For many years the west side of the Lincoln Center, along Amsterdam Avenue, was one of the least welcoming parts of its campus. Unlike the other squares and entrances of the structure, that area remained marked by walls and concrete barriers separating the cultural complex from the street and the neighborhoods around. Now the Lincoln Center has started a renovation project designed to intervene on that border: to remove part of the structures that made it closed, to create new green spaces and to make more direct the passage between the campus and the city.
The most radical intervention includes the construction of the Baron Theater, an outdoor amphitheater with 2,000 seats intended for music, dance and theatre performances. It will rise within the new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Gardens, which will take the place of the current Damrosch Park. The project includes more trees, shaded areas, flower gardens and spaces where to sit even without having to attend an event. According to the Lincoln Center, the trees will increase by 50 percent compared to the current situation. There will also be the Starr Foundation Fountain, an interactive fountain with fog and jets of water.
The idea is not only to add a new theatre, but to make one of the most important cultural places in New York less rigid. The Lincoln Center is a complex associated with classical music, opera, ballet and great artistic institutions, but for this reason it can be perceived as distant from those who do not frequent it. The new design tries to reduce this distance with more accessible routes, spaces open to those who pass there by chance and a programming that should include shows and free events. It is an important point, because in a city where access to culture is often linked to the price of tickets, a well-designed public space can change the way an institution is lived.
The project was also developed through the comparison with thousands of residents and community members, at least as communicated by the Lincoln Center. The opening of the new gardens and Baron Theater is planned for the summer of 2028, so the real effects will be seen only in a few years. In the meantime, along the fences of the yard between the 62nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue the mural The Future We Create was installed, realized with the involvement of local residents. It is a temporary solution, but it already signals the sense of intervention: turning a closed edge of the Lincoln Center into a more legible and crossable part of the city.
L’articolo The Lincoln Center opens, literally proviene da IlNewyorkese.
