Landscape in the News
There has been a little flare-up of news about landscape architecture in the last few days, and most of it is puzzling and intriguing. First, there was yesterday's article in the New York Times reporting the (rather large) salary of Robert Hammond, President and Executive Director of the Friends of the Highline. Is there some kind of New York politics behind this article? From the comments to the article, some of the malcontent could come from Chelsea residents, who are seeing tax increases due to increased valuation of the neighborhood from the new park (go landscape!). Most comments, however, defend the salary, comparing it to athletes and bankers, or at least cite misdirection, asking the Times to go after more significant crooks (Wall Street again). But, bringing our attention back to Robert Hammond, he is also the winner of this year's Rome Prize for landscape architecture. Is this the sign he will continue to turn his advocacy towards landscape? A new hybrid landscape professional?
Next, in this week's New Yorker there is first a photo of the Highline on the "Goings On About Town" page, and an article, Useless Beauty, on Governor's Island. The article takes a slow pace to get to the new West 8 (who they call "architects" grrrr) plan, which he describes as, like the Highline, "a park for cool people" and "a nexus of arty cosmopolitanism, environmentalism, and transportation geekery." The article mostly focuses on some of the obscure history of the island and Leslie Koch, another President, this time of GIPEC (Governor's Island Preservation and Education Corporation). In a way I think these both show something that as designers we often overlook: the importance of the public face and politics of making landscape happen.