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Gertrude Stein : America
landscape
"After all anybody is as their
land and air is.
Anybody is as the sky is low or high,
the air heavy or clear and anybody is as there is wind or no
wind there.
It is that which makes them and the arts they make
and the work they do and the way they eat
and the way they drink
and the way they learn and everything."
The East Harlem Arts corridor is
about art, communication, desire, and nature...Diving into
these subjects brought me to Max Ernst's surrealistic
painting "paysage imaginaire" on the one hand and to the
medieval understanding of nature as danger and their desire
to tame nature to create paradise on earth.
Evolving these themes is the
bigger area around the projects, located between 112th and
115th street, from Fifth Ave. to First Ave. They are erected
in the sense of the "Modern City" providing space, air and
light evolving the concept of the salvation of nature, while
the common city seemed to represent the abstract
danger.
21 typical blocks of the former
fabric of New York and two crosstreets were deleted, the
face of the street - the facade - was set back. A new,
larger scale was put into the city. This site seems to be
the "little brother" of Central Park (reproduction is an
important issue of modern art), flipped in an angle of 90
degrees, streets passing along and crossing in just one
direction. It works as a barrier and as an empty center as
the same time - potential as catalyst.
Zooming into the site observing
focused on details... the overtaking of little areas by
individuels for growing vegetables and planting flowers in
their
paradaisos...
the thickzone
of the natural surface at
the projects, basement and ground floor are providing space
- an available volume to improve and to transform the idea
of the paysage imaginaire - an artificial landscape -
folding surfaces... a g r i
c u l t u r e ....the train
track on Park Avenue, which runs as a rough wall from 96th
to 110th street and then becomes a steel construction like a
bridge and is already used as a
market,
the metro north stop at 125th street connects the site back
to midtown - and into the metropolitan scale.
Paths in different scales and for
different movements - different speeds - are connecting as a
field of movement
Fifth Ave. and metro north
and are providing a dense pedestrian circulation around the
area...
Paul Auster's detective in City of
Glass...flaneur
... The existing studio museum at
125th street and park Ave. and the museums along Fifth Ave.
are forming the museum mile. A new field for agriculture in
public space as community gardens will be an interesting
addition to this metropolitan chain -
culture and
cultivation.
The thematic layering of
agriculture, paradaisos, paths and the "modern City" in the
field of the projects will become the urban probe.
...Roni Horns painting "JUST",
1991 helped to scale and place the new structure of
agriculture and different kinds of surfaces for sports,
entertainment...a field of private enclosed gardens
- paradises
- overlays the big scale
community surfaces
productive nature versus nature
beautiful
- private gardening, vegetables +
flowers, first cultural step is cultivating a piece of land
vacancy gets occupied : little paradises
- private pieces spread out in public space..."take care"
energy
- scale zoom - individuel pieces are reminiscents in "
modern city high speed space"
- pieces (lots) are NOT accessable for everybody - layering
of ownerships
- pieces are out of city planning proces - rural
leftovers
- "time overlay" - historically referring to the origine of
culture...Eve...surfing the
city surface
- music : space for probes, places
for presentation, clubs, entertainment, dancing
- public "scenery theme gardens"
- art in open space - sculptures, projection, sound-machine,
walls for graffitti
- neighborhood : parking, re-greening, laundry,
hairdressers, retail, kindergarden, skating on slooping
surfaces, playing on different materials of the surface,
animals
- paysage imaginaire
- connection of Central Park and East River
- integration/extension of museum mile
- social services, medical training, motherhood help
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