Taking the edge off: A federal plaza with a controversial history undergoes another revolution, this one combining elements of a public square and a garden with a high level of craft.
Sitting in Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' (MVVA) Jacob K. Javits Federal Building Plaza in downtown Manhattan, at Worth and Lafayette streets, you could forget that a former iteration of the quiet plaza sparked one of the most outsized controversies about public sculpture and artists' control over the fate of their work.
