The Dirt admits that his much-loved mountain bike has languished in a shed for many, many years, but he is planning to dig it out from behind the lawn mower in order to participate in this year's
National Bike-To-Work Week. Organized by
the League of American Bicyclists, the week advocates for people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes for their work commutes. Check out the 50 ways to celebrate the week
here [pdf link].
So, Dirt readers, do any of you currently bike to work? If so, let us know in the comments!
Yesterday the New York City Department of Design and Construction and the Hudson Yards Development Corporation issued an RFP for the design of the four-acre Hudson Park and Boulevard and the creation of a streetscape plan for the Hudson Yards area in Manhattan.
Click here to log in and download the document. According to the Development Corporation, the park and boulevard, as "a fundamental element of the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, will create open space, facilitate access to new development and create city blocks suited to the demands of the new neighborhood.
It will provide much needed open space in an area that is underserved today and offer opportunities for recreation in an area where none presently exist."
The Dirt has been impressed by the city's strong push to make the Hudson Yards a more
pedestrian-friendly and mass transit-oriented neighborhood. Check out the full plan for the area here.
The Shelby Farms Park Conservancy in Memphis, TN, has
released the designs of the three finalists for the redesign of the 4,500 acre park. The new park is to be, in the words of the Conservancy, "
...an urban forest, a civic playground, a model for health and sustainability. It can be a standard-setting prototype for parks around the world."
The three finalists are field operations, Hargreaves Associates, and Tom Leader Studio. The Conservancy website includes well-produced streaming video interviews of
Jim Corner, ASLA,
George Hargreaves, FASLA, and
Tom Leader, Affiliate ASLA, each describing their vision for the park.
Visit the site and complete the survey giving feedback on your favorite design. The winner of the competition will be announced April 9th.
This week the New York City Department of Transportation and Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum announced a new international design competition for bike parking in New York City. The competition seeks to develop "attractive, functional, well-designed sidewalk racks and to generate new concepts for bicycle parking inside commercial and residential buildings." More than $50,000 in honoraria to develop prototype bike racks and $15,000 in prizes will be awarded to the top designs. Part of the city's ambitious PlaNYC 2030 transportation initiatives is to
promote more biking as a way to alleviate motor vehicle traffic. Visit the CityRacks blog to enter the competition
here.
Late last week the Design Trust for Public Space, in partnership with the Grand Army Plaza Coalition,
launched a new competition to redesign
Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, New York. The “Reinventing Grand Army Plaza” offers fame and fortune (well, the first prize is $5,000; second: $2,000; and third: $1,000) to the winning designer. The jury has no less than three
ASLA Fellows (
Michael Van Valkenburgh, Elizabeth Meyer, and Ken Smith), and
Alex Washburn, ASLA, among its members.
Click here to read about the competition; the submission deadline is April 25.
The city of Santa Monica, California, has transformed a former airport runway into
8.5 acres of dog-friendly parkland. The landscape architecture firm ah’bé landscape architects [principal
Calvin Abe, FASLA] used green stormwater management, landscape planting, and irrigation throughout the parking lots, two soccer fields, and dog area. The Airport Park is the first city-built “ground-up” park to open in Santa Monica in 24 years.
Dog parks seem to be all the rage--
check out the great educational dog park project members Jon Mueller, ASLA, and Keith Dixon, ASLA, completed with grade school children as part of this year's National Landscape Architecture Month.
This recent story outlines the challenges facing neglected Pershing Square in Los Angeles. With the building of a new, 70-story retail and apartment complex beside the park, attention has been turned to improving the space for the thousands of new residents the Park Fifth building will bring.
Stephanie Landregan, ASLA, gives her opinion on the current park as "bare, stark and empty" and calls for the new park to be a world-class garden to be tended by horticulturists. Pershing Park was created in 1866 to serve as the city's central park.
Witold Rybczynski, Honorary ASLA and architecture critic for Slate.com, has posted an interesting overview of the competing park designs for New York's Governors Island. The design competition, called "The Park at the Center of the World" [official site
here], has five finalists: WRT and Urban Strategies; Hargreaves Associates/Michael Maltzan Architecture; West 8/Rogers Marvel/Diller Scofidio + Renfro/Quennell Rothschild/SMWM; REX/MDP; and Field Operations.
Rybczynski has mainly positive comments on all five finalists, but tips his hand that Field Operations is his favorite. The entire piece is well worth the read (even if the text is in an annoying "slideshow" format).
Update 6/20/07:
Dirt reader Hmmm notes in the comments that
New York Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff also weighs in on the Governors Island finalists in
today's NYT.
Sunday's Anchorage Daily News brings us the story of Kincaid Park, a former Nike missile ("41-foot-long, rocket-powered javelins designed to carry nuclear bombs") silo complex that has been turned into a popular public park. The article states that the transformation has been "guided by people with the odd-sounding job title of landscape architects." Ha!
Click through for the entertaining piece, and learn how the park's designers put an old military bunker to good use.
This past weekend,
the Chicago Tribune tackled one of parenting's worst nightmares. No, not "
stranger danger," but (wait for it...)
sandboxes.
"Aren't those things just giant, ahem, litter boxes?" asks reporter Heidi Stevens, who also discovers that almost all parks in Chicago have at least one sandbox, and that cleaning crews regularly sift and clean the sand. So, it's safe for kids, right?
From the article:
Dr. Scott Goldstein, a pediatrician at the Northwestern Children's Practice, said he would never tell parents to avoid sandboxes altogether. He just urges us to use common sense.
"Wash your hands and your child's hands often," he said. "It's a good idea to carry hand gel or hand wipes around with you."
And, of course, he adds, "If you see poop in the sandbox, it's a good idea to avoid it."
Thank you, Dr. Goldstein.
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