Tag Archives: dinosaurs in New York

Calatrava in Manhattan: It’s a jungle out there

Conception for World Trade Center transportation hub

Everything old is new again. Or everything new is old again.

Or (and this is much more satisfying to type) DINOSAURS ARE ON THE LOOSE IN NEW YORK CITY!!!

Thanks to Art Knowledge News for this story about architecture superstar Santiago Calatrava‘s design for the new transportation hub at Manhattan’s World Trade Center site. (And when, if ever, will Portland start thinking about this sort of architectural landmark?) An exhibition on this and other Calatrava projects will be at New York’s Queen Sofia Spanish Institute through Aug. 31.

I love the look of this building, which seems, well, Jurassic. You might even say, stegosauran, although Calatrava prefers to think of it as suggesting a bird being released from a child’s hand. Well, we know about birds’ prehistoric line of descent. Which prompted me to poke around Google until I found this image, of a stegosaurus model at the Bartow Jurassic Park in Poland. Maybe this guy’s the Model T to Calatrava’s Ferrari. But the family resemblance is unmistakable:

Stegosaurus, Baltow Jurassic Park, Poland/Wikimedia Commons