7 Days in NYC: Exploring Contemporary Landscapes
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MAY 13TH, DAY 2, MENGRAN GAO

5/13/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
    Today is the second day in our trip in NYC. It is nice weather same as yesterday. After the experience of the first day, I am well prepared to walk already when I left for subway in the morning.
    
    We first went to riverside park south. It is a quite big park, and it is well designed and maintained. It has a lot of changes in elevation which provide scenes in different levels. The changes are quite smooth both in elevation and pedestrian directions. Also, from this park I became interested in the piers that were preserved as a symbol around riverside. This design element repetitively comes to sight in the tour today. It is pretty neat and brought the history into reality. 

     After seeing riverside park south, we went to Chelsea Cove Waterside park and also had the opportunity to see the skate park there. After we got off the bus to Chelsea Cove Waterside park, I started to take photos to the right hand side of me almost on eye level every 40 steps in order to record what I can see along the way. The process is consistent from the time we got off the bus to the entrance of the Chelsea market.

      In the afternoon, we went to Teardrop Park. It is the second time I am here. I like it more when I see it more. It is not big but very interesting and people are very involved to the site. I played the slippery slide three times. It looks very steep, but really fun. Even grownups would not feel it is boring. I think it is creative to have a slide like that and I think in the city many people are under great pressure, providing more facilities that can be used by grownups can be beneficial very much. It might be a good way to think when doing the design in urban area.

     Governors Island is another site we went this afternoon. It is located in a quite different place and thus the feeling is totally different than the parks in the city. It is quiet and neat though still under construction. It is a good place to hold festivals or other activities I think. It actually reminds me of Tongzhou Grand Canal Park in Beijing (http://r.visitbeijing.com.cn/html/english/Attractions/s120.shtml). It is far from the city center but it often holds different activities. It is big and allow many people to go there.

    The last stop today is the 911 Memorial. I went there at the beginning this year when it was really cold and freezing. Today is quite different though the design are still moving and reminds people of the loss. The water feature there is really impressive. It is simple, clean and neat. The moment you walk into the park, the atmosphere is totally different from the outside. I think it is the success of the design.

    Also for today, I am still taking photos about seating. I want to keep collecting information about this useful design element in urban district. And I found how the routes join and separate is interesting too. Maybe in the rest of days I will pay some attention to that as well. I think it was a really good day for my study though I got a little sun burnt. 

1 Comment
mh
5/13/2014 09:24:47 pm

hi mengran,

these images are interesting, but with grids it's hard to tell wherther we're supposed to read them from left to right, or top to bottom. that's why the single, vertical line of images works well in these situations.

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