Archicritics

Places has a meditation on Roosevelt Island's new Four Freedom's Park, which it describes as "a cause for rejoicing"?and a depressing indication of the state of American public architecture. "How telling it is, that our best new monument is one that had been cryogenically preserved for almost 40 years. I feel confident in positing that this FDR monument could not be designed today or, more to the point, would not be approved by any commissioning committee. The Four Freedoms Park is too austere and insufficiently didactic. It leaves the viewer with too much interpretive leeway for today's political and cultural climate in which scripted narratives prevail." [Places; previously]