June 2, 2006
A Children's Museum Grows in Brooklyn
Residents in the heart of Crown Heights are watching Rafael Vinoly's Brooklyn Children's Museum renovation take shape one stud at a time. When we visited the construction site at the northwest corner of Brower Park yesterday, the L-shaped steel frame was up and the concrete floor was firmly set.
The $62 million project - to be completed in late 2007 - is also the city's first green museum. (It was the "first museum designed especially for children"). Think 300-foot-deep geothermal wells (for heating and cooling), photovoltaic panels (for electricity), carbon dioxide and body heat sensors (for monitoring exhibition spaces) and renewable materials like cork, rubber, recycled carpet and, yes, bamboo.
While we're not sure how the bold yellow exterior will blend with the area's brownstones and Victorian homes, we see the century-old museum's facelift as a model for coexisting with neighbors. With second-floor porthole windows and plenty of street-level glass, the outward-looking design gives Jane Jacobs' "eyes on the street" a renewed relevance.
And the Brooklyn Children's Museum is open during its renovations. The museum is on the corner of St. Marks Avenue and Brooklyn Avenue, and tomorrow, the Green Dollhouse exhibit opens - "Dollhouses created by professional architects and design students feature “green” architecture in miniature scale."
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It looks like an overturned boat. Modern archticture is a pathetic joke. Apparently all the good stuff was done before so we get crap and Ghery now.
What's wrong with an overturned boat? It's a children's museum. Pathetic jokes are still funny when you're six.
And if any institution deserved new digs it's that one.
Maybe it would look better if Toby came up with a stamped-out neoclassical facade for us. Cuz that's what museums are "supposed" to look like.
(Oh and you're a Gehry-hating jerk! Hee hee!)
oh god, that is so bad. I can guarantee that it will not age well, nor will it wear dirt well.
That's the problem that starchitect-worshipping folks like otr have - they cannot imagine that their "art" has to exist in the context of the real world.
No otr, we might not need a "stamped-out" neoclassical facade.
We certainly don't need a crapped-out "modern" turd either.
Personally, I find that there are uses for both modern and classical architecture and if your opinion is staunchly held either way you are close-minded. Having said that, bad looking architecture is simply bad looking. Vinoly designed a ego-booster not a brooklyn-booster.
i liked the hhpa assemblage now buried below the 'turd'
too true about how it will wear dirt.
i'm not an architect; so i'm allowed to forget things like that. but if i was getting paid for my time it would be slightly more important :)
and btw: i'm not a 'starchitect worshiper', but the bile they inspire in their detractors is amusing.
It's interesting that everyone has focused solely on the architecture. What about the fact that this amazing place - the first children's museum in the world - is about to become the first green museum in NY? What about the fact that Crown Heights/Bed Stuy kids, and kids all over NYC, have had a really cool place to have fun and learn stuff, since 1899. With this expansion, whether you like the architecture or not, more kids will have the opportunity to explore cultural objects, learn about science, and learn about what it means to be "green."
Do you have a brochure that can be reviewed? We would like to visit soon.