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When it's finished, sometime next spring, Maggie Daley Park will be something. Everything from open meadow, to a climbing wall and skating ribbon. You can find out all about it tonight, Monday, May 12th, at 6:30 p.m. in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute, as Matthew Urbanski of the park's designer, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, talks about
Chicago Parks: Landscape, Imagination, and the Livable City.
For now, however, the site is something completely different, but just as a remarkable. Looking out from the viewing platform that Frank Gehry's closed-off BP Bridge has become, you now encounter, as far as the eye can sea, a vast ocean of white, pillow-like dominoes. These are the legos that will form the foundation for Maggie Daley's varied landscape.
They're made of of “Foam-Control EPS
Geofoam” a lightweight polysystrene that will form the foundation for the varying-level landscaping.
According to a
story by Tina Sfondeles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the material has already been used at Soldier Field and Daley Plaza, and it never dematerializes. It's claimed to be waterproof, which is a big deal, as the previous park on the site Daley Bi-Centennial, including beautiful mature trees was torn up and thrown away because was water was leaking into the garage on which the park was built, necessitating everything being removed for a new sealing to be installed.
This will be the last time you can see them, the great waves of dominoes surging across the site, awaiting careful placement before they disappear before the earth.
The sea even has its own serpent coursing through it, in the person of the winding contours of the BP Bridge.
It's one of the great shows of the summer. Enjoy it while you can.
Read More:
Valkenburgh on Daley Bi, North Grant Park (with video)
Reinventing Daley Bi
Goodbye Daley Bi; Hello Maggie Daley Park - stripping North Grant Park bare
(Better) Performing Seals fine new home at Maggie Daley Park
1 comment:
Good talk!
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