How NYC’s 2012 Olympic Village would have transformed the Queens waterfront
Architecture and Urban Design Professor Thom Mayne
Wonder what it would be like if the Olympics were held in New York? Architecture and Urban Design Professor Thom Mayne's firm Morphosis has the answer.
"Now that the 2016 Rio Olympics have come to a close, we can’t help but think what an incredible 17 days it would have been if they were here in New York City (logistical concerns aside). The city came closest in 2004 when it was chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as one of the five finalists to host the 2012 Olympics. London, Paris, Moscow and Madrid were the other four. Splashy renderings planted 27 venues across all five boroughs, New Jersey and Long Island, but the winning, and perhaps most eye-catching, proposal was the Olympic Village in Long Island City’s Hunter’s Point South by Thom Mayne’s Morphosis.
An architectural competition for the village kicked off in September 2003, when 130 mind-bending ideas from more than 20 countries were submitted. In March 2004, five finalists were announced:Henning Larsen Architects from Denmark, MVRDV from the Netherlands, New York-based Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, Santa Monica-based Morphosis, and London-based Zaha Hadid Architects.
Their designs were shown to the public in Grand Central’s Vanderbilt Hall. It was emphasized that the submissions were only part of an “innovative design study,” meaning there was no promise that any of it would be built or that the architects would even be chosen as the designers. Each of these world-class firms produced bold and refreshing schemes, but many of the plans were derivations of Le Corbusier’s Towers in the Park theme, a favorite enemy of many urbanists for its rigid ambition to engineer citizens (and the type of plan used for Rio’s Olympic/Paralympic Village)."— Ondel Hylton, August 22, 2016
Read the full article at the 6sqft website.