Aug
05
Fountain Shows Artistic Potential
John C. Dvorak has posted a clip of a fantastic water feature in a Japanese mall. Water falling from the framework spells messages and spits out graphics. I immediately thought of the much wrangled City Plaza yet to be installed on Fayetteville Street, and how easy it is to find ourselves low-balling its design.
After removing two thirds of the water features through value engineering, the plaza is slated for one water feature, currently envisioned as a “miniature Bellagio”. Is the Mini-B what would really draw people from across the country? Probably not. A fountain much like the one shown, however, would. Let’s be imaginative and spend all of that money on a place that really makes an impact.
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August 5th, 2008 at 11:18 am
That’s the best fountain ever. That would be a huge attraction here or anywhere.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:20 am
this is cool stuff, this video has more info. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2LUz2WVcek
August 5th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Raleigh blew it after nixing everything remotely interesting for this plaza-now it turned into what I always thought it would, the F Street Mall with cars on it.
August 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
But we have the beautiful and world-renowned Time & Light Tower on Capital, why do we need anything else?!
August 5th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
That fountain is really cool but would it work in an outdoor, well-lit setting? It seems that it might need lights to be seen which would make it easily visible only at night. I’m torn here because Raleigh should be a city embracing the technology of the 21st century and this fountain qualifies in my opinion. But I think that anyone who has watched the show at the Bellagio would agree that it is fantastic. If anything like that was installed in Raleigh I feel confident that it would be a very popular success. Imagine being downtown with a dancing fountain choreographed to music sounding between the buildings. How cool. That would definintely be a place to hang out.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
That is just bad to the bone !!!! I can see it saying “Let’s go Canes !!” during the Stanley Cup playoffs
August 5th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
This is great, how much fun would that be for adults and kids to view (there is Nothing for the kids in the Triangle on the weekends – not even a water park and this is the capital city)
We will never get anything like this. City council members have no vision (they are reactive, have never been proactive). We keep cutting budgets on programs and settle for below average spaces (look at the City Plaza – one ugly fountain, no art, 4 light towers, WOW – city council thinks they are doing us a favor and applaud themselves for a job well done).
Time for young blood with vision, our new city council
August 5th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
I always laugh (and cry) when I see the Plensa fountain in Chicago’s Millenium Park on every show about Chicago and the success of this park and. The idiots in Raleigh knew better though-now look what they have-a street intersection that Santa Claus can cross once a year at 9:00am on a Saturday.
August 5th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
This is neat, and shall I say, hopefully not too bold an idea for anyone. We should be thinking outside the box on a lot of things; heck knows, we will beat the logistics, traffic, cost, etc, to death before we will let it happen anyway. Here’s a couple of personal ideas:
Make Dix area a gardens/outdoor museum (a la NC Museum of Art), connect the greenway from Meredith College to it and Pullen Park, and then connect path by bridge to boylan, warehouse district and train station with an outdoor walkable square in the warehouse district at the end. Think Durham tobacco remodeling next to the DBAP., which has bars, restuarants and an partially visible waterfall/river running through the middle of it.
Better yet, divert Crabtree creek downtown and create a manmade river through it with a riverwalk. Widen the streets between Glenwood South and the warehouse district and connect the two.
Not feasible? Well, at least if we were thinking about public places that would draw and retain businesses and people it would be a beginning. Water, nature, openness, access all draw people.
August 6th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I must have different taste in “fountain art” than yall, but I thought that was very lame. Not only was it extremely boring to watch, but does Raleigh want to just copy something someone already has? Many people in Raleigh, the Triangle, and especially posting here, could come up with something fresh and better than this.