Game Changer: James Corner, Urban Dreamscaper

as a younger person in school I was really interested in an exercise called intimate immensity that sort of shaped the way I still think today intimate immensity is what it's like to be in a forest where things are immediate and tactile and intimate but at the same time you're in the big space of the forest and the forest seems in men's I'm James corner I'm a landscape architect landscape architecture is basically about the planning and design of space under the sky one of the phenomena that you deal with as a landscape architect is this idea of place the highlights perceived to be you know a derelict abandoned ugly post industrial structure that was potentially dark and dangerous and you know who would ever go up there why would anyone ever ever use use that the High Line's a really good example of a found object in the city a sort of thing that had been discarded and overlooked and being able to think about how to design that in a way where all of the potentials and all of the magic of that sort of strange found object in the city could be concentrated and come to the fore in public experience when we started the High Line we hadn't really built that much but I think you know as designers you bring an incredible sense of optimism and faith in the capacity of good design to transform what it may be perceived to be negative to something very positive we're busy with a lot of things and this model is depicting the new city in Shenzhen in China it's a city for 2 million people and it's being built as we speak typically cities are built as economic machines as block structures to be bought and then sold and built and unfortunately you know the public realm is is the leftover the residue so what we're doing in Shenzhen is actually shaping and framing the city by its public realm as opposed to simply a city being shaped by the streets and the blocks and the buildings and then the public realm being the leftover space after the fact it's been well demonstrated now that the design of good public spaces actually enhances the economic value of everything around chyna like the rest of Asia is booming and when we're designing and planning we're thinking a lot about how to diversify and create more robust eco systems in Shenzhen open space and the public realms tied to water quality and to flood control and to air quality control and to improving the sustainable environment that will support the city in the longer term it's very gratifying to be able to shape a city with those priorities I think when you are working with these complex multidisciplinary projects what's really key is the idea the idea is the gel around which a lot of often disparate and competing agendas can begin to find a foundation

Channel: TIME

Views: 11,337

Rating: 4.8823528 out of 5

Keywords: public space, Shenzhen, landscape architecture, High Line, Urban Renewal, High Line Park, qianhai, chelsea, Freshkills Park, New York, James Corner, parks, youtube, new york city, Seattle Waterfront, China, design, City, James, Manhattan, New, News, Taiwan

Id: hT36-CrNF0c

Length: 4min 17sec (257 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 23 2012