Central Park South
New York selects a design for Governor's Island.
In June, Slate architecture critic Witold Rybczynski presented a slide-show analysis of the five final proposals for redesigning New York City's Governor's Island, the 172-acre island located a half mile from the southern tip of Manhattan. Rybczynski favored "Mollusk," a minimalist design that would have covered the southern end of the island with a meadow of grasses and wildflowers. Yesterday, city and state officials in New York announced the selection of "World Park," a design that Rybczynski found lacking in coherent vision. The winning design includes a salt-water marsh, a lawn, an artificial mountain range, and even free bicycles for use on the island. "While the proposal covers all the bases," he noted, "it is not clear what it all adds up to."
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Witold Rybczynski is Slate's architecture critic His latest book is The Biography of a Building: How Robert Sainsbury and Norman Foster Built a Great Museum. Visit his Web site. Follow him on Twitter.