Our memories and futures

Curator Leevi Haapala in Standard-hotel

This is the day when we remember New York, the city with wounds, the city with radiant sparkle that lost so much of its future potential in one day, or did it start re-doing it? Dissonances are present in our memories, yet, we also recognize what our new futures might hold. Future is in people, in environment, in their harmonious co-existence. We can leave positive traces behind us, traces of the sun, traces of our bodies, movements, designs planting new hope. Let me share some of the silence and noise of the future potential. Give it away to the architecture that is there. Walk the High Line and look around you, sip a fruity cocktail in the luxurious Standard…When you stroll, find your own stone, find a wooden structure.

I was walking ‘up’ the new High Line extension paying attention to the new park designs. As I went along, I was gladly absorbing a different atmosphere, I left the modernist and massive Standard behind me (believe me, I think it is fantastic), and stepped into a merely willowy landscape, which I would not exactly take for granted in the heart of New York City. It has to be admitted that ‘willows’ are trendy, the Northern atmosphere created in the city will attract people, and it surely took me by force. I wanted to go back, as when walking the new extension I felt that I could leave some of the city mayhem behind me.

Notably, Steven Holl Architects have been joining in the city plans with ecological dimension (in Helsinki, for instance), so the High Line also reflects this approach. Green trends are global.

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