Comments on: Counterbalance park: Fail

By: Counterbalance park: A Bogus Tagline « Seek Nuance

Counterbalance park: A Bogus Tagline « Seek Nuance — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:14:29 +0000

[...] A Bogus Tagline Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: seattle — John @ 1:13 pm My October rant about Counterbalance park included intellectually sublime comments about the park’s tagline, “An Urban [...]

By: Anita

Anita — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:10:30 +0000

As far as I understand it they’re supposed to be more like that James Turrell installation at UW where the colors change from one to the other very slowly. That is, if they ever figure out how to program it.

Judging from all the people taking pictures and hanging out there at night now I’d say they disagree with you.

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:22:27 +0000

Yeah, I saw that. The red lights under the bench are hideously garish. There's a difference between being an attraction, and being attractive, and those lights are the former. Another Fail for this park.

By: Anita

Anita — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:52:38 +0000

wow, snarkiness from a Seattleite…. how original!

well, either way, I guess this is what is going on there. http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/threadcount/2008/12/lighting_the_park.php

enjoy!

By: John

John — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:40:57 +0000

Yeah, I know about working with the City of Seattle, and municipal governments in general. I also know about flat hard concrete surfaces that don’t breath, disco lights that are Ice Capades rejects, and foreboding Stalinesque spaces. If you think those lights are stunning, then I have a 50W flashlight I’d like to shine in your eyes.

By: Anita

Anita — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:53:06 +0000

Out of curiosity, do you know anything about the public process or working with the City?

I’ll agree with you that the place is pretty barren right now – and well, not what it was meant to be. But saying that the designers had their heads up their rears is a little much. There are a lot of things that go wrong in the process of designing and building a public park, the least of which is having to compromise more of the design than you’d like. Don’t know if you’ve noticed since you wrote this, but the lights are finally up (albeit I think they seem to be oddly programmed). They are actually quite stunning. As for the trees, it’s quite expensive for the city to purchase fully grown ones. That’s why you get the little dinky trees that don’t look like anything yet – it’s not really a design choice.

And just for the record, much of the money that got spent on this park came from neighborhood fund raising efforts. The neighborhood association had as much say in it as the city or the designers.