Studio a+i Is AIDS Park Design Winner ... But Wait

The triangular parcel near New York City's West Village is the green space envisioned for an AIDS Memorial Park.

We only recently posted a design ''Call for Entries'' for the AIDS Memorial Park in New York City www.landscapearchitect.com/research/article/16047.

The design competition site was the ''gateway'' to New York City's West Village, a triangle of land bounded by Seventh Avenue, West 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue on the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital. The competition ended Jan. 21, 2012.

On Jan. 30, 2012, the AIDS Memorial Park Campaign selected Brooklyn-based Studio a+i as the winner of its design competition.

But wait, as the infomercials like to say. The developer, Rudin Management, has ignored the results of the contest and announced it will go with their own design by landscape architect Rick Parisi, a plan previously approval by the NYC City Planning Commission. The contest results were never binding. The Rudin plan is for a mixed-use development that includes 450 residential units, 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, 20,000 square feet of medical offices and 17,000 square feet of public open space on the triangular parcel of land located west of the East Side.

The winning design of Studio a+i imagined a park bound by three mirrored walls that would give the illusion of a forest. The Parisi design is said to be more conventional, with seating for 600 people amid mixed plantings.