“Today marks the end of the public comment period on land use changes proposed for the Main Post of San Francisco’s Presidio – a deadline that may sound bureaucratic but in fact signals the next round in an acrimonious battle unlikely to end anytime soon.”
∙ Deadline is today for comments on Presidio plan [SFGate]
∙ A Toned Down CAMP And Revised Main Post Plan For The Presidio [SocketSite]
This is taking the form of a large scale version of a mid century Palm Springs modern home, especially some the “Alexander” homes which were built in the 50’s.
well, retards don’t want the CAMP museum to ‘compete’ in height with the myraid POS shacks that exist there now. sure, let’s piss away another potential world class museum to backward looking planning.
hipster – Is there any reason why an art museum must be tall ?
The only thing worse than a big bad idea, is a small bad idea…
Hipster – what POS shacks are you referring to, exactly? The row of brick buildings along the Main Parade Ground? I like them.
No one said tall (that’s the nimby’s perception). But it should be 200,000 sq feet, to be a viable 1st class contemporary art museum. Modern and especially contemporary art needs some big spaces to display well. (Remember the old SFMOMA in civic center? The space sucked for contemporary art.) not half of it buried underground to scale with the POS shacks nearby.
“world class museum”
Ya know, I’m a bit bothered by what has not happened: a semi-public tour of this world class collection with various PR agency coordinated writeups in the usual periodicals to create a tidal wave of public opinion saying “we must have this!”. Maybe the collection isn’t so world class.
I thought the use of the word “retard” went out like other derogatory words used to describe some people. If that’s your language style, hipster, I can only wonder at your “world class” art appreciation style.
2^ you’re right, the nimby’s narrow-minded pervasiveness, and the planning dept, bend-over-for-them policy has done wonders for making this city progressive architecturally. and then we have people questioning the quality of the Fisher’s art collection. if they knew much about contemporary art, they would know the Fisher’s have a serious collection (see below.) yet this city, with it’s idiotic (sorry, not retarded) policies is staring a gift horse in the mouth.
Donald Fisher – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn 1993, ARTnews Magazine declared Fisher one of the top ten art collectors in the world. His collection, largely housed at the Gap headquarters in San …
“Modern and especially contemporary art needs some big spaces to display well … not half of it buried underground to scale with the POS shacks nearby.”
You should check out LA’s downtown MOCA which is mostly underground. It is an awesome venue for modern art. Even Anselm Keifer’s and Julian Schnabel’s gigantic canvasses fit well there. At the same time to boot.
“Donald Fisher – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn 1993, ARTnews Magazine declared Fisher one of the top ten art collectors in the world…”
How does ARTnews rate their top ten art collectors ? By the cultural merit of the art ? Or perhaps by the auction value of the collection ? I’m not sure the two are linked. Botero still commands very high prices. (not that Fisher owns any Boteros. I have no idea)
milkshake- it’s not that its impossible to build a decent museum half underground, it’s that it’s totally unnecessary in this case. it’s a park afterall, and we have a chance to put an architecturally significant museum as a cultural anchor for decades to come. and with a name like CAMP, come on, you can’t get more post-modern than that (just ask susan sontang 🙂
as for fisher’s collection, i’m know it rare and expensive, but as for cultural merit, well that’s a subjective matter. but i hope he doesn’t have many Schnabel’s- that guy is such a stagnant 80’s blowhard- let’s keep the canvases covered with broken plates in LA. kiefer, now that’s a different story. he had a fantastic exhibit at sfmoma a few years back.
hipster – I think that we have similar taste in art ! Give me Keifer any day over Schnabel who seems to have rested on his laurels so long that they are ground into the turf.
The CAMP design has been beaten into a banal, undistinguished little lump by the local NIMBY’s — good job SF!
…meanwhile the rest of the world gets contemporary museums like OMA’s Seoul National University Museum: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/koolhaas/snum/snum.html
or Herzog & DeMeuron’s CaixaForum in Madrid:
http://www.dezeen.com/2008/05/22/caixaforum-madrid-by-herzog-de-meuron/
or Zaha Hadid’s Eli Broad Art Museum in friggin Grand Rapids!:http://www.dezeen.com/2008/01/15/eli-and-edythe-broad-art-museum-by-zaha-hadid/
or countless other great recent examples in Europe or Asia…
Hipster – You never answered my question. What POS shacks are you referring to, exactly?
I don’t have a quarrel with the idea of a modern art museum in the Presidio, but not at the head of the Main Parade ground and not something that dwarfes the existing buildings.
citicritter —
We could have had a promiment style-breaking museum building, had Fisher agreed to a location outside the Presidio.
Whoever claims these grounds are so sacred and historical so as not to be challenged by a NEW BUILDING – oh no! – is pretty pathetically clueless, regressive actually (that’s right, the opposite of PROgressive). In Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen or even Vienna for chrissakes, where the historical building stock is so much more substantial than these crappy brick barracks here, there are bold new works of architecture being built into the urban mixture. SF needs to grow up and smell the architecture.
Citicritter – Why don’t you try telling that to someone who has a relative buried in the cemetary nearby? I’m sure they’ll tell you exactly what they think of your “progressive” works of architecture (and rightly so).
This isn’t the city of San Francisco. This is the Presidio, a National Park and historical district.
If Don Fisher wants to build a museum as a monument to his ego, he can go BUY some land in SOMA, where the location makes more sense and he can build what he wants. Instead of being handed acres of prime parkland for free.
^ and nevermind George Lucas’ company (I’d prefer a museum to a business there any day). C’mon, the presideo is ideal for a architecturally significant museum. The original design was quite good and it wasent too tall IMO.
As for the POS ‘shacks’, there are certainly plenty of those in the park (I’m not commenting on all of the, just many of them.)
Milkshake- a belated amen to kiefer’s art! Btw, just went yesterday to check out the new sculpture garden at SFMOMA- a great outdoor space to relax and enjoy outdoor sculptures.
Fishchum: relative schmelative! The dead (and hopefully the living) surely wouldn’t want more of the Lucas faux barracks-on-steroids approach to contemporary design in the Presidio — although in SF they likely would.
Its the 21st century, and architecture needs to acknowledge that, plain and simple. Besides, the cemetery is a ways away from this this so-called ‘Parade Grounds’, which is basically a friggin asphalt parking lot at this poiint.