figure 5. St. Louis Ecological Assembly Line: Pruitt-Igoe as Productive Landscape, by Heather Dunbar and Xiaowei R. Wang imagines the site as a producer of trees for parks throughout St. Louis.
Heather Dunbar and Xiaowei R Wang
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replaced the innovative explorations in urban space. This landscape presents a romanticized idea of a park, ‘denaturalizing’ a site which was never natural - a man-made island. See Expo 67 Then and Now at www.worldsfaircommunity. org
AO’C: The story of the site, cultural and political histories and present pressures is very compelling, evidenced in the contrast of the developers proposal and the competition results. At the same time, this story of such a monumental and iconic site being replaced by a ‘naturalized’ landscape with no reference to its past life brings to mind
of the most significant experiments in megastructure and urban design at the time, and was a symbolic moment in the history of Montreal and Canada - the physical structures held the symbolic relevance, rather than their destruction. However, since Expo 67, the site has been stripped of all but three
the story of the Expo 67 grounds on Ile St Helene. In the case of Pruitt- Igoe the symbolism of the site was really in its destruction, and the naturalized landscape is (as far as I can tell) the effect of opportunistic species. In contrast, at Expo 67, the event itself - the pavilions, transportation, and physical site of the island represented one
‘monuments’ from the event, and a park has
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