Remember back in the summer of 2015 when Gomez Vazquez International from Mexico teased us with this:
Powerbrokers involved in the Hemisfair redevelopment publicly shot the GVI fantasy sketch down pretty quickly, as if to reassure the buzzing general public that they would never dare to break away from normative conventionality. A dangerous weed of an idea had to be pulled out before it had time to take root and spread. I knew then that we would not be getting anything at all daring.
Costs, economics, and the reality that our city is not quite the hyper-progressive, world-class, globally-connected megacity we hope for it to be all keep the more glamorously sexy designs away. Safe, boring, and cheapest will almost always be the plan we fall back to until we actually have a core density with enough capturable income to justify the investment risks of greater and grander architecture. However, what also hurts us is a broad public outlook that at knee-jerk is still largely dominated by the suburban, provincial, familiar, and conventional, and all this to a level such that we were actually
reassured that the designs would not be as dramatic as GVI's. They couldn't even pretend to call it something to aspire to.
Ah well, much of this is about skyline imagery. What might matter more is what actually happens at ground level. What details, materials, amenities, connections, and spaces do they offer that enliven this areas as an urban civic park such that we would want to walk around and filter through their buildings to the park and not instead relegate it all to an office park campus or an outdoor megamall?