http://johnfenzel.typepad.com/john_fenzels_blog/images/2007/03/26/highest_bridge_09.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VXa9Hfeve4

[Alonzo-ny]

The viaduct has a function, one which serves a very important purpose, the other examples dont really need to exist. The place you mention also probably doesnt connect two cities like Paris to Barca like the Millau viaduct does.

[GVNY]

The bridge is nonetheless extraordinary.

Oh, and Randy, you posted the wrong Queen.

[ablarc]

Whats so pipedream about the millau viaduct?
You have to ask?

[ablarc]

The viaduct has a function, one which serves a very important purpose, the other examples dont really need to exist. The place you mention also probably doesnt connect two cities like Paris to Barca like the Millau viaduct does.
Do a little research.

[ablarc]

Some recent crazy pipedreams that actually made it off the drawing board.
Nice examples, Randy. But yeah, the other Queen would have been even better.



You obviously are onto the gist of the thread.

[Alonzo-ny]

You have to ask?

I explained my point on that one.


Do a little research.

Is Palo Alto as big or important as Paris? Is Freemont as big or important as Barcalona?

[ablarc]

^ San Francisco and the East Bay.

[ablarc]

I explained my point on that one.
Yeah, but you missed the thread's larger point ... which is that pipedreams are often the biggest practicalities.

[Alonzo-ny]

^ San Francisco and the East Bay.

Ok that would make more sense.


Yeah, but you missed the thread's larger point ... which is that pipedreams are often the biggest practicalities.

Gotcha :)

[TREPYE]

So who has enough guts to put 80 South Street as one of these crazy pipedreams that wont happen.....I know I cant, it'll be too depressing. :(

[BrooklynRider]

80 South Street:p

[Tectonic]

Met Life North, is that what became 11 Madison Avenue?

[lofter1]

The latest of the recent pipedreams ...

The Morning After: Atlantic Yards (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/The Morning After: Atlantic Yards Money Woes & Musical) Money Woes & Musical

[RandySavage]

Is anyone aware of any other drawings/renderings of the proposde MetLife North 100-story tower aside from this one?
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GRP/GRP19-502.jpg

[195Broadway]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/118/296279341_5e77bfb520.jpg?v=0

[195Broadway]

http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2007/11/howard_hughes_580x.jpg

[195Broadway]

deleted photo

[BrooklynLove]

Is anyone aware of any other drawings/renderings of the proposde MetLife North 100-story tower aside from this one?
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GRP/GRP19-502.jpg

That's the only one I've ever seen. I must admit that I like the shorter version more than the full blown monty - too much phallus for my taste.

[Alonzo-ny]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3346/3209957320_a20b5497ef_o.jpg

[Alonzo-ny]

What exactly are you posting 195Broadway?

[ablarc]

^ Crazy pipedreams.

He's in the spirit of the thread.

Columbus' journey was a crazy pipedream. Howard Hughes had one too: the Spruce Goose, world's largest plane. First one looks like a Titan rocket.

[Alonzo-ny]

Wonderful, this is in the skyscrapers and architecture forum though.

[ablarc]

^ Thread belongs somewhere else.

[195Broadway]

What exactly are you posting 195Broadway?

Alonzo,
I posted the images without caption in order to provoke some thought on the viewer's behalf. :)

They are:
1 Saturn 5 rocket behind Dr. Wernher von Braun
2 Howard Hughes in the cockpit of HK-1 (Spruce goose)
3 deleted

Per the list in the opening post of this thread, I (EDIT) think the first two are relevant.

[Alonzo-ny]

Everything in the original list was a building or construction project and the thread is in an skyscraper/architecture forum. The thread might be in the wrong place.

[195Broadway]

Alonzo,
In the name of international relations and good will, I'm willing to sacrifice Columbus.

[Alonzo-ny]

Not necessary ;) Ill let the thread author decide.

[ablarc]

Thread author sez: "Let it Be."

[Alonzo-ny]

Then I suggest the thread be moved to Anything Goes.

[lofter1]

What are they giving you to drink over in Scotland?

[Shadly]

This one just made the failure list:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3220/2917949195_d6fced034d.jpg?v=0

[ablarc]

^ Where would that have been?

And how's this (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7985) big boy? I'm especially impressed in that thread by Jake's prescient post #13; note the date. Crystal ball, Jake? Or common sense that eluded us all?

[Alonzo-ny]

What are they giving you to drink over in Scotland?

I have WNY boredom syndrome.

[Shadly]

That was the Nakheel Harbor building in Dubai. Twice the size of the ESB. Just "put on hold" (canceled) because of lack of finances.

What about this one in Saudi Arabia:

http://www.weblo.com/asset_images/large/mile_high_tower_worldw_47e8944907f30.jpg

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/mile-high-tower-jeddah.jpg

[Shadly]

What about the Space Elevator. This one might actually happen. Makes fiscal sense at least.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1002/csmimg/p14a.gif

[Derek2k3]

From the same design studio I took at Pratt, 3 years later.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/Olegovich/centralparkwestrendercopy.png

http://forumnyc.com/index.php?showtopic=28039

[ItstheBeat]

Interesting how this is placed on CPW... never in a million years would this fly in the UWS.

[Jasonik]

Magic Mountain for Berlin?

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1411088,00.jpg
Jakob Tigges und Malte Kloes

SPIEGEL ONLINE
01/20/2009 06:22 PM (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,602429,00.html)

The city of Berlin has long been trying to decide what to do with the monumental Tempelhof airport, built in the heart of the city by the Nazis. Some of the most recent proposals include a 1,000 meter mountain and a gigantic red-light district.

"The mother of all airports" is how star architect Sir Norman Foster once described Berlin's Tempelhof airport. Visitors to the site might agree. Built by the Nazis as the entry point to Hitler's never realized Third Reich capital Germania, the impressive terminal stretches 1.2 kilometers around one end of the airfield.

Since the end of October, though, the airport has been closed to air traffic, and the city of Berlin has been scratching its head about what to do with the enormous field in the heart of the city.

Help, though, has arrived. On Monday, the city revealed a dozen of the suggestions -- sent in by hopeful architects and city planners -- currently under consideration. The most titillating? Why not turn the site into an enormous red-light district?

Hoax or not, the so-called "Columbia Strip" plan stands out among the rather humdrum collection of plans calling for apartments, parks and athletic fields -- the kind of project the city has been kicking around for months. Relative to some of the imaginative proposals that didn't make the first cut, though, the "Columbia Strip" is rather practical.

Like the one sent in by Berlin architect Jakob Tigges. He doesn't like the idea of parcelling up the site and turning it in to the kind of ordinary project that could find a home in one of the other abundant open spaces in the German capital. His idea? Tigges wants to erect a 1,000 meter (3,281 foot) tall mountain on the airfield. "It's provocative, but not constructive," Tigges told SPIEGEL ONLINE of his proposal.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1411091,00.jpg
Jakob Tigges und Malte Kloes

In fact, Tigges sees his idea as more of a place-holder in the minds of Berliners, a mythical mountain to fire imaginations until an appropriately grand solution is found. In the meantime, Tigges says, he would prefer for Tempelhof to remain untouched as he considers it more interesting for a Sunday walk than your average park landscape.

"Tourists would come to the site to take photographs of the mountain that isn't there," said Tigges, who noted that his euphoric mountain renderings serve as a direct critique of the city of Berlin. "The site is much too valuable to sacrifice for mediocre apartment buildings."

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1411094,00.jpg
Jakob Tigges und Malte Kloes

Only the northern portion of Tempelhof is up for grabs in this competition. But the site, in its entirety, includes 49 monumental buildings, 7 hangers and 9,000 offices. Its arched main building was supposedly designed to look like an eagle in flight, though it has more of a coat hanger shape.

Tempelhof's megalomaniacal structure, which expanded on existing airport grounds, was part of the Nazi's comprehensive, "eternal" plan for Germania. After World War II, the Americans took control of Tempelhof from the Soviets and it became one of the target airports for the famed Berlin Air Lift, during which the Allies sustained the city's population with food and supplies for over 11 months. The Americans later expanded the airport and used it as a base for decades.

After the last American troops left in 1993, Germans reopened an airport using only 10 percent of its expansive space. Then the airport closed last October due to high operating costs. Because it is under historical preservation, Tempelhof won't be demolished in the fashion of other Berlin sites, such as the now-gone capital building of former East Germany. Instead, the government will decide its fate by May of this year.

Located smack in the middle of Berlin, Tempelhof is just a short bike ride away from the city's center and sites like the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. As such, it provides an interesting space for investors.

In addition to more recent ideas floated for Tempelhof, there was once a proposal to convert the space into a luxury medical clinic for the rich and famous, complete with landing strips for private planes. Ronald Lauder of the Estee Lauder fortune stood ready to invest €350 million for a huge health and wellness center that he felt would draw international patients seeking privacy during plastic surgery and other procedures. He may have been right, seeing as how the airport has attracted stars such as the Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich in the past. Yet the plan never came to fruition.

*****

Not so far fetched considering some projects and proposals (http://www.emilioambaszandassociates.com/portfolio/) by Emilio Ambasz & Associates.

Fukuoka City, Japan
http://www.metaefficient.com/fukuoka_green_roof.jpg (http://www.filmsforaction.org/blogdetails/?num=63)

Not to mention the Timelinks Ziggurat proposals (http://www.timelinks.org/) for Dubai.

http://static.worldarchitecturenews.com/project/uploaded_files/10224_Pyramids1main.jpg (http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=10224)

[Alonzo-ny]

Dubai? Yeah right. Where did they buy all that grass?

[NoyokA]

Derek what program/s did you use to render that building?

[Jasonik]

Regarding my previous post of the fantastic mountain proposal for Berlin, there is a particular resonance I wasn't aware of pertaining to Berlin and manmade topography.

Statement of Oakland based photographer NOAH BEIL (http://www.noahbeil.com/bio.php) for his Mountain As Monument series:

The intense bombing of World War II left the streets of many European cities clogged with the remains of demolished masonry buildings. In Berlin alone, over 45 million cubic meters of debris had to be cleared as a part of post-war rebuilding efforts. After intact bricks were recovered for reuse, with much of the manual labor performed by women, waste materials were transported to distributed collection locations and piled into hills known in German as Schuttberg or Trümmerberg. Today, these debris hills are difficult to distinguish from naturally occurring features as they have been landscaped into parks with manicured grass and densely vegetated sections.

Berlin’s artificial hills provide an opportunity to study mankind’s reshaping and repurposing of the landscape, as well as the effects of natural reclamation on anthropogenic terrain alterations.

View images from "Mountain As Monument" (http://www.noahbeil.com/image.php?project=02&image=Noah_Beil_20080922_CF001171.jpg)

[RandySavage]

Came across this crazy 1924 pipedream to fill in the East River:
http://www.treehugger.com/east-river-fillin.png

I appreciate the artist rendering buildings similar to the Paris Opera House on the East River waterfront.
More here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/grand-schemes-to-pave-rivers.php

[brianac]

The City’s Future That Never Was

Begin Slide Show (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/01/30/nyregion/30future-ss-1.html)

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

If you remember the construction of Citicorp Center in 1977 or the opening of the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978, imagine your counterparts from the mid-20th century. Some were old enough to recall horse-drawn street cars and 32-story “skyscrapers” even as they sped around by subway or ascended to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building.

Sobersided planners and wide-eyed visionaries thought this astonishing pace of transformation would never abate. A dreamer named W. Parker Chase proposed in 1932 that the 50 million people living in New York City 50 years on would ride vacuum-tube escalators and take air taxis to their 250-story office towers. The Regional Plan Association envisioned a 1,200-foot-long bathhouse complex at Great Kills Park on Staten Island. Robert Moses, who usually had the power to get things done, tried to persuade the United Nations to build a Brasília-like center at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. (Midtown Manhattan, he warned in 1946, would by then “not be a proper, dignified and practical location” for the United Nations.)

Dr. John A. Harriss, a distinguished expert on traffic control, went as far as to propose damming and draining the East River, before replacing it with a five-mile-long network of vehicular and train tunnels topped by boulevards and promenades. Pure folly? Not to the advocates of Westway, a highway that would have tunneled through landfill in the Hudson River until the plan was scuttled in 1985.

Conventional wisdom holds that the era of big plans is over. “We’ve lost a little bit of our spirit to go ahead and our can-do attitude,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in 2005. He was speaking, of course, the day after one of his ideas — a $2.2 billion football stadium, with room for as many as 70,000 spectators, on the West Side of Manhattan — was halted by politics.


Begin Slide Show » (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/01/30/nyregion/30future-ss-1.html)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/01/30/nyregion/30future-ss-1.html

[Music Man]

I remembered reading about a plan to renovate the original Tobin Plaza of the WTC that involved putting a giant net over the plaza, supposedly to help with wind. Finally rediscovered the site that had illustrations.

http://www.philipbabb.com/WorldTradeCenter.html#photos/WTC01.jpg

http://www.philipbabb.com/photos/WTC01.jpghttp://www.philipbabb.com/photos/WTC03.jpghttp://www.philipbabb.com/photos/WTC02.jpg


I see none of the plaza sculptures are retained in the renderings. All those glass enclosures make me think of the new stuff at Lincoln Center

[BStyles]

It looks like they were aiming to make the plaza more pedestrian-friendly. I can't spot any of the walls of the superblock.

[Derek2k3]

I remember this. Seemed like a good idea then. Not so much anymore, kinda ruins the space. Maybe it just needed more green and plaza level retail.

[STR]

I can't spot any of the walls of the superblock.

The walls wouldn't have been visible from any of those angles.

[lofter1]

The support cables attached to the towers were no doubt necessary to make the planned structure work, but they would have looked lousy.

From the LINK to the Philip Babb Architects / Davis Brody webpage (http://www.philipbabb.com/WorldTradeCenter.html#photos/WTC01.jpg):



A major feature of the redevelopment project, the plaza screen was designed to accomplish the following tasks: (1) visually define and unify a three-dimensional multi-purpose outdoor space; (2) mediate the strong cross winds created by the twin towers; (3) serve as a staging element for temporary plaza events. Hung with support cables from the adjacent towers, the plaza screen would require no additional vertical supports on the plaza or concourse levels. Visible from well outside the immediate vicinity, the support cables would serve as a symbol of the New World Trade Center.

http://www.philipbabb.com/photos/WTC01.jpg

From this POV the superblock is at grade along Church Street, so the walls wouldn't be apparent.

[STR]

^I doubt those would have made it past cost analysis. Having to take into account the independent swaying of the two towers seems a lot more complicated than dropping some columns into the plaza and tying it into the steel grid beneath it.

[LeCom]

Besides, that would've nearly nullified the breathtaking views of the towers that were available from the open air plaza.

[STR]

It would be different, but the plaza wasn't perfect as constructed. Either you sacrifice the views in order to mitigate the displacement-effect that caused the wind tunnel, or keep it as is and have be unusable for large chunks of time. I think it's a fair trade. I do think they could have done a better job integrating the new retail into the complex. The rectilinearity was a characteristic of the architecture, and something that wasn't properly taken into consideration there.

Just as a side observation, the WTC itself was more of a crazy pipedream than a lot of these other proposals. There wasn't really a need for it, the scale was honestly nuts, and it screamed of that "build a new type of city for the future" ideology that runs through a lot of these ideas.

[ZippyTheChimp]

and it screamed of that "build a new type of city for the future" ideology that runs through a lot of these ideas.
The WTC reminded me of a PBS documentary I saw in the 1990s about the 1939 World's Fair.

The "Dawn of Tomorrow" came soon enough, but it wasn't what was envisioned at the fairgrounds.

Many who weren't around when the WTC was built may find the general ambivalence of New Yorkers at that time perplexing. But it had little to do with what was going on in the city, and where it was headed.

I suppose we just got comfortable with it.

[NoyokA]

In the late 1980's Olympia and York held a competition for a redevelopment of MSG, a new MSG was to be built on the far West Side designed by Cesar Pelli. Helmut Jahn, Richard Meier, and a team of David Child's and Frank Gehry participated in the design competition. David Child's and Frank Gehry won the competition, their entry consisted of two tall towers, suprisingly Gehry's tower was rather conventional, Child's was spectacular, imagine an original G.E. Building (the one on Lexington Avenue) made into a super tall and for the 21st century. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that entry, I do however have images of Meier's. Meier's is fussy and busy and has more than a few brutalist overtones but I absolutely love it, I love the giant curves interrupted by rectangular geometries and I like how the curving side ends with a giant rectangular bookend with the recess at the top dramatic and oversized. Olympia and York went bankrupt and now twenty something years later grand plans are being made for redeveloping MSG again.

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/2829/1bfdcd4559b44eaa8488b2b606a4f55f.jpg

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/2829/5793fa5dcb0b4f3c8c646b365a8093b0.jpg

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/2829/4729dfb5b35b40b993d81ff970755341.jpg

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/2829/b79324e16345449aa74cbf4a09cb21b6.jpg

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/2829/465b7490f17e42dc9ea1956321954a07.jpg

[BStyles]

Very interesting designs....I like that it looks like two buildings just landed on each other.