Kahn's Park Gets the Greenlight
The New York City parks around the Brooklyn Bridge are about to gain an upstream sibling. Roosevelt Island has just received a conditional green light for a new bit of green bling: the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, a plaza designed by Louis I. Kahn in 1972 for the site south of the Renwick Smallpox Hospital Ruin. The 2.8-acre park program will have closely-spaced granite columns to be carved, ultimately, with Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (freedom of speech; freedom of religion; freedom from want; freedom from fear).
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The space will overlook the U.N. headquarters and will serve those looking for space to picnic, sunbathe and enjoy public events. In essence, "a memorial should be a room and a garden," Kahn once said, "The garden is somehow a personal nature, a personal kind of control of nature, a gathering of nature. And the room was the beginning of architecture."
Date of completion is not formally announced.
Jamie Waugh
After starting in design journalism at House & Garden and CNN, Jamie runs the International Design Awards festival, which rewards visionary international design.
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