Wednesday, December 14, 2011

BMW Guggenheim Lab did great things here, BMW Guggenheim Lab says

From the EV Grieve inbox yesterday ... a news release titled "BMW Guggenheim Lab Site Officially Returned to the City of New York, Transformed into Community Park" ... Here are the three best passages...


Richard Armstrong [Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation] stated, “We are deeply grateful to the City of New York for joining with us in this adventure by allowing a Parks & Recreation property to be the inaugural site of the BMW Guggenheim Lab. We were convinced that the vitality and creativity of this dense, urban East Village location would be the ideal place to launch this experiment. Thanks to the understanding and cooperation of the City, this prediction was realized beyond our best hopes.”

And!

The Lab’s wide range of programs encouraged community engagement and offered insight about today’s dense and changing urban environments, including the need for: the increased activity and involvement of community and neighborhood groups to institute urban change; stronger personal relationships and social interaction within cities to help achieve community cohesiveness; an increased focus on the reuse and revitalization of existing physical and organizational structures; and a growing interest in understanding urban interactions through the use of open-sourced data and models.

Love it when you talk about open-sourced data and models!

The BMW Guggenheim Lab New York received a highly positive response from the public, many of whom have praised its ability to bring individuals together, evoke a sense of community, generate positive energy, provoke questions and then listen to what people have to say, and ignite dialogue that can continue on long after the departure of the physical Lab structure.

Generate positive energy? They must have missed the comments here ... and here...

In any event, the Park is back in the community's hands... a subject we'll have more on later...

FRIDAY: BoweryBoogie has a rundown on Saturday's festivities here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Guggenheim wants our rat-infested First Street lot

Residents pitching in to help refurbish First Street garden

Designs for urban life apparently don't include trees

Continuing to question the BMW Guggenheim Lab's benefits to the local community

11 comments:

  1. They should have remained open for Santacon.
    "We were convinced that the vitality and creativity of this dense, urban East Village location would be the ideal place to vomit."

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  2. @ Uncle Waltie

    Ha! Is that considered "open-sourced"?

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  3. @Uncle Waltie--lol
    aye carrumba.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is the park back in community hands? It is gated and locked every time I pass by. It's like they're waiting to open it to the public, as soon as they find the "right sort" of public. Please tell me I'm wrong and only suffering from luxury related stress overload.

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  5. There's nothing quite like tooting your own horn.

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  6. I weren't 'again it, but then I never ever went in either. Why is everyone so close-minded? Live for today and remember the past.

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  7. Ken from Ken's KitchenDecember 14, 2011 at 12:10 PM

    I'd bet Mitt Romney's $10,000 that First Street Green and the other residents of First Street who'd been trying to convert that rat-infested vacant lot a into a cultural center or park could give 2 shits about the negative comments on this blog about the in 'n out BMW Gugg Lab -- the lot's cleaned up and paved over now and they can move on to phase 2.

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  8. I attended the holiday party there on saturday, which was a bit underwhelming. And maybe that's a good thing. The place didn't deserve the attention it received over the summer. It's a lot. A vacant lot. That's all. If the locals can make use of it, then great. But we don't need another reason to attract hipsters from all corners to come trash the neighborhood.

    I can't see much being done there without bothering the people who live in the windows above, but the next door folks with the hot tub and canope surrounded by champagne buckets seems to be enjoying themselves.

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  9. Doesn't Dr. Doom (Nouriel Roubini) live across the way?

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  10. Ya gonna dislocate a shoulder yous keep patting yourselves on the back like that.

    ReplyDelete

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