Must-See Green American Landmarks （2）
A skyscraper, city park, baseball stadium, hotel, museum, parking garage, restaurant, and more — all of them iconic, all of them green. This is what sustainable design looks like now.
By Karrie Jacobs
The Art Gallery: 5.4.7 Arts Center, Greensburg, Kansas
This spirited, 1,680-square-foot box, with green glass louvers and a wall that swings open like an airplane hangar, is conspicuous for any number of reasons. For one thing, it has a mini wind farm out front. It also has geothermal heating and cooling, a photovoltaic array, and a green roof. And like everything designed and built by the architecture students at Studio 804, part of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, it is also an aggressively modern design. The 5.4.7 Arts Center is named for the date a tornado nearly wiped this little western Kansas town off the map, and it is the first public building to rise from the ruins, a bellwether for the greening of Greensburg. Prior to the tornado the arts organization was merely a dream of its founder, Stacy Barnes, who works as an administrative assistant for the town (and oversees the gift shop at Greensburg’s other attraction, the world’s largest hand-dug well). Barnes believes that the arts advance the healing process and help people unwind from the hard work of rebuilding. To that end, she’s hung paintings, offered ceramics classes, and started an outdoor summer movie program. “We’re trying to broaden everyone’s horizons,” she says.
The City Park: The High Line, New York City
At the south end of the High Line, an abandoned 1930’s elevated freight rail track turned 21st-century park, a new Standard Hotel is going up on massive concrete piers, boldly straddling this most extraordinary public space. All along its 1½-mile path (the first third is scheduled to open by the end of 2008), the High Line has become a magnet for innovative architecture; the Standard will soon be joined by a branch of the Whitney Museum designed by Renzo Piano, and experimental architect Neil Denari’s gravity-defying apartment tower is rising a few blocks north. Between the speckled concrete walkways and benches by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Field Operations, Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf is inserting a somewhat aestheticized version of the urban meadow that had previously grown undisturbed on the tracks, with clusters of flowering perennials, wetland grasses, and occasional wooded patches. “To walk on the High Line,” says Friends of the High Line cofounder Joshua David, “is to experience New York from a vantage point that can’t be touched anywhere else.”
The Hotel: Cavallo Point—the Lodge at the Golden Gate, Fort Baker, San Francisco
For much of the 20th century, the spectacular string of promontories known as the Marin Headlands remained undeveloped because it was of great strategic value to the military. Today this glorious coastal landscape is dotted with decommissioned gun batteries and missile installations. Fort Baker, for example, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge at the south end of Sausalito, was a depot for the minefields that kept enemy submarines out of the bay during World War II. In July, this historic site was reborn as Cavallo Point, a luxurious lodge, spa, and center for environmentally themed conferences and lectures. The former officers’ quarters have been carefully restored, and newly constructed, modern rooms look out over the bay from the hillside. Where soldiers once assembled explosive devices, guests can sleep soundly on organic linens, indulge in an herbal hot-stone massage, or linger at the Tea Bar. More ambitious visitors will notice that the lodge is still of great strategic value: it’s the perfect base for hikes, bike rides, and kayak trips.
[ 本帖最后由 晔阳 于 09-1-31 11:39 编辑 ] |
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发表于 09-1-29 09:41:59
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