By Tony Adams
The thoughtful exhibit at Art Gallery 21 may be a good side effect of the pandemic. Five South Florida architectural firms jumped at architectural historian John O’Connor’s invitation to imagine what might be built on the empty rough patch on the Drive in Wilton Manors adjacent to the police station/city hall. Ordinarily they would have been too busy to produce these elegant proposals without an expectation of real work. O’Connor said that some city commissioners planned to view the exhibit. Perhaps some of the five fantastic renderings that envision lively mixed use, and flexible structures will appeal to them.
O’Connor explains, “This is part of the ‘Reimagining the City’ series I’ve done for the magazines I’ve been involved with. I ask architects to roll up their sleeves, don’t worry about zoning or other restrictions, and just answer the question ‘What would you do here?’ This is really just an idea-generator.”
Urban theorist Jane Jacobs (Read her The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961.) who stopped Robert Moses from destroying Greenwich Village, would have enjoyed these proposals. When she wrote about “infill” curing blocks that pedestrians avoid, she could have been talking about this site. She would have enjoyed the friendly, porous, sustainable, and inviting (Glavovic Studio’s “Eco-Agora”) visual flexibility of greenspace and glass in these proposals. (Field Agency’s cubes conjure Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montreal.) We will never know how she would have felt about a “drone port” for deliveries, with all that it implies about commerce, traffic and urban life. (Strang Design’s “Why Travel for a purchase when the purchase can come to you?”)
The exhibit, like Brigadoon, has vanished, but O’Connor’s efforts have planted seeds that will help Wilton Manors continue to grow as an excellent place for living, working, and playing. This was made possible with the generous support of community leaders Joe Pallant, Tony LoGrande, and Chris Caputo.
The participating firms are Adache Group Architects, Field Agency Architects, Glavovic Studio, SOW Design, and STRANG Design.
