Penn Station platforms. CC image from Harvey Yau.
More links in relation to yesterday’s post on the future of Penn Station in New York:
- Second Ave. Sagas approaches skeptically, but with a nice compendium of the various renderings from the four architectural teams.
- Meanwhile (and also from Second Ave. Sagas) there is modest progress toward new Hudson river tunnels.
- The Municipal Arts Society posted video of the presentations and the panel discussion from yesterday’s event.
In the videos from MAS, particularly in the panel discussion segment of the event moderated by Michael Kimmelman, it is heartening to hear many of the issues I raised in yesterday’s post (written without the aid of hearing the presentations) acknowledged, if not satisfactorily resolved. The SHoP team in particular at least addressed the more practical concerns of cost, safety, and infrastructure. Reactions amongst transit advocates were skeptical, but open.
Unfortunately for SHoP (and for the credibility of the entire process as something more substantial than a hypothetical design exercise), these pragmatic and practical realities were dismissed as problems for policy wonks to solve, implying they are beneath the work of the designers – all while joking that the one team at least acknowledging these realities was not a ‘designer.’