NEW YORK TIMES: AIDS Memorial Loses Plants and Gains Supporters
The New York City AIDS Memorial planned for Greenwich Village has emerged sleeker, lighter, more sculptural and a lot less verdant after months of scrutiny by city agencies.
The memorial would take the form of a steel canopy over the westernmost end of a new city park on the triangular block bounded by Seventh Avenue, Greenwich Avenue and West 12th Street, opposite the site of St. Vincent’s Hospital, which is being redeveloped. The construction of the memorial, which is being financed through a group calledNYC AIDS Memorial, is scheduled to be completed in 2015.
The architects of the memorial are Studio a+i of Brooklyn. The structural engineers are Robert Silman Associates.
Though similar in many respects to the version of the memorial shown last summer, the revised plan that was made public on Wednesday differs in some important ways. Most obviously, it has lost all of the English ivy, Virginia creeper and honeysuckle that was to have covered it as if it were a garden trellis. This change was championed by Amanda M. Burden, the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission.
