concluding remarks
Martin Felsen What I’ve noticed a lot in cities these days is that some of the deputy commissioners or department heads are architects. And those are some90
times the people that are hiring us—all the big us in this room basically—because they’re able, from the inside, to convince the powers that be. There is importance in thinking long term, holistically, environmentally, ecologically, in really centering design thinking into the development process of the city. David Fletcher The architects and planners, especially in Latin America and South America, that have given us a lot of precedents have greater latitude and much less robust bureaucracies to contend with. Architecture in a sense suffers from a misperception, but also isolation and elitism. Of this four percent of US building stock that is designed by architects that Charles mentioned, there’s a tiny, tiny percent of Zaha Hadid work and a tiny, tiny percent of Frank Gehry work. According to Nicolai Ouroussoff’s recent articles, we’re seeing a soft transition from this orgasmic formal cheerleading to social relevance. You see that trend symbolized at Central Park in the rejection of Zaha Hadid’s pavilion. Within the context of Central Park—which is always thought of as an infrastructure in itself, as the lungs of the city and a rock water reservoir system—it’s seminal. There’s a sense of transition towards relevance. George Thrush On that note, we should call the formal program to an end.