Public Art Field Trip to NYC

BAC students from the School of Landscape Architecture program traveled to NYC in the fall term for a two day Public Art field trip.

The group led by the Head of the School, Maria Bellalta, and LA Master's Student, Nancy MacDonald, covered a lot of ground visiting and experiencing a range of public art and civic spaces.  The collection of sites included:

Tatzu Nishi's Discovering Columbus, an experiential transformation and scaffolding veiling the 75 foot tall granite structure that is reimagined upon reaching the top, where one enters a living room to encounter the giant statue of Columbus on the coffee table!

9/11 Memorial, former World Trade Center, occupies half the original 16 acre site with two massive 200' x 200' square monolithic waterfalls, reflecting pools, imprinting the ground with the imploded buildings.  The Memorial is profound, powerful and inescapably chilling.

Bryant Park, the 9.5 acre public green in Midtown Manhattan originally laid out in 1847, and what was once considered a problematic open space is today a one of a kind gem within the City. The perfect green garden room amid the urban grid.

Isamu Noguchi's The Red Cube is a lipstick red painted steel sculpture magically balanced on one of its tips and sited in a small plaza in front of the HSBC building on Broadway. The Cube enlivens the City all around.

Paley Park by Zion and Breen has been found tucked away at 3 East 53rd Street since it opened in the spring of 1967. With a single step in, this 4,200 square foot pocket park that takes one from the street into a secret, magical garden.

Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden, a lush modern garden by Philip Johnson and James Fanning, 1957, is an open-air courtyard and cafe, with lavish climbing ivy, lime green ferns and river birch trees, cascading white marble water troughs. Museum visitors sit and chat, and listen to music in this white washed drawing room in the City.

Brooklyn Bridge Promenade, this National Historic Landmark is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the U.S., and at the time of its opening in 1903, was the longest suspension bridge in the world at 1,595 feet. Today, an icon of New York City, commuters and visitors cross all day, as we did, with spectacular views and air of the East River.

Brooklyn Bridge Park, will transform a 1.3 mile stretch of post-industrial waterfront along the shore of the East River into a thriving 85- acre civic landscape and urban destination. This is a significant act of land reclamation, from abandoned shipping and storage, to valuable new green connections between the City and the River.

The High Line, by James Corner, Field Operations, is the revitalization of the elevated New York Central Railroad spur called West Side Line into a mile long suspended Piet Oudolf lushly planted sky-walk. Visitors cross the linear park and transit along a pedestrian green belt with magnificent views to the City from the grand balcony above.