Public Art and the Wastewater Plant

Not the Newtown Creek Opera House

The best kind of "public art" is handsome infrastructure -- useful things done for the public good like parks, subways, schools and government buildings.

Where the typical "percent for art" commission satisfies the schlock taste of consensus or the corporate ego, good infrastructure expresses thoughtful citizenship.

Central Park is a great example, and so is Greenpoint's Newtown Creek Wastewater Plant.

Sure it's a sewage plant, but its parts are clean and exposed like the chrome and polished metal-flake paint on a show car, demonstrating that there's nothing like form following function to distill design.  Even the "useless" details of the plant -- accents like tiling and piped fences -- are there to bolster the viewer's confidence in the design, and the enterprise as a whole.

Some of the plant's buildings look better than airport terminals.  And as you can see in the pictures here, its visitor center looks like a Performing Arts Center.

Handsome infrastructure like the plant -- even at the business end of waste treatment -- can remind us that public space does not have to be a No Man's Land where litter drifts and accidents happen to strangers.  It can respect the viewer and remind us that, as citizens, we share something beautiful and still unfolding, that we've carried from the beginning of our long journey from the cave.

Note: I've been calling it the "Wastewater Plant" on this blog; its official name is the "Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant."

[ NTCWPCP, Architectural Record ]
[ Ada Louise Huxtable on Public Building Design, WSJ ]