SCOTTISH ARCHITECTS WIN ISTANBUL PROJECT; WATERFALLS AS WINDFALL
The Scotsman reports that RMJM, the architectural firm behind the Scottish Parliament, has won a competition to design a 3.6-million-square-foot mixed-use development in Istanbul. RMJM’s proposal for an area that the Turkish government wants to turn into a new financial district would be worth nearly $975 million. The project will include a school, as well as residential, commercial, retail, and recreation facilities. Chris Jones, RMJM’s urban studio director and design principal, said the site gave the company the opportunity to create a “landmark community.”
In other news from the Associated Press, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said the public artwork by Olafur Eliasson that put four waterfalls in the East River and New York Harbor brought in an estimated $69 million for New York City, exceeding initial expectations of $55 million. The work drew 1.4 million visitors from June 26 through October 13 to view the installation off Manhattan’s East Side. “People didn’t buy tickets or pass through a turnstile to experience the Waterfalls, but this exhibition brought people to areas of the city they might not otherwise ever have visited,” the mayor said Tuesday in a statement. “We’ve always understood that we have to encourage big, bold projects that set our city apart, and this will be increasingly important while areas of our economy are struggling from the turmoil on Wall Street.” The project was not without its problems. It generated complaints from some neighborhood groups and businesses that said salty mist from the man-made cataracts was damaging waterfront plantings along Brooklyn Heights’ popular promenade. In response, the Public Art Fund in September cut the exhibit’s weekly hours in half. The project was the city’s largest public-art endeavor since 2005, when artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, festooned twenty-three miles of Central Park’s footpaths with thousands of saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames. More than five million people saw The Gates, including about 1.5 million out-of-town visitors. That installation was credited with injecting about $254 million into the local economy.
