Another Utopia -We have failed to make a Utopia out of architecture

摘要

After getting a master's degree at Harvard University in summer of 1953,I spent a year living and working in New York, a city I had dreamed about. In the sixty-odd years that have passed since then, I have had countless opportunities to stay in New York, at times for a few days and at other times for weeks. Particularly in recent years, a number of projects there have led to many visits to the city. One day, however, I suddenly found myself wondering what the primary landscape of New York is for me. It is not the image of skyscrapers crowding Manhattan. Instead, it is spacious Central Park; the Sculpture Garden in the old Museum of Modem Art; the skating rink in Rockefeller Center; Washington Square, the gateway to the Village, and the sight of seniors leisurely enjoying chess there; and Gramercy Park, which Gramercy Park Hotel, the hotel I stayed at for a workshop lasting several weeks at Columbia University in the 1970s, looks out on. These open spaces have been constants, even as neighboring buildings have sometimes changed.