Strolling through the crowded galleries of Never Built New York (NBNY) at the Queens Museum feels like gazing into a parallel universe: things look familiar, but not quite right. The exhibit offers a glimpse of the different versions of New York that the city could have become—for better or worse. Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin curated the show, which is a companion piece for their earlier endeavor on the West Coast (Never Built Los Angeles, July 28 to October 27, 2013, at the Architecture and Design Museum) and books of the same names. The pair of architecture writers spent the last two years negotiating with universities, museums, and other institutions to assemble some 250 pieces of architectural memorabilia representing more than 80 unbuilt projects.
The exhibition begins in the long and narrow Rubin gallery. The curators, along with exhibition designer Christian Wassman, have displayed objects, renderings, sketches, and models of unbuilt projects around the room, which roughly mirrors the shape of Manhattan, arranged according to their corresponding location on the island. “We wanted it to feel as if you’re in the city,” Lubell told RECORD. Entering the exhibition, at the equivalent of the borough’s southernmost tip, visitors are greeted with drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Key Plan for Ellis Island and Thomas Hasting’s 165-foot-tall National American Indian Memorial, as well as models of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates’ Whitehall Ferry Terminal, planned for Staten Island, and Moshe Safdie’s Habitat New York. Walking farther in, one encounters Midtown schemes, Uptown plans, and finally concepts for the South Bronx.
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