The Unisphere of Flushing Meadows Park built for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair.
Signs of social activism around the world are coming forth through the social media. The old world representations for ‘peace’ and ‘mutual understanding’ are still visible in the landscape, and also preserved in the architecture, in monuments and even in parks. The Flushing Meadows Park in New York City’s Queens is an example of the park, which shares an illusion of the timeless representation for ‘mutual understanding’. The globe functions as a symbol for the world cultures, for the one-world, for the United Nations, and many more. In the Flushing Meadows, it stands as a symbol for the peoples’ park and shared time together.
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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