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This winter, six proposals for the redesign of Columbus Circle
were unveiled at Municipal Art Society. Rafael Viñoly fills the
circle with a trellis of walkways.
(Courtesy of the Municipal Art Society of New York)
| Designers present six schemes to turn New York's "last great site"
into a world class public space. by David E. Brown In the summer of 1892, at the intersection of Broadway, Eighth Avenue, and 59th Street in New York, ground was broken for a monument commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. At the ceremony, C.A. Barattoni, vice president of the Columbus Statue Executive Committee, thanked the city for "granting this beautiful spot for its erection, where it will hereafter remain an object of beauty and admiration." It didn't quite work out that way. The intersection was already busy with traffic--a crossroads for two trolley lines, a major entrance to Central Park, and the gateway to the newly burgeoning Upper West Side. In the century since, Columbus Circle has become a transportation hub, with cars zooming through at all hours and three subway lines rumbling beneath. The monument itself, which once towered over a low cityscape, is lost amid much taller buildings and expanses of asphalt. The spot is no longer beautiful, nor is the statue much admired. But while the circle can seem beaten down by grime and whirling traffic, its edges hold out some hope. On a recent spring afternoon, the Central Park side of the circle teemed with tourists and New Yorkers, many stopping to rest on the steps of the Maine Memorial, even more gathering to watch a break-dance troupe. Across the circle, a gift and vegetable market attracted passersby. Hemmed in on all sides by whizzing traffic, only the center, where the eponymous monument stands, was vacant. This winter, New York's Municipal Art Society unveiled some more concrete hopes for the space: proposals for the redesign of Columbus Circle from six architects, planners, and landscape designers. Calling the circle the city's "last great site," the society is hoping the impending redevelopment of two adjacent properties will allow and encourage a visionary design. The city government, which has been closely following the redesign process, has nearly $1 million earmarked for the circle; it may adopt one of the proposals, part of one, or parts of several. The goals of the juried competition were brief but ambitious: to create "inspired but practical plans," to "reassert the public's interest in the city's planning," and, most important, "to realize Columbus Circle's potential as a grand public space--one that is on par with La Place de la Concorde and Trafalgar Square." The responses often said as much about the designers as they did about realizing public space. And though they varied widely, there was an odd consistency among two-thirds of the designs--an urge to show off structure and infrastructure--that made the efforts to reimagine the circle as a public space even more compelling. New York architect Rafael Viñoly's proposal was perhaps the most spectacular: a huge, semispherical trellis of walkways and pedestrian overpasses. A tourist attraction, an engineering statement, and a reminder of bare structure, the design is a beautiful stunt, promising aerial promenades above the (unaltered) circle and the park. And Viñoly's trellis would fill the circle, helping the space seem less like a wide-open wasteland. The Boston architecture firm Machado & Silvetti Associates, working with Philadelphia landscape architects the Olin Partnership, also managed to fill the circle, though for reasons more geometric than spectacular. By suspending a web-like canopy from 140-foot-tall columns, they write, "we have inscribed this idealized geometric figure [the circle] in the sky." Below, around the circle's original column, they have "sliced and lifted the ground plane to expose the subway below." Though these gestures are interesting visually, their intent--emphasizing that the circle is a circle, showing off the circulation below--seems formal, not social. Laying infrastructure bare is even more important to the plan of New York--based Weiss/Manfredi Architects. "The circle becomes the gateway to underground New York," they write, "making plain the weaving trajectory of Broadway, illegible at street level." A circle is cut around the base of the Columbus Statue, allowing anyone who can dart across traffic--or is lucky enough to fly above--a glimpse of the multilayered space beneath Manhattan. The plan of Michael Sorkin, another New York architect, would also open up the space around the statue, with a low, oval glass dome around its base, illuminating the subway station beneath. Though the circulation at ground level does not change, a sinuous underground ramp simplifies the station, and wide ramps replace the subway entrance stairs. Above ground, visual clutter is reduced, and steel railings keep pedestrians from harm's way. Shielding pedestrians is at the heart of the proposal from Dan Kiley, a Vermont-based landscape designer. Kiley, a Modernist known for his crisp, geometrical plantings, has almost filled the circle with trees. Thick, regular clusters of trees frame every entrance to the space, stand in front of all the surrounding buildings, and encircle the central monument. Around that circle, too, is a series of fountains, which are echoed across Broadway, in front of the Coliseum site. It's a humane attempt to create a public space by screening the dominant--and most intrusive--use of the circle, as a traffic conduit. With so many trees and the sound of so much water, one can imagine finding respite here. Surprisingly, only one design changes the traffic flow in the circle. Kennedy & Violich, a Boston architecture firm, extend the plaza in front of the Maine Memorial, at the entrance to the park, out and around the Columbus statue. Finally, after more than a century, the monument no longer defines a traffic circle. With cars funneled through a bulge on the other side of the statue, the best-loved and best-used part of the circle is greatly expanded. This land bridge to Columbus may be the one way to turn this neglected crossroads into a vibrant, viable public space--certainly more than the rhetorical flourish of laying infrastructure bare. At the exhibition of the proposals, two visitors were discussing the various interventions. After looking at another model that did not challenge the circle of cars, though, one made a quick--and fatal--criticism: "I still don't understand why people would go in the middle of all those roads." |
Keywords:
open space, traffic circle, Columbus Circle, New York
