Glenn Robert Lym Architect AIA/PhD

 

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Having Shown HERE1 & HERE2

March 29th, 2010 by Glenn Lym | Filed under Uncategorized.

The showing of the two HERE videos this past Wednesday night at the American Institute of Architects San Francisco Chapter Gallery went quite well. Erin Cullerton of AIASF masterminded the setup and Joe Armin who used to be in my office volunteered to help the the staff set up.

I released the video on the de Young and the California Academy of Sciences to the internet first, as it is the most succinct, punchy and overtly architectural of the 3 videos that I have worked on so far. The episode on the history of Golden Gate Park is more interesting on a deeper level. Yet its arguements are more complicated and subtle, so I released it on the internet second. However at AIASF I showed these videos in the reverse order. Each was followed by a lively and engaging Question and Answer period.

HERE2 – A History of Golden Gate Park depicts the long struggle by San Franciscans to develop their burgeoning city by creating a huge park set in distant sand dunes miles from the heart of the early city. It was politically and technically an extraordinary undertaking. There are fights about whether the park would be nature oriented or building/amusement oriented. Landscape would be created only to be torn down for buildings which in turn were torn down for meadows, gardens and treescapes. In the end, I came to realize that in building Golden Gate Park, San Francisco had created a myth for itself -that underlying the City was bucolic nature. The real origin of the City as a set of sand dunes, a few lakes and a bunch of salt marshes was banished from it’s citizens’ mindscape. The culture of San Francisco was rewritten as a woodland ancestry, not one made of sand.

As the lights went up during this first video’s Q&A session, I realized that the audience comprised a nice age range from recent graduates to senior masters of the subject matter. I was very pleased that landscape architects Tito Patri and Drew Detsch were there. And it felt like a EHDD Friday Slide Show Party with Peter and Jan Dodge and George Homsey there. Several people connected with the de Young and the Academy of Sciences were in the audience.

Several of us talked about our experiences as children, coming to the park periodically for open and inexpensive access to the grounds and museums. In comparison, today the museums feel remote and places of special events with a high ticket cost. Audience members noted that with the decline in public and private financing of these institutions, the museums have had to transform themselves into media draws to command substantial ticket revenue.

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As you know, in the HERE1 video, I do not take a stand about whether the de Young or the Academy of Sciences is a better building – I simply look at their differences. Yet as the Q&A discussion progressed, parts of the audience argued for their own favorites. So I asked for a show of hands of who liked each museum. About 1/3 voted for the de Young while 2/3 voted for the Academy of Sciences. Yet the reasons underlying this vote were complex. People who liked the Academy of Sciences talked about its approachability, and its gentle setting in the park compared to an abrubt and awkward sense of the de Young’s placement. Yet people also felt that once you had been to the Academy, it was as if you have seen everything, so the compulsion to return is not great. And on the other hand, people commented that the meanders within the de Young led to memorable and varied visits. The de Young’s ambiguous character seemed to bother and puzzle people, yet ensure repeat attendance.

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At some point, we touched on the decline of the park’s landscape. Whether through a raising of the soil at the Concourse which led to damage of its a thick bosque tree cover or the death of the park’s first generation trees, people pleaded for a solid underwriting of the park’s maintenance efforts. And yet there is the spector of climate change, bay water tide rise and questions about future water resources. Seeing as the park is man made and must be continuously watered, would its underground wells and the City’s Sierra Mountain based water systems continue to be available?

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But it was 8:30 PM, time to head out into a warm San Francisco spring evening and have good drink with friends.

« A San Francisco Showing of HERE1 and HERE2
My Head to the Sand, Immersed in the Past »

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