Forest City Ratner has not released the "Atlantic Yards" image below to the public in New York, or via the AtlanticYards.com image gallery, because, well, it's not part of Frank Gehry's design.
However, a representative of parent company Forest City Enterprises apparently did label the image "Atlantic Yards" in a presentation (p. 48) to governmental and business leaders during a 4/18/07 forum in Atlanta on redeveloping an underutilized corridor.
(Update 5/25/07: The presentation has been removed, but NoLandGrab has a copy.)
Except it's the World Trade Center site. Compared to AY, the WTC has had more--if contested --public process, with architects competing for the design rather than anointed from the start, and a greater public discussion of security concerns.
More contrasts
Notable, the rendering above emphasizes scale, while the depictions in the Atlantic Yards image gallery tend to cut off the buildings or frame them in ways that minimize them. Remember, in the mailers Forest City Ratner sent to Brooklynites; three (1, 2, 3) included no renderings of the project, while a fourth depicted 15-story buildings.
The WTC rendering may have its uses--or was it all some kind of "brutally weird" joke?--but it certainly doesn't back up the developer's claim that Atlantic Yards would "help connect the four surrounding communities.
It comes closer to fulfilling the prediction of the Park Slope Civic Council that AY would be "a high-density enclave between several neighborhoods which will in fact be a new urban form, however, more likely analogous to a spaceship landing in a field than a unifying element in the community."
Borrowing an image
Another rendering of the future project oddly borrows an image directly from New York magazine's 8/14/06 cover story, without attribution.
Project site today?
Another image, purporting to show the project site today, hardly encompasses the 22-acre footprint or the diversity of buildings today. The project would wrap around rather than eliminate the Newswalk condo building at left. The attendees at the forum likely were underinformed, if not completely flummoxed.
However, a representative of parent company Forest City Enterprises apparently did label the image "Atlantic Yards" in a presentation (p. 48) to governmental and business leaders during a 4/18/07 forum in Atlanta on redeveloping an underutilized corridor.
(Update 5/25/07: The presentation has been removed, but NoLandGrab has a copy.)
Except it's the World Trade Center site. Compared to AY, the WTC has had more--if contested --public process, with architects competing for the design rather than anointed from the start, and a greater public discussion of security concerns.
More contrasts
Notable, the rendering above emphasizes scale, while the depictions in the Atlantic Yards image gallery tend to cut off the buildings or frame them in ways that minimize them. Remember, in the mailers Forest City Ratner sent to Brooklynites; three (1, 2, 3) included no renderings of the project, while a fourth depicted 15-story buildings.
The WTC rendering may have its uses--or was it all some kind of "brutally weird" joke?--but it certainly doesn't back up the developer's claim that Atlantic Yards would "help connect the four surrounding communities.
It comes closer to fulfilling the prediction of the Park Slope Civic Council that AY would be "a high-density enclave between several neighborhoods which will in fact be a new urban form, however, more likely analogous to a spaceship landing in a field than a unifying element in the community."
Borrowing an image
Another rendering of the future project oddly borrows an image directly from New York magazine's 8/14/06 cover story, without attribution.
Project site today?
Another image, purporting to show the project site today, hardly encompasses the 22-acre footprint or the diversity of buildings today. The project would wrap around rather than eliminate the Newswalk condo building at left. The attendees at the forum likely were underinformed, if not completely flummoxed.
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