We Need a Broader Vision for Visionary Postwar Developments
New York鈥檚 Battery Park City and Washington, D.C.鈥檚 Pennsylvania Avenue between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, America鈥檚 Main Street, are two examples of ambitious, civic-minded urban planning that employed landscape architects, architects and allied professionals in the creation of contiguous projects. Moreover, they are significant works of modern and postmodern landscape design. Another characteristic the two share is that they are collections of individual projects that have separate identities, but are also part of larger, symphonic narratives. Lastly, they both have sites that are under threat.
Landscape architecture at this scale does not happen in a vacuum; it requires the leadership of strong patrons 鈥 in these instances, Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) and the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA).
The genesis of efforts in Washington, D.C. began in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy created the President鈥檚 Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, which was ultimately followed by the creation of the PADC a decade later. The PADC commissioned major practitioners including Dan Kiley, Hideo Sasaki, M. Paul Friedberg, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, George Patton,