When Olmsted and Vaux designed Prospect Park in Brooklyn, they recognized their chance to refine or redress some of their efforts in Central Park, whose two large green gathering spaces, The Sheep Meadow and The Great Lawn, are both essentially flat. In Prospect Park, one of the best-loved features then and now, is the Long Meadow, the nearly mile long roll of grassy hills that unfold after the initial entry from Grand Army Plaza. They considered Prospect Park their superior work, as do many landscape architect critics.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro cut out a small section of this undulating Brooklyn icon, and then transported their flying green carpet of grass to the tighter, smaller, higher-built spaces of Manhattan. Here, they placed it on the head of a two story, still unnamed “destination” restaurant in Lincoln Center’s north plaza, and secured it all with a stainless steel hat pin.
Last Friday, this “Short Meadow” of green space opened for public use, finally allowing close-up inspection of what has only been intriguingly visible from a distance or in computer simulated virtual reality.
