field operations – The SunBreak

What’s a Working Waterfront Worth, Anyway?

July 18, 2012July 19, 2012 Michael van Baker central waterfront, field operations, james corner, seawall

Berger is right to call for due diligence in inspecting funding assumptions, and he’s half-right about using Seattle Center as a cautionary tale–it may be called “Seattle Center” but when it comes to funding maintenance and improvements, the City of Seattle generally runs the other way.

But to call what James Corner Field Operations is designing a “park” is like calling a space shuttle a “thermal tiling system.”

Environment Features News

James Corner on Design, Scale, and Post-High-Line Life

April 24, 2012April 25, 2012 Michael van Baker architecture, design, field operations, high line, james corner, park, seattle, urbanism, waterfront

This is what Friedman highlighted in Corner’s work in his introduction: the way Corner has found parallels between ecological process and infrastructure, the way his work generates a self-awareness in communities by making their patterns explicit. So when Corner talks about the juxtaposition of urbanism and nature, it’s not with the notion of any essential distinction: the urban has arisen from nature, from similar processes.