I’ve been today in the “Never Built New York“ exhibit at the Queens Museum and I loved it! It features many models, drawings and installations of architectural and urban schemes that never made it past the drawing board. They go from different conceptions for realized buildings (like alternative ideas for the freedom tower), to megaprojects and ways of reconfiguration for the entire city.
It was not only a great opportunity to visit this exhibition, but also to see the Queens Museum and “The Panorama of the City of New York”, a massive physical model that reproduces the 320 squares miles of New York City’s five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. It was built for the 1964/65 World Fair and updated a few years later, but for this opportunity it also held models of the unrealized projects of the exhibition, helping us to understand how the configuration of the city would have been if they actually had been built.
It is a really good opportunity to explore and investigate more about New York, find some really interesting projects to look into, and maybe even rethink the way we conceptualize not only this city, but some aspects of architecture and urbanism in general.
Even as the “Never Built New York” exhibition is about to finish, “The Panorama of the City of New York” is an ongoing exhibition, and I absolutely recommend going to see it!
