As the Carousel Turns: Jean Nouvel or Bye Bye to Dubai?

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David and Jane Walentas have enlisted Jean Nouvel in their long-running struggle to have a restored carousel placed in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The saga of the carousel goes back 22 years and New York Magazine's Intelligencer updates it as it now includes a pavilion designed by the Pritzker Prize winning starchitect. Besides learning that it costs $500,000 to have Mr. Nouvel design a carousel pavilion, we find out that the Walentases have promised to pay for the building, that the head of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp. is still in no hurry to make placement of the carousel a priority. Despite years and years of agitation by the Walentases to give the carousel to the the park, the master plan doesn't include a space for it. The Nouvel Pavilion involves "shadows of the carousel’s 48 horses prancing on the pavilion’s glass wall as they revolve by night." Meanwhile, Jane says: :"I wake up every morning and ask myself, ‘How do we get the powers that be to get off their dime?’" Here's one way: "There's a guy in Dubai who wants to buy the carousel," she says. Nooo!!!
· Nouvel and the Carousel [Intelligencer/NYM]
· Now in Dumbo: Jane's Carousel [Curbed]

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