Reasons to Smile at Teardrop

If you are a landscape architect and have done POEs on your own or others’ work, I would love to know of it. Even if you haven’t done a formal POE, have you at least revisited and informally assessed your own key projects? If so, what have you learned?... More

If you are a landscape architect and have done POEs on your own or others’ work, I would love to know of it. Even if you haven’t done a formal POE, have you at least revisited and informally assessed your own key projects? If so, what have you learned? Because of the dearth of POEs, I was surprised to learn that Teardrop Park in New York’s Battery Park City (“Abstract Realism,” February 2007) had been the subject of one. What sparked this most unusual undertaking? Nothing less than Teardrop’s gaining the dubious honor of being listed on Project for Public Spaces’ Hall of Shame (www. pps. org/great_ public_ spaces). “There is almost nothing to do in this park,” charged PPS, “and nothing to attract the people who might use it. ” This allegation so rankled Robin Moore, Affiliate ASLA, who had consulted on the planning of the park, that this professor of landscape architecture and director of the Natural Learning Initiative at North Carolina State University traveled up to Manhattan to Less