Will the new design competition lead to the implementation of a design as boldly modern as the Arch? Probably not. After all, the program for the competition is realization of the National Park Service's new General Management Plan (GMP) for the Memorial. That plan's preferred alternative is not a blueprint for radical upheaval of a significant landscape but a corrective program for finding remedies to that landscape's flaws. The new CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation, spearheaded by attorney Walter Metcalfe, Mayor Francis Slay, Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley and national parks advocate Lynn McClure, is sponsoring the competition and raising money for implementation of the winning entry.
The competition thus wisely avoids a fruitless effort to construct a parallel icon near the Arch. The architectural genius of the Gateway Arch is elegant and unparalleled. Few contemporary architects -- or even starchitects with their tedious "signature" touches -- could match Saarinen's vision. Likewise, the Kiley landscape is a masterpiece. To attempt to add to the Memorial design through iconic design is folly. John Danforth's museum proposal was fueled by the incorrect assumption that any large new building on the Memorial grounds could be anything other than pretty clutter.
Still, the design competition is a clarion call for vision of a different kind. The GMP acknowledges the spatial obstacles to pedestrian access to the Memorial. In the GMP, there is discussion about the terrible infrastructure on the west and south sides of the Memorial that make pedestrian access difficult. The GMP discusses the moribund riverfront, the dormant east riverfront and other things that make the Memorial grounds a very divine landscape surrounded by an ugly cityscape and divided from urban vitality.
The design competition responds to the GMP by calling for radical reconceptualizing of the cityscape on both sides of the river that frame the Arch grounds. The subtitle of the competition is "Framing a Modern Masterpiece," indicating the challenge ahead: visionary urban place-making around a magnificent landscape that cuts across the boundaries of many government entities.
This competition thus is as much about politics as design. Mayor Francis Slay and Senator Claire McCaskill are deeply involved in the process. There is little doubt that the competition's fast track -- completion of improvements is slated for 2015 -- is driven by political concern rather than interest in truly transformative planning. In an interview, I asked competition manager Don Stastny of Stastny Brun if he had ever been involved in any design competition that had a time line of less than six years between the start of the competition and the projected completion of the design. He said that he had not, save a State Department competition for the destroyed Nairobi embassy.
There is a strong tension between the frank analysis offered by the National Park Service in the GMP and the "get it done" attitude of elected officials. Perhaps that tension is productive in a city that lacks any effective planning ordinance or agency. The National Park Service is playing the catalytic role that a city planning agency should already have done. On the other hand, without the competition's ambitious pace, good ideas might get lost or watered down through slow implementation. The competition process cuts through parochial politics by forcing St. Louis, East St. Louis, Missouri and Illinois to work together and implement solutions that are not neatly confined to parochial politics of appropriations.
Still, there is no need to have everything done by 2015. I like that early date as a spur to slow-moving local governments. However, I am afraid that date could preclude consideration of larger projects needed for connectivity. The competition cannot produce anything as great as the Memorial, but it need not be reigned in by a fixed, arbitrary timeline. After all, Kiley and Saarinen's plan was selected in 1948 but not fully completed until 1982.
Boundaries
The boundaries of the competition are exciting, as the map above shows. There are several notable inclusions:- The east riverfront, a topic neglected in much of the recent debate on the Arch grounds, is included. In fact, a large part of Malcolm Martin Park is included. Unfortunately, the boundary excludes the Casino Queen site and the MetroLink station. The pedestrian path from Malcolm Martin Park to MetroLink should be included, since the walk currently takes place on an unkempt street without sidewalks.
- The boundary seems to purposely place both the Eads and Poplar Street bridges inside. The Poplar Street Bridge is aging and due for major overhaul. The competition could create a vision for what a new Poplar Street Bridge would look like. Bike and pedestrian lanes are a must.
- Kiener Plaza is included in the boundary. While the Old Courthouse is part of the Memorial and needs a more graceful frame than the current state of Kiener Plaza, does the plaza really need to be part of this process?
- All of the Memorial grounds are included, which is fine, but preservation of the landscape is essential. However, jurors in the competition -- and leaders of the CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation -- need to be ready to consider proposals that would reloctae or alter the north parking garage (operated by Metro) and the south maintenance facility.
- I-70 directly west of the Memorial is included, but the boundary does not extend north to capture all of the elevated section. The GMP states that the National Park Service "strongly supports" removal of the highway, but thinks it unfeasible at this time. Why?
If there has ever been the right time to consider removal of the depressed and elevated lanes, it is now. There is a great converegence between the design competition -- where thinking big is encouraged, and reweaving urban fabric is the foundation for the program -- and the 2016 opening of the new Mississippi River Bridge that will carry I-70 out of downtown forever. While the end dates of these projects don't align perfectly, they are too close to leave unexamined. Highway removal need not be underway in 2015 for the ribbon-cutting; if the competition jury endorses any plan for highway removal, the region will have made major progress.
Obviously, the impact of the new bridge on traffic would need to be studied before removal could be planned. The replacement of I-70 should not be set in stone, since a wide boulevard could be as pedestrian-unfriendly as the current I-70/Memorial Drive configuration. Those two considerations are perfect fodder for a team of design professionals to engage. While we have the world's best architects working on solutions for the Memorial's connection to the rest of the city, we would be foolish to not encourage them to study one of downtown's biggest problems.We have great leadership in the Memorial's Superintendent Bradley. Tom Bradley has been a patient, thoughtful and progressive player who has managed to channel converging political forces into a positive direction. Bradley weathered the Danforth museum idea, which did nothing to address the real planning issues of the Memorial, and forced normally complacent local leaders into action that has the potential to truly transform downtown. Stastny likewise should be a great manager, since his philosophy is that his clients must determine the choice to have a competition on their own. He's not a salesman, but an astute facilitator.
A successful competition will consider every entry on its merits, and its jurors will have the courage to endorse the best plan no matter what its political implications may be. We may never again see another international design competition in St. Louis. We must be as wise as our ancestors -- nay, wiser.
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5 comments:
God I hope this international design competition is the first of many. The only one we will see in our lives? What a terrible thought.
Is design(art) ever going to take precedence?
What is more important art or money?
The most interesting thing will be to observe the integration of this process in the public realm. Otherwise it will just be another decision to benefit the usual insiders rather than the public at large.
A successful arch grounds will impact much more of the city than is shown. They are willing to cross the river, but ignore urban areas much closer to the arch.
A properly integrated transit system cannot be possible under such boundaries. In part that should be the future of the arch, as a center for transit, at least along the edges.
But that would require including much of the city and major routes out from the arch.
Thus the inclusion of transit at this major monument influences the whole of St. Louis and even the region.
So wait, is the Danforth museum dead?
Too bad it's not an open competition.... The brief reads like an RFQ: Eero Saarinen himself wouldn't qualify to compete if designed at the same time in his short career that he designed the arch. The competition will only solicit ideas from a rarified few, the established, in the design community. So is it about great ideas, or great names?
This project is a complete waste of federal funds, pushed from behind the scenes by the clout-heavy and tasteless danforths and cronies who won't rest until their name is plastered on every building in this city, and every park is obliterated. it is totally misguided. The Arch park is a masterpiece as is, a serene oasis that this town badly needs. That an organization which pretends to be "ecological" has gotten behind this project is a shonda. This project is mutilation of great art on a grand scale, no different from slashing the Mona Lisa with a broadsword. While it is true that the Arch grounds can be better-connected to the mall area, they nonetheless draw more than three million visitors a year [ten times the population of the city!] with the present connections over I-70 [which afford much easier access to the park than Michigan Avenue affords to Grant and millenium Parks in Chicago; but somehow people there manage to get across]. There will never be substantial access from the commercial center of downtown to the Arch grounds, no matter wht is done, as there is from the Chicago Loop to its lakefront parks, simply because this city's commercial downtown doesn't run parallel to the Arch park, as Chicago's Loop runs along its parks; this city's commercial downtown, where most of the workers are, lies northwest of the park, and both physical and visual access to [and therefore consciousness of] the riverfront park is further obstructed by the Mansion House apts. This project is nothing short of vandalism, and will be committed by an incompetent and politically-clout-heavy agency [the national park service] that has not only proven itself completely incapable of maintaining the Arch grounds, but has committed the worst forms of degradatiion of the National Mall in Washington, DC. Shame on you for supporting this wasteful, unnecessary and wrongheaded [and pigheaded] travesty!
What is the alternative, Mr. Miller?
Leaving things alone?
The Arch grounds are surrounded by ugly buildings and ugly infrastructure. I can't see how anyone can apologize for the status quo.
As for the grounds themselves, if you have read my work, you will know that we agree.
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