Fig. 14 Steeplechase's mechanical track
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Fig. 15 Dreamland's calculated circulation
Fig. 16Luna Park's Moon theme entrance
Analysis of Delirious New York
Coney Island
Koolhaas analyzes the city in Delirious New York, as a constantly changing place, because of the influence of the economy, culture and politics. Moreover, he looks upon organizational strategies that can raise future changes and possibilities. This subsection will focus on Coney Island’s amusement parks with their ever changing and unstable program, where Koolhaas discovers evidence of congestion and learns how to proceed with Manhattan; then the growing cultural demands and Manhattan’s Culture of Congestion, the “Grid” and the “Skyscraper” will be analyzed. The final part will be focused on Koolhaas’ investigations and how he uses them to define his design strategy for Parc de la Villette project.
Coney Island’s amusement parks allow the understanding of the culture of congestion. Koolhaas studies their unstable programs and searches for instruments that can handle these constant changes of their conditions. The amusement parks also help to comprehend the busy metropolitanwayoflivinginManhattan. Koolhaas describes Coney Island: “The strategies and mechanisms that later shape Manhattan, are tested in the laboratory of Coney Island before they finally leap toward the larger island. Coney Island is a fetal Manhattan” (Koolhaas, 1997:30). Steeplechase, Luna Park and Dreamland are the three major amusement parks, constantly competing with each other, that made Coney Island the most desirable entertainment place for the middle and lower classes of the new urban life.
The driving force behind Coney Island and its amusements was to offer a new and surprising world for the public. Consequently, the many unmet demands resulted into a constantly changing environment in which in order to survive each owner had to cope with the instability and find a strategy to control it and attract visitors’ attention. “To survive as a resort, Coney Island forced to mutate: it must turn itself into total opposite of Nature, it has no choice but to counteract the artificiality of the new metropolis with its own Super – Natural” (Koolhaas, 1997:33). The facilities evolved so much, because of the constant insatiable demands of the public that created instable conditions. Steeplechase,Dreamlandand Luna Park first came with solutions to the problem by inventing organizational methodsandlayoutsfortheirprograms. Steeplechase Park introduced mechanical horses to be ridden on a railway circling around the park.
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