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Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park infographics: what's built/what's coming/what's missing, who's responsible, + project FAQ/timeline (pinned post)

Deceptive rendering: where's Fifth Avenue traffic?

I wrote Wednesday that New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff missed the opportunity to critique deceptive renderings in the new Atlantic Yards arena design.

Michael D.D. White follows up:
Here though is what we find to be the most fascinating element of the rendering which also convinces us that they don’t want the public to really see the design even now: Fifty percent of the colored rendering of the arena is not a rendering of the arena at all. It is a rendering which, borrowing the same colors in which the arena is depicted, shows with abnormal emphasis the blurred lights of the passing traffic on Atlantic and Fulton Avenues! Gosh Golly! The lights of the passing traffic are going to be prettier than the arena itself?

And that’s as if the feigned time-lapse photography of the rendering would actually capture moving traffic rather than the traffic jam on a night that the arena was in use. (And if moving traffic is so beautiful, why does the mega-project go out of its way to shut down streets and avenues?- Note, that in the rendering there is no blurry smear of car lights where Fifth Avenue will be shut down.)


Maybe the architects can answer a few questions on Monday.

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